I'm impressed by their ambition to fire 1700 managers(!) That's a lot of managers! I interviewed with ASML a decade and a half ago and while there was plenty to complain about (eg their tens of millions of lines of absolutely unmaintainable C code), I didn't feel at the time feel like it was a very top-heavy organization. It was very engineer-y, and I loved that about them. This press release (when taken at face value) suggests that this has changed a lot over time and they're now trying to correct it.
I gotta say, if true and not code for general "cheese slicer" cost cutting, I think that this is rather ballsy. Philips (which ASML spun out of) famously never did anything of the sort and gradually cramped into an extremely management-heavy organization where most people just write reports for other people with scary few people actually moving the needle. I think it's cool that ASML has identified that they're risking becoming like Philips and trying to do something about it, even if the method seems rather crude. I think the risk is real. ASML's fast-moving culture formed in a mad multi-decade survival-crunch, but they've been a near-monopolist for a while now and that means those pressures are long gone.
You see the same pattern with Siemens and a lot of their spinoffs: Continental(VDO), Infineon, Qimonda, Gigaset, Healthineers (yes, that's a real name that somebody got paid to come up with), etc
THe ones without some major moat like trains or energy, got slowly run into the ground becoming irrelevant or stagnant, or ended up being shuffled between various foreign PE groups as they couldn't make them profitable.
Bizarrely, even Healthineers which should be booming due to healthcare being a super profitable industry with a massive regulatory moat, has hit a 5 year low in its stock price.
Remember how Siemens used to make mobile phones? Yeah, well ironically, Apple's in-house modems are the former cellular modem division of Siemens-Infineon that Intel bought and then sold to Apple.
There's something with the management from these massive German conglomerates that just lacks any sort of vision, and over time end up producing bloat, inefficiency, bureaucracy and stagnation while the same staff ends up flourishing and producing top notch tech when under a US company like Apple. Wondering if it's what they teach in business schools over there or if it's the culture, or both.
These are people who primarily create work for themselves and each other. I have sat in meetings about meetings for actions that, ultimately, have zero impact, in teams where managers involve outnumber people who actually execute anything three to one. It's staggering.
I believe the best way to kill a company is to have middle management beyond the absolute minimum you might need.
So, ASML is extremely on point here.
There are daily syncs for things that take weeks to do due to compliance, endless war rooms to solve things that would be done offline in half the time, and random bullshit process and committees introduced by management which generate even more meetings...
It's common all over the world, motion instead of progress. It's incredible to me how all those companies don't realize where their money is spent. But alas you cannot make people see a problem if their salary depends on it, and I may be no different.
As an engineer who 'jumped' to middle management: yes. 100% yes.
It's kinda disheartening and also a little bit insane to sit in a room with 12 people who learned CISSP and ISO27001 by heart but could not explain what SSH is or what a container does.
Everything has to first be abstracted away from tech into 'risks' and then 'controls' and then these controls have to be re-translated into actual changes in IT systems.
However, at every layer and every abstraction so much detail is lost that they're essentially steering blind.
Last week one of them suggested that we should whitelist the entire IPv4 range of AWS to allow some SaaS (Jira?) to connect to our internal Git.
The policy said to do whitelisting and so they all approved it until I challenged it.
Crazy to watch and honestly so disheartening that I might go do something else. Trying to affect change feels like leaning against a wall.
1700 managers is a lot, but also, it's a huge multinational so I'm not surprised they have that many. They will be alright I'm sure - one, if there's any forced firings they will be well taken care of under Dutch labour laws, and two, ASML will look very good on a CV.
Yes. Notice period stays in tact. Transition payment is 1/3rd of a monthly wage per year worked. And then your unemployment runs for up to 24 months at 70% of your income capped at €4500. Unemployment benefits are unconditional until you find a new job.
How is one exposed to tens of millions of lines of unmaintainable code during an interview?
You ... ask? I've gotten answers like this just by asking in the interview.
ASML, NXP, and TSMC was largely boosted by Philips.
My Dad was in the finance department of Mullards-> Philips Electronics for 30 years, seemed like part of the family.
But Philips does seem to have given rise to many companies.
Even the OG division: lighting, has been spun off.
True, but here's the real kicker: when you add almost 15 years of ZIRP hyper growth since when you applied, you'll then see the same pattern in most big tech companies: overhiring, empire building and management bloat with no proportional increase in innovation or productivity, just hiring to signal to investors that you're growing and make stonks go up.
And 15 years is a long enough time for that extra weight to accumulate towards the top, since some FAANGs doubled their headcount during Covid alone. Just let that sink in.
So yeah, I'm sure your assessment from 15 years ago is fully accurate, however a lot has changed in tech the last 15 years for better and for worse, and now many of those companies in tech are doing a great reset also for better and worse.
(I am not saying OP is talking like that about them, but I am seeing some responses that do...)
I wonder how many mangers they have.
They probably shouldn't have more than 4k. It's kind of shocking they have almost 2k they can fire.
Irrespective of the difference between organizations they hired after Meta hired and they fired in the same way as Meta after Meta fired. The children did not know that they were following the piper. The piper knew.
Everyone thinks themselves unique and historic. e.g. Balenciaga will say their new logo is inspired by Modernism and so on, but really Apple made what is considered modern mass-market premium and this so-called pioneering fashion brand is just an Apple brand copycat as far as their logo.
Everything is downstream of American culture. It's why people the world over kneel before football games. Sadly, this is even true of American culture.
Oh boy. This fills me with dread. I've never seen a company that starts doing buybacks not become a financialized hollow shell within a decade. Being an irreplaceable monopoly on the commanding heights of the digital economy makes this even worse.
ASML is a fairly old company (40+ years), and they have been doing share buybacks since 2006: https://www.asml.com/en/investors/why-invest-in-asml/share-b...
Then again, this has been going on for decades. Businesses used to be about being the best for your customers and personnel. But it's all become about sticking it to everyone for the benefit of the shareholders.
I've never seen a company that ...
Example: Alphabet has started share buybacks in 2015 and increased those every year. $70B in 2025 alone. And they are firing on all cylinders product-wise.
They lost battle for office software, they can't even exist in chat space, despise trying to make chat that sticks for 2 decades now, they squandered on video chat space and office space too.
IF Alphabet was actually efficient they should own office space, but 365 ate their office productivity and even the utter turd that is MS teams is beating them out on chat.
Even their search gets worse and only places where they actually have progress is AI.
Dividends are totally fine (from my perspective), while. buybacks are problematic from a place where executives are bonused on share price and earnings per share, both of which can be manipulated by buybacks.
More philosophically, I think that dividends are better for society as they allow investors to realise a stream of value from well run companies rather than needing to sell their share to acquire this value.
This is obviously just my opinion though, I don't know if it matches to what the OP cares about.
With different consequences and historical outcomes to more commonly used mechanisms.
> Do you invest in companies that don't distribute profits
Does every company that distributes profits do so with buybacks?
> does this get you some kind of higher return?
Do all companies payout the same ratio of market cap as dividend?
ASML's bet paid off and for now at least their business is very sustainable.
And ASML has been paying out a dividend for a long time.
Most managers are no longer technical, and just create bloated middle layers that slow everyone else down.
The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp. Most others just seem to be able to say “my team will follow-up” and “my team will look into this” and are beyond useless. Few are shedding a tear at cleaning that up.
> The only managers that are decent are the ones that have kept their technical skills sharp.
Alex Ferguson was a terrible footballer when he was managing Manchester United. Yet they won the premiership in 6 of his last 10 years in that role, and have never won it since he left.
The skills that make one great at doing work on ones own aren't necessarily the skills that make a _team_ of 3, 6, 12 people all collaborate with one another, and with the other teams within the company.
Good management is rare, due to the tendency to promote engineers into the role instead of hiring people specifically trained in that discipline, but when you're in a well-managed -- and hence highly focused -- team the results you can all obtain together can be impressive.
This instinct can be developed due to direct experience as an engineer, but it can also be due to experience as a product manager or something else, as long as they have some curiosity to actually learn the big picture stuff.
Now with AI chatbots there's little excuse for a manager to be completely clueless about this stuff, but still there are a class of these people who just can't be bothered to care about anything other than moving units of work around boards.
Tech is very different… given the pace of change you quickly no longer have any clue what’s happening unless stay technical. Imagine being dropped in to manage an AI team in 2026 when you have no experience with LLMs and the last time you coded was Pascal. 1) Teams some respect you, and 2) You’ll have no clue what you’re doing. And yet there are tons of “tech leaders” that fit this profile.
Good management is rare.
No, they are equals. Just different people doing different kinds of jobs. There should be two tracks and people should be able to choose. If engineers feel they have to become managers to grow their careers, all you are getting will just be unhappy engineers and bad managers.
There are companies that promise this, but it is rarely done. For whatever reason, management is universally convinced that ICs have lower value and are more replacable than managers.
It's also a distinctly European trait that European executives can look at US tech companies, who have IC roles on all levels, see that they are the most successful and innovative companies in the world, and conclude that yes, maybe capping IC benefits and adding another level of management is the way to go!
The issue is, even with two tracks, there's every chance that more people end up taking the management path because it's seen as an easy way to climb the ranks. Your success can be built from your teams success, rather than your own individual contribution.
Well, yes. That's what good managers are: a force multiplier.
A bunch of rockstar devs reporting to a poor manager may never move the needle in an organisation. A bunch of below average devs reporting to a stellar manager will definitely move the needle.
People want this to be true but it just isn’t in reality and can’t be. Companies are pyramid shaped and the higher up you go the more managing you do and correspondingly less engineering.
It’s baked into the structure that seniority and power is biased towards managers
Many senior ICs at tech companies DO have teams assigned to them for technical tasks, but they don't have to deal with giving feedback, managing compensation, giving bonuses, hiring, etc etc. Basically they get assigned extra hands and arms to do their tasks but aren't responsible for their growth or happiness.
Except the manager is the decider, and controls the fate of the IC. That makes them unequal, even if IC salaries were higher.
"There are no important people at ASML. Only roles with more responsibilities."
IDK, where I am its always been that managers specifically have power over ICs
The salary is not equal.
The difference is there will probably be a lot more M7+ than IC7+ so getting to the higher ranks is easier as a manager
“ ASML plans to eliminate approximately 3,000 of its 4,500 management positions in engineering. The expectation is that approximately 1,400 people will be able to move into new engineering roles.”
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2026/01/after-record-year-asml-is-t...
See also the statement from ASML (linked to in that article):
https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-01-28/asml-plan...
ASML wil zo’n 3000 van de 4500 banen van managers in de engineeringtak laten vervallen. De verwachting is dat ongeveer 1400 mensen een nieuwe functie als engineer kunnen gaan vervullen. „Van ongeveer 1700 mensen verwachten we afscheid te moeten nemen”, stelt financieel topman Roger Dassen in een toelichting.
They say it is to focus on innovation, but if you are a smart young person in NL, would you want to work where they just fired 1700 people? And if you already work there and are a top player it is a good time to rethink? A company I know wanted to focus, instead of firing, they sold the parts of the company they felt did not fit their future vision for money.
Of course, it's hard to tell how much is PR and how much reality. However, if there is substance to it, it would want me to work there even more, since they value engineering culture over management culture. Having more velocity is good.
Interesting. In old companies the only way to climb the ladder (get a raise) was to get into management. And then if they were a bad manager, they might get 'sidemoted' into some position where they could still contribute. Anyway, back in the old days, it was not uncommon to see 'managers' or even 'directors' with no direct reports.
That would be disappointing for engineers that were actually doing engineering, as yet again their grade increases would be taken by management types.
> Engineers in particular have expressed their desire to focus their time on engineering, without being hampered by slow process flows
I'm guessing ASML had a lot of regrettable attrition and heard this in the exit interviews.
Firing 1700 managers is somewhat different than firing 1700 ICs. Whether managers will want to work there is an open question, but quite a lot of ICs will see the trimmed management layer as a good sign that they'll be free to get shit done
> Individual contributor, a business role for an employee without management responsibilities
They've also done another thing:
>ASML also announced a new share buyback programme of up to €12 billion, to be executed by 31 December 2028.
They have €12 billion they don't know what to do with with so they will give it to shareholders, for a nice gain of less than 1% per year for the next 3 years. Assuming the annual salary costs of each of the 1700 employees is 150K (likely much much lower) those 12 billion could have paid for their employment for the next 47 years.
My impression was that people were constantly being promoted into management and at some point we just had too many managers and that's why it was done. Of course, when you know this, the question becomes: why allow things to get to this point in the first place?
Layoff --> increase short term valuation --> increase value per share --> owner of shares happy during buyback.
After, it's true that having a lot of middle management can slow things down. On the other side, they could have indeed created new entities, new projects, re-qualify employees,...
I wonder what correlation will exist between the set of people who end up leaving the company, and the set of people responsible for setting up those "slow process flows" in the first place.
[1] https://www.asml.com/en/news/press-releases/2026/strengtheni...
Dutch government stepped in last year to help facilitate a anticipated growth by fast tracking infrastructure and housing investments, as ASML is building a new campus for 20.000 employees. Then do they expect the 1700 to wait and come back in 2-3 years when the new campus is planned to be operational?
The US is pretty dynamic. So is every country. To the extent it appears not to be there is usually some entity with it's thumb on the scale.
I don't want to trash anyone. Having said that, I always kept my engineering approach as opposed to being a manager in the sense that what I did became an end in itself.
I was more of a renegade within corporate, and used this unique position to achieve fun and results way above everyone else. I got proof, this ain't no bragging. It was easy mode, I used the top notch devs I could hire and automated everything, build a platform, that became internally the de facto standard, which caused 600+ Mio EUR cost savings within 4 years and counting with a headcount of 8.
Long story short: I was a bit Googly, knowing them a bit and having been there.
Here is the gist: To this day I could never grasp what my manager collegues or their peers and directs were doing. I asked many and many times of any rank, because I wanted to learn.
Most things were related to administrativ stuff like vacations permissions, performance reviews, budget "planing" - and of course meetings, meetings, meetings.
95% of what the HIPPOS with high 6figure and 7figure incomes in the room were doing could easily been done by an intern, except for the people affais.
Only requirement is discipline to sometimes just sit still in a chair and jumping via Zoom from meeting to meeting every 30 minutes from 8:00/9:00 to 19:00. Monday to Thursday.
All you have to do is rely on these phrases: "What are the next steps?", "I will delegate this to...", "Now start the reports please."
These people were IT managers - of course no one except me had any (!) Computer Science background.
Google taught me, that it is totally easy to train a computer scientist business skills, but impossible to train any non-IT person Computer Science. This holds true.
So yes, I can totally relate to these news here, however I feel sorry for the people anyway. Good faith in most cases has to be used. That they do everything to appear irreplaceable and therefore cause havoc along their "career" is only the flipside of human behavior and dysfunctional settings.
Take care of your craft and be proud, if you are in need.
There is only one kind of person that I look down upon life, its MBAs with no other qualifications. I would consider a medieval dung hauler a more skilled and important member of modern society than a modern MBA-only holder. I just don't see how anyone can get such a degree and see their skills as valuable, but they all like to build each other up off of everyone else's backs and somehow it works.
Ive never had a good manager that wasn't just another worker in the trenches for a decade or more beforehand.
You could say it is restructuring, eliminate positions or laid off but firing to me means something very different.
I’ve had some amazing managers that were engaged and did more than go to and from meetings. And I’ve had some that improved things vastly just by leaving the room.
And yes, wondering how many of these employees will be hired by Chinese counterparts.
How many are left when you are done? Same number, just in different branches.
The advent of AI should be making deeper cuts in management areas than in engineering.
But even the knowledge on its own is enough - after all, a lot of that is in published scientific papers already. ASML works because they combined everything. China can't just build a copy of their EUV machines without also having a copy of their suppliers.
I'm pretty sure those aren't even a consideration if you relocate to a different economic superpower.
If you don't reach your targets it's not the engineers fault.
It's bad management ;)
ASML understands what most big companies don’t: if you hit all your targets you weren’t setting yourself tough enough targets.
There we go.
You don't really need an army of sales managers to sell such a product. Going lean on management and more heavy on engineering is therefore a good idea if you want to keep the lead you have.
This reminds me of a company I worked for recently, that, at the yearly meeting talking about the financial situation were all depressed as if we were broke since the profit (and revenue) was slightly less than last year, which was significantly higher than any other year in history with the year prior also being a record. This was essentially when the interest rates jumped after covid and businesses had to adapt so I'm sure it would have been another record if the economy in general wasn't doing worse that year.
Of course, they want to keep people from asking for raises and bonuses, but I found it very weird to see them act worried with the profit/revenue graphs at a crazy peak still.
Firing does not mean what you thought probably.[1]
These distinctions may mean less in countries without robust worker protections where the lines between the two might be blurred, but in a lot of the world these are quite distinct concepts.
> The cuts will mostly impact employees at leadership level in the Netherlands and will also affect operations in the US. The planned reductions represent about 4% of the company’s workforce.
[1] Source: https://www.ed.nl/binnenland/vakbonden-woedend-na-keiharde-i...