Several members of Dish’s corporate communications team were laid off last week, and that was preceded by layoffs on the pay TV side of the business the week prior, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Asked about the layoffs, Dish provided the following statement to Fierce: “Like most businesses, we continually evaluate and adjust our workforce to meet the needs of our business. While there may be fluctuations on some teams due to functional demands and performance issues, we are actively hiring throughout the company.”
The company’s statement ends on the upside note about hiring. Indeed, the company has myriad job opportunities posted on LinkedIn, including for corporate communications specialists.
However, “the organization as a whole is undergoing a significant workforce reduction,” said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Dish did not provide a number for how many people were affected. One source speculated about 10 people on the communications team received pink slips, including senior leaders for the Dish wireless communications team, while many more were affected on the pay TV side of the business. However, it did not trigger a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the state of Colorado. Dish is headquartered in the Denver suburb of Englewood.
The layoffs reinforce the revolving door that Dish appears to be operating under. Since the start of the year, Dish has seen the departure of high-level executives from various parts of the company, including Stephen Bye, who played a key role on the network team, and Stephen Stokols, who was hired in 2020 to head up the Boost Mobile business. Stokols previously founded prepaid brand FreedomPop.
When Stokols’ departure was announced in April, Dish said it was hiring Dish alumni Michael Kelly as EVP of Retail Wireless. Kelly’s resume includes prior leadership roles at Dish within sales, advertising, marketing, customer service and more, including at Blockbuster, but not much in the realm of wireless retail.
Last month, Dish disclosed in an SEC filing that Narayan Iyengar was resigning as EVP and chief operating officer effective June 23. He had been with the company since March 2022.
Wave7 Research reported in May that Dish’s Boost wireless brand had a high level of executive turnover in recent months. Besides Stokols and Bye, Dish/Boost also saw the departure of Boost SVP-Retail Rob Hussa and sales leader Benjamin Ordaz. Today, Dish announced the retirement of Dave Mayo as EVP of network development and the hiring of Eben Albertyn as chief technology officer of the wireless business. Marc Rouanne will take on a new role as EVP of global partnerships
“Dish Network and Boost Mobile have been reducing their headcounts recently, while experiencing significant turnover of executives,” Wave7 principal Jeff Moore told Fierce.
“There’s just a lot of organizational upheaval,” said Recon Analytics founder Roger Entner, noting the company’s need for capital to fund the rest of the 5G network buildout and to get its retail business squared away. “There’s so much change going on … They got their 70 percent done,” but the Boost Infinite postpaid brand and Project Genesis 5G network are not adding customers at a fast enough pace.
Irons in the fire
Since Dish met the June 14, 2023, deadline for providing 5G broadband to 70% of the U.S. population, it now faces the more formidable task of covering 75% of the Partial Economic Areas (PEAs) of the U.S. by June 2025. Under the T-Mobile/Sprint merger conditions, Dish was set up to become the fourth facilities-base carrier in the U.S.
Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen told investors on the most recent earnings call that the company will “take a little bit of a pause” in terms of building out new markets until the late 2024 to early 2025 time frame.
As for the company’s liquidity story, “obviously, we have to address that,” he said, declining to go into detail about the company’s strategy but suggesting there are more levers Dish can pull and “there’s more opportunity for us than people realize.”