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Layoffs at OSDL
daria42 writes "Open Source Development Labs - which employs Linus Torvalds - has apparently cut nine of its fifty-seven staff (although Linus has retained his job). The cuts come as the organisation re-structures. It will establish a European office and expand into Asia. "We're a small enough organisation that what would be a small change in focus for a bigger company has a large effect on us," said a spokesperson."
What exactly is their income anyway? Do they have a revenue stream?
I would be surprised if nobody donated a ton of cash, to say that they are paying Linus' salary.
No reason to lie.
Um, you want open source in India? Make some.
Opensource is where people code it, mostly.
Anyone that has ever worked for a small programming shop knows this probably isn't a huge event. It sounds like of the 9 people let go, most were not programmers. They probably got rid of some sales and marketing people to prepare themselves for an investment. A lot of times to take larger amounts of venture capital, you have to clean house to prepare to take on execs from the VC firm. We had to name one of their board members our President. They also gave us a marketing guy, and sales guy. It is part of selling your soul to make money.
Hopefully they didn't ditch anyone too integral to the programming. Also, they mentioned consulting positions, so they might have simply decided to not renew some contracts. Without the breakdown of what positions were downsized, it's hard to tell what they are doing.
The one thing that happened to our company during this process is that some of the engineers got fed up (myself included) and left. We had about 15 people total and only 5 were programmers by the time the restructuring finished. Imagine this: 10 people telling you that we need Product X yesterday, and it gets added to your list of 10 other things that were promised to your top clients.
/. ++
OSS is whatever you contribute. There no real dollars chasing OSS based on where you live. It is based on how much you contribute. If you contribute a lot, you will find that HP, IBM, even OSDL would hire you.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The cuts come as the organisation re-structures.
This has to be the most used line ever when talking about layoffs. One day I want to see a press release about layoffs from some company "Eh...we laidoff people just for the hell of it...we're perfectly structured we just wanted to shake things up a bit. To keep our employees on their toes."
Europeans are, at this point, probably as or more expensive, especially considering the weak dollar.
It's not outsourcing, it's expanding. Linux doesn't just exist in the US, you know. There are big opportunities in other parts of the world, and apparently they want to be there.
http://www.welton.it/davidw/
The laid off programmer would find another job. If that job pays him to do the same thing, great. If not, here's why you'd want to keep paying him:
I have a job writing proprietary software, which I don't like, but at least it puts food on the table. In my spare time I write open source software. All the five minutes of spare time (average) per month that I am not burnt out from work. Expect a 0.0.1 release around this time the next millenium, if I'm not dead by then.
Well, there's the difference between 8-14 hours of development per day and 2-3 hours every few days. These people you're referring to probably aren't going to live on the street and eat out of a dumpster just to keep developing.
Or maybe it just shows how little you know about what is being developed where.
The myth that US software developers are so much better than their Indian counterparts is just crap. And the idea that Dell support was any good when it was on shore is just plain baloney. It was rubbish then, now its rubbish and cheaper with a more dodgy accent.
You do know of course that many of the finest mathematicians on the planet are Indian. That senior posts in many technology companies in the US are taken by Indian people, not because they are cheaper but because they are better.
Rather than moaning, and slinging mud, about elements moving to India, wouldn't it be better to ask how come all these "superior" US developers couldn't break a 50% success rate on projects. Not so hot
As a friend of mine said
"We like to pretend that its India thats rubbish, in fact its pretty much everyone".
And the worst lot are the ones who moan that the other guy is crap, while never checking out the fact that they are worse.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
You're absolutely right that expanding into Asia and Europe is hardly synonymous with outsourcing. It's more like being realistic about where the growth is in IT. I'm suprised they aren't also setting up in Brazil.
The key markets for information technology in the next few decades are not the US, Western Europe or Japan. The key markets key, as in where the majority of goods will be purchsed and consumed-- are Mainlaind China, India, Eastern Europe and South America.
Where do I get that idea? Easy, hardware manufacturers. People in the wealthy nations often have a hard time imagining how hardware can get any cheaper and still remain profitable and yet it does relentlessly continue to decline in price. The answer to how it remains profitable is simple, volume. And that volume cannot and will not exist in the highly profitable and yet relatively sparsely populated wealthy countries. There simply are not enough consumers.
So, as a manufacturer, you simply enter new markets by lowering your costs until the real masses, the billions, can afford your products. And you can bet that WiMax is going to be one of the enabling technolgies that is going to make this push into the "third world" happen all that much faster.
Which means it makes perfect sense for OSDL to have a real presence in these markets. In fact, you could argue they're moving too slowly.
But none of that has the slightest thing to do with "outsourcing". It's just the reality of where IT is going.
It's not outsourcing, it's expanding. Linux doesn't just exist in the US, you know. There are big opportunities in other parts of the world, and apparently they want to be there.
They are firing people in the US and replacing them with people not in the US. You could make the "expanding" argument if they weren't doing the firings. They are not "expanding". They are relocating.
Yeah, and while you're at it fanboy why don't you also explain to the PHB's that not all Indian engineers are super geniuses. My wife's company regularly poaches from the top five percent of their graduates and then brings them up to the US on H1B's, and then magically all of the MBAs seem to think that "OMG... Indian engineers are all geniuses!". From what I've seen a number of them are pretty goddamned lazy, too.
As theorists, sure. As far as actually DOING SOMETHING WITH IT give me the Russians and other former eastern bloc math guys. Additionally, I'll put the creativity and practicality of US engineers against the overly academic Indian engineers any day of the week. My biggest laugh is working with engineers from the EU: all theory and very little if any application. And if you'd been paying attention you'd know that Waterloo up in Soviet Canuckistan whips damned near everybody's ass because they're good theorists AND good engineers..
In addition I've been seeing an increasing number of software engineering projects coming BACK to both the US and the EU because India just flat the hell out couldn't deliver.
Outsourcing is not going away, but it is not a universal panacea, and I find it gratifying that a number of major companies got burnt by it.
Seriously, if they can't pick up the dupes, the typos, RTFA themselves and filter out the blog-whoring shite from prostoalex & rpiquepa then wtf *do* they get paid for?
Maybe if the US fixed it's broken and steadily worsening IP policies, it wouldn't be about to be overtaken by so many countries in the IT sector, and this kind of thing wouldn't happen.
I can see you've never run a small company. If you had, you'd realize that a good (or bad) receptionist can make (or break) your business. Think about it--here is one person who typically talks to every employee several times a day, and most of your customers every week or two. The person who watchs who and what enter and leave, gets to see the unguarded moments, the body language, hear the idle gossip--in short, the best clue catcher you'll ever have.
I'm always amazed at the money people will pay consultants for clues they could have gotten in far less time just by asking the recptionist. Often, the receptionist is the only person in the whole outfit that sees the big picture.
--MarkusQ
Proof that this place needs a (-1, WTF?!) moderation.
The cuts come as the organisation re-structures. It will establish a European office and expand into Asia.
This is bizspeak for what the rest of humanity calls outsourcing.
Pretty words to hide real actions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Many of the major Open Source and Free Software projects these days are actually done by professional developers, e.g. the Linux kernel, Red Hat, SuSE, MySQL, gcc, Eclipse, ...
At the moment, it's cheaper to hire developers in China and India rather than the USA or Europe. People in the USA and Europe are being made redundant and their jobs are going to the Far East. That's where my old job went.
Stick Men