Open Source: IQVIA lays off, hires, acquires | More Bandwidth workers talk | G1 gets sold

I’m Brian Gordon, tech reporter for The News & Observer, and this is Open Source, a weekly newsletter on business, labor and technology in North Carolina.

Q2 Solutions, a large clinical trial laboratory services provider based in Durham, laid off Triangle area workers this week, an employee affected by the move confirmed. It is at least the second time in the past 12 months the IQVIA subsidiary has let people go, following position cuts last August.

The N&O spoke to two former Q2 workers, one who was laid off last summer and another who was let go on Tuesday. Together, they estimated a few dozen positions were cumulatively eliminated between their respective rounds.

IQVIA disputes the employees’ understanding that these cuts were part of a broader corporate shift.

“While individual managers may make hiring and termination decisions when deemed appropriate, neither Q2 Solutions nor IQVIA have had any mass layoffs,” company spokesperson Trent Brown wrote in a statement. He added that Q2 Solutions’ headcount rose close to 10% in the first half of 2024.

The company did not share how many positions it eliminated this week or last August.

Q2 (which workers pronounce as either “Q two” or “Q squared”) is one of many IQVIA subsidiaries. The Durham parent company formed in 2016 when the pharmaceutical data provider IMS Health combined with the clinical research organization Quintiles. Since then, it has acquired more than 10 pharmaceutical services businesses, helping propel its global headcount from 36,100 workers in 2016 to around 87,000 today.

“Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have long been a vehicle for life sciences industry growth,” IQVIA wrote in a 2021 paper, noting they offer bigger companies pipelines to growth and smaller companies attractive exits. In its latest annual report, IQVIA noted business combinations came with “expected synergies.”

As of early last year, IQVIA said it had around 4,000 North Carolina employees, and the company is Durham County’s 13th-largest employer according to the state commerce department database.

It’s acquisition aspirations hit a snag however when IQVIA attempted to buy a company called Propel Media in 2022. Propel owns the platform DeepIntent, which the Federal Trade Commission later called one of the three largest providers of programmatic advertising aimed at health care professionals.

The issue? IQVIA had recently purchased one of the other three largest programmatic advertisers, a company named Lasso, worrying federal regulators that having both under the same corporate roof could stifle competition, push up prices and reduce quality.

In July 2023, the FTC sued to block the deal. IQVIA expressed disappointment, telling the N&O in a statement that month that it sought to buy Propel “to help its customers provide information to doctors and patients to improve healthcare and health outcomes.”

This January, IQVIA and Propel abandoned their intended merger. But the next month, the company told regulators it “will continue to consider strategic business combinations.”

More Bandwidth workers discuss the company’s faith

At its old headquarters on North Carolina State University’s Centennial Campus, the telecommunications company Bandwidth prominently displayed a collage of employees’ children with a Bible verse underneath: “Be fruitful and multiply — Genesis 1:28.”

Since my article on Bandwidth’s uniquely religious culture published Monday, I’ve heard from additional former and current employees, including one whose child was on that poster. In an interview, they said the company gave “no forewarning or indication that they were going to put a Bible verse on the family poster,” adding “I might not have given a picture of my kid if you’re going to put that on there.”

This employee wasn’t irate about the poster, but it did make them uncomfortable. They remain at the company today, highlighting Bandwidth’s emphasis on work-life balance and excellent health care benefits as their top reasons for staying. But they’re still unsettled whenever Christianity pops up at the workplace.

And religion is hard to miss at Bandwidth, a publicly traded company with 800 employees in the Triangle area. The poster is gone, but at the company’s new campus, an exposed beam showcases hand-written signatures from Bandwidth leaders and staff. In big, bold font, the company’s CEO and cofounder David Morken wrote “Psalms 90:17” next to his name. (In the Bible, the verse reads “Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us, and establish the work of our hands upon us — yes, establish the work of our hands.”)

Morken conducts a call to prayer at the start of every all-staff meeting. In the notably secular technology sector, this is singular. Other workers shared they also felt the company encouraged them to have children. (Bandwidth denies this, though its poster literally contained a command to procreate.)

“Under the umbrella of David’s very public worldview, it opened up for interpretation interactions having a religious undertone,” said Kate Canfield, a former manager in Bandwidth’s marketing department. “It may or may not be there, but at any other company, I don’t think anyone would have thought about it.”

Staff reactions to the overt and subtle evangelical signifiers vary. Some are believers. Some have ignored it or didn’t mind it. Some rolled their eyes. Others have felt alienated, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic made them reconsider how Morken’s beliefs shaped their workplace. During a staff meeting early in the pandemic, Morken said he wished he could travel to China to catch the virus to prove it wasn’t a big deal. And Bandwidth initially demanded employees return to the office before pretty much any other major Triangle tech company.

This week, a former employee shared an exit letter he sent Bandwidth when he left from the company in July 2020.:

“Our religious emphasis, especially during meetings and large events, is, in my opinion, unacceptably unprofessional for a public technology company,” he wrote, adding, “It creates a chilling effect such that employees feel required to join in or at the very least keep any evidence that they might adhere to another religion (or none at all) as quiet as possible.”

In an email asking if Bandwidth was aware of employee concerns regarding Morken’s prayer, company spokesperson David Doolittle told The N&O the CEO “has chosen to say a prayer of gratitude at each quarterly all-hands meeting since he founded the company 25 years ago — and Bandmates are provided with the option to opt out of listening and enjoy a moment of silence instead.”

I have also heard Bandwidth defenders this week. On Instagram, a former employee who left in 2018 spoke up for Morken, commenting under the article post, “As a Bandwidth alumni who is not religious now or when I worked there, I can say that the company was always welcoming to me and all employees. David and Bandwidth are not pushy and have created an amazing culture.”

And a public relations consultant who worked with the company and its Republic Wireless division before 2021 emailed, “There was a real sense of camaraderie and joy among the employees, largely thanks to David’s inspiring leadership.”

This consultant advised “if you momentarily set aside the emphasis on his faith, it becomes clear that David Morken is the kind of leader that many employees dream of working for.”

But Morken himself rarely seems to set aside his faith — personally or professionally. So, I think a story focusing on this aspect of his company — and what it’s meant for the business and those who work there — was warranted. I hope you read it.

Clearing my cache

• G1 Therapeutics announced it will be acquired by the Danish pharmaceutical company Pharmacosmos in a $405 million deal, which will take the Durham biotech company private. G1 Therapeutics has created the only FDA-approved treatment for a certain type of small-cell lung cancer, though recent trials for its flagship drug to treat other forms of cancer disappointed.

• Levitate, a Raleigh marketing software firm that streamlines how small companies connect with clients through email and social media, raised $15 million in a Series D funding round.

• On Tuesday, the FDA approved a drug to delay progression of a type of glioma, a malignant brain tumor. Duke University researchers, including Dr. Darell Bigner, played a pivot role in its long development.

• MetLife, which has its global technology campus in Cary, appointed two new executives to tech positions. Tamar Shapiro will be the company’s chief data and analytics officer while Dan Antilley was named its chief information security officer.

• The Cary software firm SAS Institute has partnered with the Commonwealth Secretariat to promote artificial intelligence education in dozens of small countries. SAS will donate $10 million-worth of “software, computing capacity and training” to the Commonwealth, which is a collection of 56 countries, most of whom date back to the British empire. SAS’ efforts will focus on smaller nations, starting with counties in the Caribbean.

• Greenville’s MrBeast got more bad PR as The New York Times spoke to angry contestants of his upcoming Amazon game show.

National tech happenings

• Amazon makes deal with TikTok and Pinterest that will allow people to purchase items without leaving the social media apps.
  
  

• X, formerly Twitter, is suing a nonprofit coalition of large advertisers accusing it of coordinating a boycott against the social media platform.

• A federal judge deemed Google a monopolist for violating federal antitrust rules in advertising and search. Somewhere, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is smiling. Actually, that place is on X, where the head of the Cary video game maker called it “a huge victory.”

“Together with the Epic v Google victory last year, big tech is being held accountable to the law,” Sweeney wrote.

Thanks for reading!

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