Public libraries have become substitute offices for the recently disenfranchised, so it wasn’t unusual that 40 bright, talented and unemployed people found themselves in a conference room on a dreary day at the Montclair Public Library last January.
Amid the profusion of job cuts at big tech firms, with the latest including Microsoft’s announcement on Tuesday that it would forge ahead with a second round of layoffs, a new executive survey sparks a glimmer of optimism about future hiring in the technology industry.
Shifting U.S. jobs overseas is nothing new for technology giant International Business Machines Corp.–or the tech sector in general–but a brave new employee relocation strategy at Big Blue is raising some eyebrows.
Alex Andon, 24, a graduate of Duke University in biology, was laid off from a biotech company last May. For months he sought new work. Then, frustrated with the hunt, he turned to jellyfish.
Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs. But the real cut here is to Google’s ambitions.
The carnage in the Japanese consumer electronics industry rolls on.
This morning, Pioneer Corp. announced that it will cut 10,000 jobs and close its TV operations. The company said it now expects a loss for the March 2009 fiscal year of 130 billion yen, or $1.44 billion, far worse than its previous estimated loss of 78 billion yen. The company said it will withdraw from the TV business by March 2010.
There’s kind of a pattern to today’s very large batch of earnings from the semiconductor and semi equipment companies. The Q4 numbers in most cases were well telegraphed; many companies in the sector had already pre-announced rotten results. Many have cut heads, are cutting heads, or will cut heads. And the guidance for the March quarter is generally for double-digit sequential revenue declines.
Kodak this morning said it will cut its staff by 3,500-4,000 jobs in 2009, reducing its workforce by 14-18 percent. The company also said it will pay no executive bonuses in 2008 and that it will not issue pay increases this year.
The company is struggling enough, in fact, to have opened talks with lenders to assure continued access to its revolving credit line.
Texas Instruments this afternoon said it will cut its staff by 12 percent, including 1,800 layoffs and 1,600 voluntary retirements and departures. The company will take about $300 million in related charges. TI said total saving from the latest cuts and the restructuring of its wireless business late last year will total about $700 million after all reductions are completed in Q3.
The year of hope and change is certainly off to a grim start in the tech world. Last week alone saw layoff announcements from stalwarts like Intel and Microsoft, as well as Web 2.0 companies like Digg, just to name a few.
Americans, by nature, are an optimistic bunch. Even in tough times, there is something to be optimistic about. Where others see the glass half empty, we see it as half full. That is probably the only reasonable explanation for the findings of this survey conducted by Glassdoor, a Sausalito, Calif.-based start-up that ranks employers by taking anonymous feedback from their employees.
When the Tribune Company announced that it was filing for bankruptcy, last Monday, Sam Zell, the man who bought the company a year ago, for $8.2 billion, said that its problems were the result of a “perfect storm.” You take readers and advertisers who were already migrating away from print, and add a steep recession, and you’ve got serious trouble. What Zell failed to mention was that his acquisition of the company had buried it beneath such a heavy pile of debt that any storm at all would likely have sunk it.
So, you just got laid off from the struggling portal. Congratulations. Ten years from now Steve Jobs’s iPhone will be just another obsolete gadget. Rob Bailey’s vitamin vodka, however, will still refresh.
Lately, we’ve been hearing the stories of many of the people on the receiving end of the layoffs recently sustained by the tech industry. But there is another side to layoffs that doesn’t get told very often. That’s the story of the people who do the laying off, those who make the decisions about who stays and who goes.
Google, one of the nation’s great growth engines for employment, has essentially stopped hiring for the last month, according to several executives at the company.
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