The ax has finally swung at MySpace. This morning the AOL of social networks announced plans to sack 30 percent of its workforce. All told, 420 workers will lose their jobs, reducing the size of the company’s staff to 1,000 employees. CEO Owen Van Natta’s all-hands memo, after the jump.
Seagate is defragging its workforce again. The hard drive manufacturer said Wednesday that it plans to sack another 1,100 employees–2.5 percent of its workforce. These in addition to the nearly 3,000 workers it laid off earlier this year.
Black Thursday fell on more than just IBM today. Agilent also announced layoffs this morning. The company plans to sack 2,700 employees–14 percent of its workforce.
To see just how badly the continuing erosion of consumer confidence is affecting the chip industry, one need only look at the pitiable state of National Semiconductor. After announcing third-quarter revenues that were down 31 percent from the previous quarter and 36 percent from the same period a year earlier, the company said today it would sack more than a quarter of its workforce.
“Terrible.” That was Seagate CEO Bill Watkins’s (at right, doing his Dr. Octopus impression) one-word description of the disk drive maker’s December sales last week–and apparently one of his final public comments as Chief Executive as well. This morning Seagate said that Watkins is handing the CEO reins over to Chairman Stephen Luczo and that the two will confer over the next week to “determine what role, if any, Mr. Watkins will have at the company going forward.”
Who said the M&A market is dead? Sun Microsystems said this morning that it has acquired Q-layer, a company that automates cloud computing deployments. Meanwhile, Sun shares have been trading higher for a few days now, inexplicably up about 20 percent vs. Nasdaq, which isn’t doing nearly as well.
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.
Tech may be done with layoffs for 2008, but 2009 is another matter entirely. Now that the souring economy has had its way with Yahoo and AMD and Palm and Sun and Nortel, it’s moving on to bigger fare. We’ve already heard predictions that Google will sack as much as 15 percent of its workforce next year. Now come rumors that Microsoft is steeling itself for large-scale job cuts as well.
If life is a cement trampoline, then Fairchild Semiconductor just performed a flat back landing. It’s hand forced by those oft-cited “market conditions,” the company said Friday it is sacking 12 percent of its workforce in an attempt to reduce expenses and spread holiday cheer.
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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