Posted 03/03/10 at 07:36:34 AM by Paul Lilly

The tough times continue for those employed in the tech industry, and Big Blue in particular. According to the Alliance@IBM/CWA Local 1701, IBM has issued about 400 layoff notices.

Lee Conrad, national coordinator of the Alliance, believes this is the just the first wave of more layoffs to come, though he didn't say how many he believes will get the axe. Neither did IBM, who rarely does, saying only that this is a result of a remixing of "our skills and structure to meet the changing needs of our clients."

IBM employs about 400,000 workers around the world. According to Conrad, the latest cuts are the result of a shift to offshore work. Big Blue employees around 105,000 U.S. workers, compared to 115,000 one year ago.

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Posted 02/03/10 at 07:05:39 AM by Paul Lilly

Lest anyone thought Microsoft was kidding about slashing its workforce by 5,000 when first announced a year ago, the Redmond outfit has met its goal, and well ahead of its self-imposed June 2010 deadline.

Steve Ballmer's plan for mass layoffs was the first in the company's history, and it has already handed out 5,300 pink slips, or 300 more than originally announced. About 800 positions were eliminated in the company's fiscal second quarter ended December 31, 2009, with Microsoft reporting it had paid $59 million in severance pay related to those layoffs.

When Ballmer first announced the cuts in January, 2009, he said they would continue over the next 18 months and might reach as high as 5,000. With five more months still left to go, Microsoft has overshot its goal by 300. From a bean counting perspective, the layoffs have been a success, helping Microsoft report a record $19 billion revenue in the last quarter.

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Posted 11/19/09 at 11:45:38 AM by Paul Lilly

Today's WTF moment is brought to you by AOL. The struggling ISP recently told investors it would spend $200 million trimming down a large portion of its staff, but up until now, the suits in charge didn't say how they planned to do it. According to CEO Tim Armstrong, AOL is looking for "up to 2,500 volunteers," CNet reports.

Raising your hand for a pink slip doesn't quite have the same effect as barging into the boss man's office and telling him to to 'take this job and shove it,' so we're curious how AOL's volunteer program plays out.

The 'step forward and enjoy the holidays on unemployment' program begins on December 4, just a few days before AOL spins off from Time Warner. So in other words, AOL employees must choose whether to leave on their own free will and start the job hunt right away, or roll the dice and hope they won't end up with a pink slip anyway as AOL moves to cut its annual operating expenses by $300 million. Sounds about as much fun as Russian Roulette, but hey, at least the investors are happy.

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Posted 11/10/09 at 07:21:26 PM by Ryan Whitwam

Things aren’t looking great for AOL as it is in the process of shaking Time Warner loose. The once dominant internet company has announced that 100 layoffs will be happening soon. After that AOL plans to ask for voluntary departures, possibly with some sort of buyout system. If that doesn’t produce the desired results, employees can expect heads to roll.

In an earnings call last week, Time Warner reported that AOL revenues were down 23 percent from last year. Sources say that those figures mean AOL will need to cut about 1000 jobs through various means. The larger layoffs could coincide with AOL’s departure from Time Warner. It will be a rough holiday season for some AOL employees. It almost makes you miss the golden age of the free AOL disk.

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Posted 11/06/09 at 08:02:36 AM by Paul Lilly

As part of a restructuring effort, Blue Coat Systems said it plans to slash nearly 20 percent of its workforce. The firm will issue about 280 layoffs in all and close its facilities in Riga, Latvia, South Plainfield, New Jersey, and Zoelemeer, Netherlands.

At the same time, Blue Coat announced plans to acquire S7 Software, a services company out of Banglaore, for $5.25 million in cash. The acquisition will also add 65 employees to Blue Coat's workforce.

"The combination of the restructuring program and the acquisition of S7 Software strikes an appropriate balance between profitability and investment for innovation," said Gordon Brooks, senior vice president and chief financial officer. "Together these actions will allow us to invest for future growth while aligning the Company’s cost structure to its current revenue level, which should drive higher and more consistent levels of profitability."

In addition to the layoffs, Blue Coat will relocate an undisclosed number of engineering jobs from its Sunnyvale, California, and Austin, Texas offices to S7's offices in Bangalore and a few other locations. After factoring in S7's employees and a few new hires, Blue Coat's workforce reduction will be closer to 10 percent.

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Posted 11/04/09 at 12:42:50 PM by Paul Lilly

Microsoft may have been a little conservative earlier this year when it said it would eliminate up to 5,000 jobs in response to falling sales and profits. Now in its third round of layoffs since Janary, the software company plans to cut 800 jobs, which would put the total number somewhere around 5,400 so far.

The first round of layoffs began in January when Microsoft handed out 1,400 pinks slips, and then thousands more in May. But the worst news coming from Redmond is that more layoffs are yet to come

"Today, we are eliminating around 800 positions spread across multiple businesses and locations and have completed our reduction plan sooner than we had anticipated 11 months ago," Microsoft said in a statement. "At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas, but also understand that continuing to manage our businesses closely, as we always do, can mean additional headcount adjustments."

The "headcount adjustments" come just a little over a week since Microsoft reported declines in revenues and profits.

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Posted 10/21/09 at 12:25:08 PM by Paul Lilly

In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Sun revealed it plans to eliminate up to 3,000 jobs, or about 10 percent of its global workforce, ZDNet Asia reports.

This marks the second major round of job cuts in a year for Sun, who last November announced plans to reduce its workforce by up to 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of its global staff, in a major restructuring effort. Those cuts were already disclosed by the time Oracle announced its $7.4 billion takeover bid for the struggling server maker.

As the Oracle deal sits in limbo awaiting approval from the European Commission things could get even worse for Sun.

"Sun is losing $100 million a month, we'd like to get this thing done," Larry Ellison, CEO for Oracle, said at an industry gathering in Silicon Valley last month.

Oracle has so far remained quiet about the latest round of job cuts taking place at Sun.

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Posted 06/15/09 at 04:56:17 PM by Andy Salisbury

MySpace recently got a new CEO in Owen Van Natta, and according to reports, they may have a few more problems to deal with than they’d originally thought.

“The business is in a lot worse shape than Fox Interactive was positioning,” stated an anonymous source. According to a report, while MySpace’s old CEO Chris DeWolfe boasted loudly about their 120 million unique visitors, the real numbers are nowhere near. And, it’s being reported that when Google renews their $900 million advertising deal with MySpace, they’ll only guarantee $50 million per year, cutting MySpace’s ad revenue in half from $600 million to $300 million.

It’s expected that the new head honcho will make some huge layoffs, possibly cutting down their 1,500 employees in half to just 750 (but hey, it’s News Corp, how would that not be expected?).

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