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Sun to Cut 5000 Jobs
codemachine writes "In one of Jonathan Schwartz's first acts as CEO, Sun Microsystems has announced that they are cutting up to 5,000 jobs over the next 6 months. The company plans to sell property it owns in Newark, Calif., and to exit leases at a site in Sunnyvale, Calif. Analysts will be pleased that Sun has finally taken steps to cut costs, but what will this mean for the future of the company?"
Yeah it sucks badly to lose your job, but it doesn't really mean Sun is going down the hole. It means they are cutting the fat. I don't know how profitable of a company they are, but this is typical of companies that are trying to be all things to all people. It generally means they are going to re-focus on their core market (what actually made them money in the first place).
I remember when Amazon refocused. They were selling so many ridiculuos (to ship) items, there were many products you could get at a local store that cost more to ship than the product itself!
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I took a Unix systems programming class from Sun about five years ago and it was very good. The only downside to the class were the attitudes of some of the Sun employees that were in there. They repeatedly told the rest of the class that they "didn't really need to know this stuff" and that they were "web guys" or "java gui guys" and that the nuts and bolts of Unix were tangential. When they were in the room they spent most of their time talking about the price of Sun's stock. It was hard to imagine how the company was going to go forward when so many employees seemed to think that their core products (Unix servers) were not really worthy of learning about.
I really like Sun's stuff and I hope that they are able to make a big comeback; but they are not going to do it counting on the folks that were in my class.
I know people who work for Sun here in CZ. I also went through their interview process while I was looking for a job in January. Sun decided a long time ago that continued investment in the US was a waste of money. They directly told me they had no interest in having new employees in the US. Their operations have been growing in eastern Europe and India. The layoffs come as no surprise to me at all. They have been creating the redundancy to be able to let go of people for a while.
When I tell an object to delete this, am I killing it or telling it to kill me?
Disclosure - I am a Sun employee. Hopefully unaffected by this move. I am speaking for myself here, not for the company.
Having said that, this is a targeted cut. Not a cheese-paring '10% everywhere' as has happened in the past. The execs have taked a hard look at our business and decided that we'll focus on what makes sense for Sun. Areas that don't make the cut will be, well, cut. What's remaining will be left intact.
In fact, my group has open reqs that we are actively filling. Unusually, these are entry-level positions. If you're fresh out of college and want to 'live in interesting times', as the Chinese proverb has it, then take a look.
Cheers,
Pat