“We are mostly but not all done” with layoffs. So said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in May at the start of a second round of cuts that claimed the livelihoods of some 3,000 employees. Now, six months later, the company is finishing the job. Sources tell TechFlash that Microsoft will make additional job reductions this week–beginning as early as today.
Oracle’s pending acquisition of Sun will undoubtedly be the subject of much discussion this afternoon when the database behemoth reports fiscal first-quarter earnings after the market close. Indeed, there’s quite a bit of jawing about it already, particularly about Oracle’s continued commitment to the deal in light of the ugly decline in Sun’s revenues and profitability since it was announced in April.
The econalypse is playing hell with the mobile phone market. Handset vendors world-wide shipped 244.8 million units in the first quarter of 2009, 15.8 percent fewer than the 290.8 million units shipped during the same quarter in 2008.
With the economy continuing to sour and consumer tech spending slowing, speculation is running rampant that Microsoft may soon join the sad conga line of tech companies announcing layoffs. According to an unsubstantiated, poorly sourced report currently making the rounds, Redmond is steeling itself for a massive staff reduction.
AT&T joined the sad conga line of companies laying off workers, announcing on Thursday the elimination of 12,000 jobs. That’s roughly four percent of its workforce. The company cited “economic pressures, a changing business mix and a more streamlined organizational structure” as the rationale for the move.
AT&T is “shifting headcount to areas where the customers are”–literally. This morning, the telecom sacked about 4,650 employees, trimming its workforce by about 1.5%. The cuts were made across the company and, according to AT&T spokesman Walt Sharp, are not an indication of weakness in the business.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper.
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
… you vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous perverts
Stephen Fry and zoologist Mark Carwardine meet the kakapo — a fat, flightless and very randy rare parrot.
Spectacular in the bellowing Russian sailor sense of the word …
“If you spell something wrong on your insurance claim, do you really deserve surgery? I don’t think so …”
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