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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."
- No brainers: the people who most deserve to go, and who everyone agrees
- The group of tough choice cuts, generally 60% of the first round, and not often based on performance but more so on overshadowing
- The painful cuts who don't deserve to go but they have to cut 40% of the last round numbers, so these will have to do
But of course since this is to enable the company to move into Europe, and not due to financial problems -- then perhaps this will be the only round as they will be rehiring these positions in a new office. I like the idea that they will be hiring new locals.The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
I'm an Indian in Bangalore.. Guys like us would LOVE to have something like OSDL here ..
Also Opensource should be world wide - based on the distribution of intelligence rather than $$$.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
Fifty-seven staff on the list,
Fifty-seven of staff.
You take nine down,
Cut them around,
Forty-eight staff on the list.
(sigh) I'm lame...
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.
this sucks, osdl is more evil than ibm!
Kudos to all who contribute to projects such as Linux. From its inception, it has been a grassroots initiative to provide better for less. It's sad for the people who have been laid off, but it's part of the economy we live in. These people won't be out of the job for long though. Keep your heads up, guys!
Now accepting PayPal donations!
"The organisation, which calls itself the "centre of gravity" of the Linux movement" How can they possibly be serious? Judging from the average weight of people at a LUG...
Wow, they cut workers on both sides of the fulcrum. Sweet!
On a side note, doesn't ZDNet have a spell checker?
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
OSDL cuts, IBM cuts... is the start of another .com bubble burst??? *runs off and sells shares*
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
It will establish a European office and expand into Asia.
Lets be honest here. They are outsourcing those jobs. Hey, I'm not complaining. Hooray for the Europeans and the Asians. But the US is slipping further and further behind in the world of techonology.
It is a pity that 9 people have lost their jobs. However, it is unlikely to have an impact in the long-term. The great thing about Linux is that it is so well supported by different organisations and certain aspects can be outsourced to other knowledgeable groups.
Problems may arise if they cut further jobs and the outsourced responsibilities begin to splinter and fight among themselves.
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.
Linus is dead weight. He should be replaced with somebody who passed their micro-kernels course at college and who can use CVS without resorting to shell scripts. Windows experience would also be a plus.
Any bets when will Linus move to Apple? He's using their G5-hardware already, so I think this time he won't turn them down.
I am guessing that half of them will be picked up before the end of the week.
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."
This is not a correct number. He said: /. l/p! Eeek! /. l/p! Yippie! Time to troll....
My split personality found my
{{{ZZZZZZT]]]
Er... I found my split personality's
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Lets see
No competition or development, and its not for a lack of brains or competent programmers. Clearly whatever terms or restrictions are both unacceptable and ineffectual in countering a monopoly.
Pump lots of that fine money with weasel clauses removed, into a lab in Europe, and wait.
If you were fired by a company that paid you to write Open Source, would you still develop it? If so, I can see how management would say, "what's the point of paying you, exactly?"
The US is being led by intellectual bigots, between the Bushes, the burden of lawyers and the religious right.
Is it any wonder that advances are being made elsewhere?
Is it any wonder that the 'client countries' are where the capital is fleeing, along with the jobs.
America will cease to be a world player in less than a century.
It only takes one generation of idiots to bring it down and they're a quarter way here already.
Unfortunately, they still have the bomb.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
5% layoffs at IBM! Strike!
15% layoffs at OSDL! Strike!
for the state of beyond the scope of stagnant. As Linux lead developers could save it (confirming the
I'm a little surprised that the industry sponsers aren't keeping up with this. Surely RedHat, IBM, Monte Vista, Wind River, et. al. are making far, far more on Open Source than a measly $10 Million a year?
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
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.
Yipee, offshoring comes to the open source movement
Linux came in the mid ninetees. It was a project of three gay fat geeks students, namely Anus Torvalds, Anal Cox and Richard "Dick" Stallman.
...
:-).
Anus, wanted their OS called Anux, a name that also pleased Anal Cox for sure, but Dick Stallman wasn't really happy and threatened not to have a bath anymore if they adopted that name. This threat immediately made Anus and Anal change their mind : given Stallman usually only washes once a month, they knew he was not lying
Instead, Dick Stallman wanted the OS to be called "Dinux, the dickhead OS", because he estimated many of the kernel wouldn't have existed if he hadn't first thought of it. Dick has always been an egocentric person, but Anus and Anal still wanted to please him, given he has always been pleasing them with his huge cock. So they kept the second letter "I" from his suggestion. They they went to bed and made love, that's why the first letter "L" was chosen.
So all in all, Linux is just a big story of love for unix, be happy
McDonalds is hiring; Fry technicians and Big Mac Engineers.
Seriously, I doubt this will have any real impact and given the current job market they may be better off. It seems a lot of employees latched onto their jobs fearing they'd never find another not realizing that the employeers often took the same attitude and didn't feel the need to pay the employee as much. I think this is changing in the market.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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?
Just another large corporation laying people off so they can offshore to India. Ref: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/23/192424 4&tid=99
You're mixing two completely different arguments here. Development and support are entirely different beasts.
But if we're going to talk support, let's talk support:
Fact of the matter is that support, once moved away, has gone downhill, not just for Dell, but for other companies as well. Probably my worst support experiences have come from SBC, who outsources their support to India. Level one support from them is running down a script and checklist. There is absolutely NO independent thinking from their support.
Thank God for places like dslreports.com for their Tracy, CA-based help through the forum.
I think you overestimate the logical basis for layoff choices. Office politics are usually a major factor as well.
Not that I'm paranoid or anything.
You can have your god back when you are old enough to handle the responsibility.
What is this Open Sores thing I keep hearing about? And why would I want to develop it? Wouldn't it be better to let it heal?
Random is the New Order.
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
If Linus had been laid off, slashdot would have instantly turned into a single black page saying something to the effect of "REHIRE LINUS, WE NEED HIM", and all sorts of anti-OSDL propaganda.
I'm sure employers and ISPs around the world alike would rejoice if slashdot is only a single page :)
I'M NOT ANGRY!
bash$ %osdl
... of software patents?
It would be very interesting to OSDL to be on countries that doesn't acept software patents.
Rethinking email
I could have sworn the city of Beaverton just gave the OSDL a substantial chunk of funding in order to try and "promote growth and yadda yadda" of the tech market here...I'm sure this isn't what they had in mind...
Granted, it sounds like a fairly small ripple in the organization, I just hope it isn't a sign of further things to come.
"But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong" - Dennis Miller
Instead of firing people they should consider charging for their software !
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! --
and I hope to hear of more layoffs for OSDL in the near future. OSS is shit code, plain and simple =]
This is bizspeak for what the rest of humanity calls outsourcing.
Pretty words to hide real actions
when software is made int oa commodity, expect outsourcing to the lowest bidder.
When I was part of the layoffs at my odl company I was in round two.
Yet more evidence that Communism is dead, dead, dead.
What is wrong with hiring open source developers from other countries?
Nothing, so long as they're added, not replacing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
After the number of times I've seen OSDL slap their "We own Slashdot" tag on the end of OSDL-related Slashdot news articles, I'm surprised to see they didn't tag this one.
Is this how Bill picks them up?