Slashdot Mirror
More Massive Layoffs at AOL
dawnzer writes "It looks like AOL read the comments from Slashdotters saying that 950 employees do not constitute a 'massive' layoff. Several news sites are reporting that AOL is getting ready to cut 5,000 jobs, or roughly 26 percent of their global workforce. Now that's more like it."
Does this mean that AOL is going away, because I'm getting excited just thinking about it.
Philosophy.
AOL is a dinossaur now. Their market doesn't exist anymore and they stuck upon their past until it was too late.
Your ad could be here!
26%!!?? AOL is cutting their employees by AMD's marketshare. Intel's in bed with AOL! It makes perfect sense!
I'll bet you'd be a lot less glib about it (and way more pissed off) if it was your job on the line. Especially if you saw people making comments like that!
...one person just sent an email to everyone at the office that says "OMG I just got my pink slip" followed by thousands of replies that say "me too"?
Its never cool when any company does layoffs. If Microsoft did a layoff, I know people would be happy because "the tide is finally turning." That is very sad. You should never be happy when someone gets laid off... you don't know who they have to support with that income. It may be their family suffering now that someone got laid off, so be a little more of an adult and don't praise layoffs, from any company.
Pftt, only 5000? You can do better AOL.
It's just a shift to smaller companies or self-employment; we just don't hear about it. A company laying off 10,000 people is news. 1,000 different companies hiring those people the next day isn't.
I'm sorry but the article has misquoted John Miller AOL CEO. His actual statement went more like this:
Following last nights board meeting, the AOL directors would like to confirm the rumours that we have decided to move away from our core business, the manufacture and distribution of drink coasters and frizbees. We are now seeking to restructure the relevant departments and pursue a profitable business model of providing our internet services at no cost to non subscribers. [ Long Pauses ] As a result we belive that within 6 months anyone in our employ today with half a brain will no longer be with the company....*phone rings* ahhh, hello?. yes Satan... sorry I gotta take this
serenity now!
Here's AOL's most recent mailing to all of its customers:
Dear AOL Member,
I want to let you know about some exciting changes happening at AOL. Our service has always been an all-in-one solution for our members, consisting of:
1. Connectivity - a way of connecting to the Internet (through a dial-up or high-speed connection), and
2. Content and Services - bringing you useful tools and features like email, security and an entertaining online experience once you're connected.
Today we are announcing that AOL's software, email, and other compelling AOL features will be free to everyone who has an Internet connection -- including your Address Book, Screen Name, the Buddy List® feature and more. AOL will continue to provide a dial-up connection for you, and we will continue to offer several reliable and affordable options for getting online.
What Does This Mean for You?
Nothing about your service arrangement with us will change unless you want it to. Your current plan, which includes Internet connectivity, 24/7 customer support, unlimited email storage, your email addresses, and all the AOL content and services you rely on, will still be there for you.
If you do at some point choose another provider to connect you to the Internet:
* You can keep your AOL Screen Name and email address for as long as you want to use it, completely free;
* You can continue to use your AOL software, and you can still get all your favorite features and content, completely free;
* You will still get AOL's comprehensive safety and security tools, protecting you from online hackers, spammers and identity thieves, completely free.
All of this is free, no matter who provides your Internet connection.
Why Is AOL Doing This?
We're simply changing with the times. There are many options for Internet access, whether it's dial-up or broadband. At the same time, a lot of online content and services are now available on the Web free of charge because they are supported by advertising. So, while your Internet connectivity needs may change over time, what you love about the Web does not. We are now able to ensure that the familiar AOL experience, your Screen Name, your Address Book, your Buddy List, your Favorite Places, and other content and features you enjoy, will always be available to you for free.
In September, you will be hearing more about changes at AOL. Until then, you can visit AOL Keyword: New AOL for more information and to sign up for informative email alerts.
Sincerely,
Jon Miller
Chairman and CEO
AOL LLC
I manage a team of Retention Specialists in Reston (posting AC for obvious reasons). I'm not so sure about all this talk of layoffs. They need us more than they realize, and they would surely be willing to keep us around a little while longer for a slightly lower salary. I mean, if they really decide we aren't needed anymore, they can always reconsider and cancel our employment next month. I'm sure they'll find they really really really miss us after we're gone.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
They do serve a unique function: Spam control.
They've been known as the 800 lb. anti-spammers for several years now. Read what you want to in the news about Microsoft's efforts, but fan away the smoke and there's nothing left but the mirror you're standing on. Microsoft has made some money, directed it to their "big three" (Huey, Dewey, and Louie - aka Marketing, PR, and Sales), and Dewey has done a good job of ensuring they make a lot of press by looking terrific. When you hear a consensus of HotMail issues and bCentral.com ratified in the anti world, then perhaps it's safe to venture back online. Microsoft's anti efforts are supposed to be a hammer, looking at 2003-U-CAN-SPAM as a blueprint. Has the volume decreased?
Aside from AOL, how many other Fortune 500 companies are actually doing something about spam generated by their resources, either by providing online services or have zombies?
By-and-large, AOL has had at least one person monitoring SPAM-L beyond the PORN (Post Once, Read Nothing) factor, where others such as Tropica have done. When questions have arisen, AOL has been pretty open about what they're doing and resolving issues. If they were like everyone else, they'd have left the guy who walked with their member list go. They pursued his hairy ass and taped his buns together.
Oh, and Louie could be generating more local (U$) income if the piracy@microsoft.com address actually worked. If you send them too little info, they tell you they need everything. Send everything along with an explanation at the top, and it'll be rejected, telling you it looks too much like spam. Send them text asking which way they want it and silence. Send plaintext message + ROT13 for the headers+payload, silence. Plaintext explaining you are unable to send anything, the response is, "We're working on it." So much for being a good guy. (actually, it started as an experiment and I had to see what happened all of the way around.
It's one of the risks inherent in participating in a capitalist economy. The potential exists to do very well, but there is also the potential that things might slip in the opposite direction. Is it cool? Not really, because it does tend to disrupt peoples' lives. Do I feel sad for them? Not really, because it's all part of the game called "US of A". And let's not forget that there are other parts of the world where just getting a single meal is the biggest worry.
If after 45 days you are not completly satisfied with your Employment Service Provider, cancel at no charge!**
**You must call to cancel your employment status or will continued to be employed at the standard rate.
I want to be retired when I grow up.
AOL is Web 3.0!!! Where do my eyeballs sign up for this pay-per-click multilevel marketing bonanza. Both of them missed the first two bubbles. They blame me; instead of blogging like I was supposed to I wasted (am currently wasting) my talents getting modded off topic on slashdig. We want some of that Web 3.0 cash. Now. Referrals. My eyeballs might like Roland Pickypail if he kicked down. We want referral fees for my teflon eyeballs. How many frogclick ringtones did my clickthroughs sell for you? APIs!! APO's!! IPI's! PAP's! Frog click. Frog click bad. Class action.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
At the risk of sounding like a libertarian (which I'm not), that's how capitalism works. A crappy company goes under, and in the process some people lose their jobs. Then some other company rises and those people get another job.
Note that there's no need to get doom and gloom about it. I know that for the average citizen unemployment and inflation are signs of the apocalypse, and politicians use them as such in campaigns... then proceed to forget that they promised solving both. That's because they're not. Read something about keynesian economics, which is how the economy works nowadays, and especially about the Phillips curve.
In a nutshell, there's a corelation between the two, and if you push one down, the other one goes up. And what governments can do is pick a point on the curve and try to keep the economy around that point.
What does this have to do with this? Well, it's darn simple: for the last 60-70 years (depending on the country) everyone had the unemployment basically where they wanted it. In spite of the constant "waah, another company lays off 5000 workers, our country is doomed" scares, that's never actually been a long term problem. So some other company or several smaller companies will figure out "hey, look at all the workers we could hire in city X" and proceed to do so.
Incidentally that kind of a correlation isn't even just an effect of the last century, but you can see effects as far back as, say, the 1300s and 1400s. The plagues and resulting utter lack of unemployment for, say, peasants, caused a massive inflation and were in the end the cause of the Renaissance.
And you can see the same economics at work on a smaller scale in the limited domain of IT in the dot-com bubble, where lack of enough workforce caused the salaries to spiral up out of hand, and the cost of any resulting program reflected it. There the impact was absorbed by the rest of the society, but imagine the same economy-wide. If for every job there wasn't a pool of unemployed workforce, and companies had to pay a premium even to get receptionist, you'd see the prices rising accordingly.
It may seem calous and lacking empathy to say that someone has to be unemployed for the economy to work, and it partially is, but that's how it works. Rebelling against it is like rebelling against gravity: not very productive. We have to work with what works, not with what would be an idealist utopia. All we can do to make it more palatable is to offer some unemployment benefits and some government demand for work and move on.
And at the risk of going off topic, that's another reality that we have to live with: that governments actually have to do that kind of thing. In spite of bullshit pseudo-economic theories idealizing lean governments and some idealized image of unrestricted 19'th century capitalism, it stopped working that way in the Great Depression. That's when the economy of scarcity ended. The countries that got out of the crisis fast were the ones whose government overspent: be it FDR's New Deal, or Germany's and Italy's spending on armament. The countries which didn't, got to enjoy a jolly good depression until WW2: e.g., Canada.
Funny what things you get to learn when you take your economic theories from real economists, instead of from novelists. (*cough* Ayn Rand *cough*) But that's another discussion for another time.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
AOL REPRESENTATIVE "JOHN": Hi this is John at AOL... how may I help you today?
...the ones in India? ...years.
AOL HUMAN RESOURCES: We wanted to terminate your employment.
John: Sorry to hear that. Let's pull my account up here real quick. Can I
have your name please?
HR: Vincent.
John: I've had this job for a long time.
HR: Yup.
John: I work here quite a bit. What was the cause of wanting to terminate my employment today?
HR: We just don't use you anymore.
John: Do you have outsourced or subcontracted employees elsewhere?
HR: Yup.
John: How long have you had those...
HR: Years...
John:
HR:
John: Well, actually I'm showing a lot of hours of this employee.
HR: Yeah, a long time, a long time ago, not recently...
John: Okay, I mean is there a problem with my performance?
HR: No. we just don't use you, we don't need you, we don't want you. We just don't need you anymore.
John: Okay. So when you use me... I mean, use my services, I'm saying, is that for business customers or for... for home users?
HR: Dude, what difference does it make. We don't want you working at AOL anymore. Can we please terminate your employment?
You get the idea...
-Steven