Slashdot Mirror
AOL Lays Off 450 In California
bmarklein writes "AOL has laid off 450 in California. The former Netscape campus is going from 675 employees to 300. The San Francisco office, which they obtained when they acquired Spinner (now Radio@AOL), and which housed Nullsoft after their acquisition by AOL, is being closed along with an office in San Diego. 100 employees have been offered jobs in Virginia or New York. No word on how this affects products like WinAmp. Justin, are you out there?"
So do I. I remember people talking about them being "the next Microsoft", and not in a flattering sense. I remember the incompatible tags they introduced. I remember the appalling mess of Netscape 4 and CSS.
And then there was the <blink> tag...
I can remember distinctly when I switched to IE, and at the time it was because IE was better, not because Microsoft forced me to. I can also remember switching back to Mozilla (and then Firebird), again because the browser was better.
I would argue that the glory days of Netscape stopped at Netscpe 3, took a break and restarted in the present time due to Mozilla. I'm not certain now what percentage of Mozilla developers are ex-Netscape, but I imagine it's still high enough to be called Netscape-in-another-form.
Cheers,
Ian
Oh well, it can be worse. You could get ranked and yanked, like I did. When that happens, they paper your file, rake you over the coals for a few months and fire you individually. It looks great. In my case, my supervisor made sure he nailed me on my birthday. Another great and integral part of rank and yank is bonus incentives for those not fired. The company was talking about bonuses as high as 15%, knowing they could split the salaries of the people they planned to fire. It's strange how no one but supervisors were excited about that.
Look forward to getting the usual communist propaganda from the company by mail for a while. The idiots in HR sent me a big fat glossy book, personalized with my own numbers, about what great benefits the company has for it's employees. The only thing they missed in the personalization was the fact that I was fired. How sofisticated, the company really loves me.
My company was big, but Time/Warner is much bigger. I wonder if the Netscape people are going to have it that much worse than I did. Nah, it's hard to get worse than fired, no matter how the jack-asses dress it up.
Welcome to the great suck that is the "recovery". I've been out of real work for more than a year. I'm not really happy to have lots of company.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh grow up. You're putting words into my mouth that are utterly without basis from what I posted. I think any job loss is bad news, and 450 is really distressing. I've been in situations where I've put my shirt on the line for a company I believed in and, in some cases, just wriggled through, and, in other cases, paid the price with my job. And, hey, guess what? In one of those cases I was the sole programmer at a company that ended up struggling and decided to cut me loose first.
If you read my direct quotation of the 2% figure as being somehow trivializing, then you're deliberately trying to spin it. 2% of a company's workforce is, to me, fairly substantial. Getting rid of innovative people such as the undisputedly talented programmers under discussion here is a very real and serious action.
Looking at your other post on this topic, it looks like you've got a chip on your shoulder, but it's certainly justifiable. Unlike you, I'm not going to wish you ill or gloat, because I've been there and know how much it sucks, and it's just not worth it to spread the bitterness. I really do hope you find a job soon.