The number eight contains a specific form of corporate cruelty. Not eight days, not eight weeks’ notice. Eight minutes. At least one support engineer who spoke to BetaKit after the company’s simultaneous cuts in the US, Canada, and India in March 2026 said that’s how long it took OpenText to end a seventeen-year career. Not even a proper farewell was given to the employee. It is said that until the calls were completed, their direct manager was unaware of who was being fired.
In late March, OpenText, an information management company with headquarters in Kitchener-Waterloo, laid off about 4% of its global workforce, affecting an estimated 880 workers out of a stated headcount of 22,000. The cuts were broad rather than surgical, affecting engineers, senior analysts, community managers, and team leads. By Monday afternoon, LinkedIn was flooded with job-seeking posts from people who had worked for one of Canada’s biggest software companies just hours before.
Before dismissing this as just another tech-sector trim, it’s important to consider what OpenText truly is. The company, which was founded in 1991 and generates over a billion dollars in recurring revenue annually, competes with companies like IBM, Abbyy, and Hyland by offering cloud-based information management solutions. This is not a runway-burning startup. By most financial metrics, this established enterprise software company has withstood a lot, including acquisitions, changes in the market, and the move to the cloud. And yet here we are, making staff reductions for the third major period in about two years.
The layoffs are a part of a larger three-year business optimization plan that was introduced in 2024 by former CEO Mark Barrenechea. The plan started with the elimination of 1,200 employees and continued with the elimination of another 1,600 jobs soon after. After Barrenechea was ultimately fired in August of last year, the company was left in an uncomfortable holding pattern with a temporary CEO while a permanent replacement was sought. On April 20, 2026, Ayman Antoun, a former President of IBM Americas who led cloud, infrastructure, and cybersecurity initiatives for IBM for more than thirty years, was scheduled to formally assume the role. About a month before he even entered the building, the March layoffs were announced.
OpenText has been actively selling what it refers to as “non-core assets” since Barrenechea left. The company sold its Vertica business for $150 million USD and its eDOCS business for $163 million USD, with the proceeds going toward debt repayment. A company cutting personnel and product lines at the same time in the name of focus is subtly telling. AI is being emphasized more and more; in particular, OpenText’s information management platform is being positioned as the database for enterprise AI systems. To be honest, it’s still unclear if that repositioning is a visionary move or just a practical rebranding.
The atmosphere within the organization is less ambiguous. Employees have expressed a “very distinct sense of impending doom,” dissatisfaction over forced migrations to internal tools that were then abruptly discontinued, and doubt about any new leader’s ability to significantly reverse the trajectory on internal message boards and forums. Given that Antoun’s background leans toward services and consulting—a different discipline, different instincts—some have questioned his particular suitability for a software product company. He might surprise everyone. Another possibility is that the IBM playbook enters through the door with him.
Here, the larger context is important. The layoffs at OpenText are not isolated incidents. Tech workers in Canada have been going through a challenging period as companies that grew rapidly during the pandemic years have been quietly, then not so quietly, contracting. OpenText is just one of the more well-known examples; it’s large enough to make headlines and old enough that its mistakes have some significance. Seeing a 30-year-old company fire so many employees raises a question that is rarely voiced loudly enough: when does “optimization” turn into something completely different? If there is a response, it most likely depends on where you were during an eight-minute call.
