SanDisk Corp and Symantec Corp are leading their Silicon Valley peers in boosting profit per employee, as technology workers learn to do more with less.
SanDisk earned US$684,381 more from each worker last year than the prior year, while Symantec added US$430,453, according to Bloomberg data measuring the most recent fiscal year.
About half of the companies in a Bloomberg regional index had more profitable workforces last year, helped by job cuts and the start of the economic recovery. Silicon Valley lost about 90,000 jobs during the worst of the slump.
The remaining workers had to take on more of the burden, propelling productivity to its highest level since the dot-com boom in 2000.
“You can get your people to work harder for an extended period of time, but the question is, is that sustainable,” said Tracey Grose, vice president of research and development for Collaborative Economics Inc, a Mountain View, California-based consulting firm.
Productivity rose 3.8 percent between the second quarters of 2008 and last year, according to an annual survey by Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
As companies begin to see orders rebound, they eventually have to bring workers back.
“When companies start turning around, they will take on temporary help, and then they’ll start hiring full-time positions,” Grose said.
SanDisk, a maker of Flash memory based in Milpitas, cut at least 10 percent of its workforce in late 2008, part of an effort to reduce operating expenses to US$800 million or less.
Prices of flash memory recovered after the industry cut capacity and worked through the excess inventory.
SanDisk has been profitable since the second quarter of last year. On an employee basis, the company earned US$127,123 last year, up from a loss of US$557,258 in 2008.
Symantec, the world’s biggest maker of computer-security software, also cut jobs during the recession, reducing its workforce budget by 4.5 percent at the end of 2008.
However, customers bought consumer products at a faster pace than business software, helping Symantec pull out the slump, chief financial officer James Beer said. Per worker, net income was US$41,035 last year, compared with a loss of US$389,418 the previous year.
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