Google and Seagate cut staff while Microsoft weighs options
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Jan 15th 2009 3:18AM
posted Jan 15th 2009 3:18AM
We woke up this morning to find somebody other than Steve Jobs at the helm of Apple and Palm reigning supreme as the new darling of the tech industry. Unfortunately, it's not the tech bubble year of 1996 -- it's the recession plagued start to 2009. So it's no surprise to hear that Google, Seagate, and Microsoft are all looking to slash operating costs in a quest to remain buoyant. Google (yes, the invincible Google) just laid off 100 recruiters while announcing the closure of a few satellite engineering offices -- a move that will certainly see the loss of at least a few of the 70 or so affected engineers who are unwilling or unable to relocate. Meanwhile Seagate is swinging the axe deep with an announced 6% cut (2,950 people) to its global workforce coupled with executive pay cuts by as much as 25%. And according to sources over at The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft is scouring its books for cost savings but is hoping to avoid layoffs. Nevertheless, cuts could be announced as early as next Thursday's earnings call. Hey sock-puppet, how 'bout a dance? We could use some levity right about now.
Read -- Google recruiters
Read -- Google engineering
Read -- Microsoft mulls cuts
Read -- Seagate slashes
Read -- Google recruiters
Read -- Google engineering
Read -- Microsoft mulls cuts
Read -- Seagate slashes
Maybe if Google didn't serve 5-star food in their cafeteria, they could've kept some employees...
They're only having to fire around 170 people, 100 of them simply being recruiters (which just implies that they're not sustaining a certain amount of growth, rather than actually having a loss). I think they're doing something right.
maybe if they didnt hire old 1920s men, theyd be spend less on dental insurance...
Speaking of 1920's men when this whole recession bs blows over PLEASE engadget give me the link to your database of pics from the depression there hilarious.
They actually closed a bunch of their cafeterias at Mountain View to cut costs.
Honestly I can't say I'm surprised that the recruiters were the first to go...when you're not hiring having 100 recruiters sit around doing nothing is a pretty silly waste.
They should have looked at the alternatives before knocking of employees .. The alternatives could be from pay cuts to removing lunch subsidiary. I found these 9 fundamental ways to Cut Costs Not People
1. Salary cuts starting from the top
2. Re-visit Inventory
3. Sell, dont just donate or Trash
4. Encourage longer working hours\weeks
5. Remove lunch subsidies
6. Avoid travelling abroad
7. Aim at Zero Bench
8. Inculcate Innovation
9. Slow down on Unnecessary Advertising
If seagate would of had some quality control on their 1.5 Tb hard drives then maybe it could of saved people their jobs.
Adding the source to my earlier comment -- world wide web . entrepreneurshipandbeyond. blogspot. com
@ logicaljackass
Maybe they have no choice but cut off staff because they ran out of alternatives.
@Dave:
http://images.google.com/images?q=depression%20national%20archive&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
The irony of firing recruiters.
Ironically ironic, I say.
Man, where does the axe stop? Seems like it's spinning wildly out of control with collateral damage being the last thing on its mind..
Collateral damage? Right now, at least partially, they cant think about that. Right now its survival of the fittest, and they are doing what they need to do to survive.
D:>
I'd imagine Apple at least will remain unscathed because since they should have amassed quite a large amount of liquidity over the years by not paying dividends...
It also helps that a lot of Apple's retail staff are on zero hour contracts. Apple don't have to make them redundant because they don't have to give them any shifts to work.
more like steve jobs is dead in a few weeks and the company's stock will plummet, leading to layoffs. dumbass fanboy
"Jerkfaced" - yep, you sure are. Crying "fanboy" every time anyone mentions Apple just makes you look stupid. Nothing fanboyish about the orig comment, but plenty anti-Apple fanboyish about your knee-jerk reaction.
Wait and see my friends. Wait and see. As once mighty empires like Microsoft, Google, and Seagate cut jobs and lose sales, what does that mean for the rest of the economy? The small, individualized shops or even simply lower end companies? It means they will die. And I do NOT consider Steve Jobs leaving (for a period of time) Apple to be the end of the Apple empire. They will continue, but whether or not they will fair well, is another question.
Let me count the times I've seen this in the IT industry. We missed the oil shock of 1973, happily, but I still met people who had been laid off during those times, a decade later. In 1990-91, just as I started my consulting company, the Iraq war caused all gigs to dry up and it took several years before decent work came back on the scene. Then things were great until 2001, when the dot-com boom popped and consultants all over were culled. This current crisis was predictable (and I wrote about it in 2007[1]) but IMO it's going to be a freaky one. OTOH we are seeing not one but many bubbles pop at once (housing, financial markets, cheap energy, stock market). OTOH, global trade has never been more efficient, and this is where the real wealth comes from, not from crazy debt leveraging.
So I think we're going to look back at this as the Great Realignment, where the lazy and corrupt got their payback, and the world finally became flat.
[1] http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-21772/will-the-patent-system-trigger-financial-collapse-in-2008
You are spot on. I'd also say that over the last several years there has been way too much emphasis on debt positioning (postponing) and various ways to calculate ROIC to justify mediocre or poor business. In this "Great Realignment" I believe it is going to get back to the basics of being profitable or not. There is just not going to be mindless financing around to delay the inevitable or to make bad business look good. I also believe this economic downturn is going to be multi-years which is longer than many in the media are stating.
Good for seagate to cute executive pay. Never understood why Companies so easily cut the 60k a year guy on the bottom instead of reduce the pay of the 400k a year guy on top. I know its hard for management to cut their own salaries but its for the good of the company and its not like you already don't have enough.
Because 10 people at 60K = 600K
1 person at 200K = 200K
well how about cutting 9 people instead of 10 and cutting the guy who makes 200k to 140k to make up for the 10th person. that saves additional jobs at the bottom and those guys at the top can just take the sacrifice until times get better. really if your making that much money and a little over a 4th is gonna cause you so much financial difficulty you spending way to much f***kin money in the first place.
Time to start hoarding the govmn't cheese again. I also read up on a techdirt list that HP is cutting 25,000 employees over the next three years, and Nortel filed for bankruptcy.
I clicked through, but couldn't find any dancing sock puppets. Do you know what a tease is, engadget?
That photo isn't really funny. It's actually pretty unnerving given our current economic outlook and the fact the government appears to want to repeat the mistakes made in the 30's.
I wonder how Engadget is holding up.?...any layoffs yet?