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Job Cuts For Dell, Motorola, and Circuit City
maeveth writes "Talk about not a good time to be working in the tech sector. Layoffs all over the industry have been announced, in a variety of different areas. Last week Dell announced they were partnering with Wal-Mart; this week they are planning a ten-percent reduction in their global workforce. Motorola was already going to cut some 3500 jobs by the end of June; they're now adding another 4000 pink slips to that number (and hoping that next month's RAZR2 launch will boost profits). To top it all off Circuit City is acting in a decidedly schizophrenic manner. The are going to axe about 850 employees, on top of the 70 stores they closed last month ... while also planning to open 165 new stores."
One of these things is not like the others.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
printing presses -> inflation -> interest rates -> bad times.
HTH.
Deleted
Meanwhile, every tech place I know can't hire fast enough. The good candidates are getting soaked up by the market fast. Wasn't there a stat recently that computer people are in higher demand than during the tech boom? But maybe its just a localized phenomena where I live.
Imagine a beowolf clu- oh sod it.
... where the cuts will occur. Obviously the Circuit City cuts will be in the US, but what about Dell & Moto? Any bets that they are not in the call centers of India? The Dell article mentions employees in England & Ireland but doesn't say where the cuts will be.
Nothing like making the employees pay for management's bad decisions.
What's so strange about closing 70 locations and opening 165? Anyone that has had anything to do with corporate retail planning can see that it can make perfect sense: The company wants to grow, so they add more stores, at the same time, some stores have been performing so badly that they think the location will never be profitable enough, so they are closed.
The only surprising part is that we are talking about all that many stores at the same time: It either means that the former management was ignoring all the indicators, or that the new management has just gone overboard to make a point.
Either way, it's something that seems perfectly healthy for a retail chain to do.
FTFA:
"This time around, the company [Circuit City] axed roughly one manager from each of its 654 stores along with nearly 200 positions at its Richmond, VA headquarters."
How does sacking a bunch of retail managers and back office support staff spell doom for tech sector employees? I understand that job cuts are bad things, but I don't think this one should be lumped in with the tech sector.
[sig]you really dont want the answers, trust me[/sig]
Circuit city and Dell are in the retail sector, and that article doesn't say who at Motorola is getting canned. It could be marketing for all we know.
MORON! I guess because a gas station on a corner street in BFE, Ohio is out of business, it MUST BE A TERRIBLE TIME TO BE IN OIL.
Slashdot posters are some of the dumbest people around. This guy must have his underwear pulled up around his waist.
I bet laying off 1000s 6-figure-earning code coolies is well justified. It would affect the bottom line and quarterly earnings by a fraction of a point, at best.
The submission suggests the decision to open new stores while closing others is weird... but it is not.
BGI (Borders, Waldenbooks, Brentanos, Paperchse) announced they would be closing/spinning off all international operations a day before they announced the opening of several new international stores. The intertia behind the construction, planning, hiring, etc was too great to halt. Additionally, the purchasing departments negotiate deals based on volume and there was *years* of planning/analysis/spending that affected the entire chain and would need to be revisited if the stores did not open as planned.
The damage to the company would have been greatly compounded if the new stores had not opened.
Finally, while closing locations is common practice for companies that are in difficult times, it is not unusual to continue expanding in markets that show more promise than the failing ones that were cut. Shoring up existing markets does less to placate edgy shareholders than showing aggressive pursuit of new opportunities.
Regards.
Be nice if it was global, and not just USA.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Perhaps someone can inform me how people getting laid off at Circuit City is any indicator of the status of the tech sector. Now I have never bought anything from a Circuit City but they weren't the most technically adept people I have ever talked to...just a bunch of dullards spouting numbers off of a tag and having no clue what they actually mean. I can see Motorola and Dell, but lumping Circuit City in there is just grasping for straws
As the industry matures, it's a lot harder to be unskilled and collect a paycheck on just smoke and mirrors like just having certifications.
If, however, you have real technical skills, you are not going to go hungry.
During growth cycles in the stock markets, like the record-breaking S&P 500, it's very typical for companies to shed employees. It has nothing to do with Tech as an industry segment, has nothing to do with outsourcing, has nothing to do with EducationInAmericaToday, has nothing to do with anything but pleasing Wall Street. This allows stockholders to fatten up the stock price, lower DE ratios, and at the end of the day, inject new blood.
Does it suck? Of course it does. Wall Street is a nasty bitch.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
At first, it was a great part time job for a guy working his way through college. Commission based computer sales, and the commission was more than fair. Then around late 2000 there was a huge shift.
First of all, our store's management staff was almost entirely changed no less than 9 times in 7 months. That's the store manager, assistant manager, and all the department managers. The only role that was relatively "safe" was the AV manager, who got demoted to a sales guy when they brought in someone else, then got promoted again after 3 guys went through that manager role.
Commissions were first cut, then to compound the problem they started flooding the sales floor. Where you used to only have maybe 2 guys in a department during the day and 3-4 at night (depending on the time of year and the department), it became literally 5 during the day and 8 at night. No one was making money on commission anymore, we were just drawing the minimum hourly pay.
Ironically, I think that last move is what really started the store's sales going downhill - no one wants to feel like there's 8 sharks circling for blood/a sale while they're looking at a printer or whatever. Even if the salespeople aren't trying to do so, with 8 of them in a small department, you can't really avoid that feeling.
From one of our assistant managers, I heard that there was some huge politics going on in the regional level in the company. Exactly what, he didn't have details on, but most of the Northeast was going through similar issues (although our store was the worst example he heard of).
Really, I think the problem is that Circuit City hasn't been aggressive enough in its adaptation to new marketplace conditions. It settled for "good enough" for too long, and lost it's momentum.
Disclaimer: I don't hold anything against them, like I said, it was a nice place to work for a while. And at least their problems stemmed from poor organizational practices rather than a crappy attitude toward the consumer. Customer service was at least given more than lip service while I worked there. Granted, it's been 5 years, so things may have changed there too, I'm not sure.
"decidedly schizophrenic manner"
Schizophrenia != Split Personality
Given the strength that the marketing department seems to have at Motorola, I wouldn't doubt that they are staffed by a cast of thousands. Can someone explain to me why Mobile Phone Tools needs to be stuffed chock-full of pictures of people younger, trendier, and apparently happier than I am?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I don't know if I'd really consider working for Circuit City to be part of the "tech industry". More like retail sales.
Circuit city and Dell are in the retail sector, and that article doesn't say who at Motorola is getting canned.
Yeah, but CC and Dell and CompUSA and anyone else selling hardware has been squeezed by M$ and burnt by poor sales. That they are firing people means they expect worse. After six years of waiting, Vista is a flop. People are really sick of the upgrade train and it's hurt the whole industry's reputation. Time for honest computing.
How does Motorola get into this mix? Well the neat-o things about their new phones are all features that depend on M$ desktops to work and other rape you deals. M$'s move into digital music is just as as big a disaster as Vista is. Plays for Sure failed and then got stabbed in the back, so those who took the trouble to install drivers and wade through the WMP nightmare got screwed. How many $250+ phones are you going to sell that way? The M$/RIAA/MPAA cluster fuck here is amazingly bad.
2007 is the year of Linux.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
first dell adopts linux, now they're already in their death throws! i knew it! i knew it!
Dude! You're getting a pink slip.
I completely stopped shopping at circuit city back when they tried to foist DIVX on the world.
No, that was the line in April. In May it shifted to reports of huge Vista shipments followed by "Of corse M$ has been selling huge piles of Vista their a convicted monopolist so everybody has to by Vista or teh Steve Balmer will through a chair at them!"
Get with the program!
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=236903&cid=193 46111
CC and related retailers still exist in the numbers they do because people like to be able to play with tech before they buy it. It is not safe to assume that customers have simply switched to buying online, or that CC competitors have made enough of a market incursion to justify these sorts of layoffs (after all, CC has a huge established client base due largely to their longevity in the market).
CC laying people off is not the same as, say, Tower Records doing the same. There is no emerging technology that is going to replace the physical retail outlet for consumer electronics until the generation raised with online purchases begins to age up a little.
The fact that CC is having difficulties could be an indicator that the next round of profit reports will look pretty grim for numerous consumer electronic manufacturers.
Then the effect trickles down, and outward, and touches other aspects of the industry through measures like consolidations to reduce overhead, offshoring unrelated divisions to make up for lost revenue from the Consumer Electronic divisions, and pricing wars.
The consumer electronic industry is not in a good position with all the other rising costs in America (with power prices being one key marker). Would you rather have a new digital camera or heating oil? We could see some big players get hammered if war related costs continue to rise and those costs continue to affect pricing in key markets like power.
In short, the information about CC fits in the summary.
Regards.
P.S. Not to start a flame war or anything, but employees at consumer electronic outlets are often sales people who have been displaced from other industries by the emergence of consumer tech. Hardware stores, auto part outlets, and numerous other more established retail sectors have suffered mightily from changes in the market. A friend who works LP @ a big-box construction supply chain saw his 12 person unit reduced to 3 people over the course of two years. Might not hurt to assume they *might be* working @ CC because selling the products they know and understand is no longer an option.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
Of note, specifically: Despite its etymology, "schizophrenia" is not synonymous with dissociative identity disorder, previously known as multiple personality disorder or "split personality"; in popular culture the two are often confused.
The persistence of the incorrect definition is really annoying.
Please see this article. According to Fortune, in some areas hiring in the tech sector has been increased by a substantial number. Companies are out on a hunt for college grads and overall the picture does not look bad at all. Of course, there is no such thing as job security, but I'd rather work in IT than for an American auto company. The glass is always half full :)
how many employees do they plan to hire in India and China in the next six months, and how many of said new employees were using L-1 and H1-B visas in the US prior to said "downsizing", when it's really outsourcing?
Do an online Yahoo Stock search and check the news and PR items and find the truth.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Dell inaugurated Thursday a new research and development (R&D) facility in Bangalore, India, that can house up to 1,000 staff. The new facility is in line with Dell's plans to make India a hub for the development of enterprise products such as servers, storage, and software. Coincidence? Surely not.
go ahead and add freescale to the list as well
although the article doesn't mention it, the percentage seems to be about 10%, too (of a ~24,000 employee company)
Circuit City is not the tech sector. It's the retail hell sector. Dell, well, if you stretch it, you can argue it's in the tech sector. It's more of a packaging and logistics company.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
What killed Circuit City for me was that stupid restocking fee. They can argue and explain until the end of the world about how it's fair and reasonable and helps keep costs down, but when it's CC or Wal-Mart for the same price, and Wal-Mart will give me no-hassle returns, I'm not buying from CC.
True story: I bought a graphics card from CC on sale for $20 a few years back. It was going in a cheapie desktop, so I basically wanted something that could put color on a screen. Anyway, I got home and it was DOA, so I returned and found that they were sold out of that particular model and their next cheapest card was $100. The clerk gave me the choice between upgrading to a part 400% more expensive or paying a 15% restocking fee to get a refund. Well, long story short, by the time I left (with my full refund), two managers and a security guard were involved.
I will never, ever, to my dying day, spend another penny at Circuit City. Maybe they feel OK charging for returns, but as a potential customer, I'll take my business someplace that treats me well. I'm not out to rip anyone off and I won't deal with someone who tells me that I am.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
...if you happen to work for them and are about to get sacked.
All signs of an unstable economy.
While you're at it, you could explain to us why Dell posted better than expected profits while doing what you consider to be their problem, if indeed you consider six months of poor post-RTM Vista sales to be able to have enough negative impact on a company this size for them to cut 8,000 jobs on short notice. Surely you don't expect to have it both ways, right?
Oh, and breakdown of PC sales profits/losses vs. all other products sold by CompUSA and Circuit City would also be nice. I'm sure you have proof that they're being "harmed by the collapse of non free", right? While you're doing that, something similar for BestBuy would also be nice
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Here goes.
India blah blah... Outsourcing blah blah... Education system... blah blah... CEO salary.. blah blah...
Ahd oh...
Microsoft sucks.
I pretty much covered the whole discussion there... din't I ?
It could be too that they are just re-arranging the stores into better markets.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I never bought a single DIVX disc or plugged it into the phone line (or took one of the free ones they tried to give me with the player).
The percentage of DIVX players that never phoned home once were a bunch a nails in its coffin. It performed OK as a cheap DVD player.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Oh hell... Why doesn't Dell move its HQ from Austin to India? Just get it over with.
Life is not for the lazy.
An insulting AC writes:
Yes, Microsoft is a convicted, coercive monopolist. So now, in June, the suppliers who took all of those Vista CDs are firing people. This is not a coincidence, it's a consequence. Vista is not selling and those who were forced to take it lost. "Channel stuffing" is little more than a transfer of wealth from places like Walmart, Dell, and others to M$.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
i.e. they are lying about the inflation. Bigtime lying. It's bad right now. They are using some sophisticated smoke and mirrors propaganda action to cover their asses, that's all. Trying to forestall a crash and loss of the fednote as the planetary "reserve currency".
lines
read read read
Dell used to have -maybe still has- a policy that went something like this:
1) Evaluate every worker. Rank them by productivity.
2) Eliminate the bottom ten percent.
3) Hire more, train them.
4) Goto 1.
In other words, they routinely purge the bottom ten percent.
Seen from this corner of the world (Norway):
Motorola used to have some very reliable products, but now they have to much mumbojumbo you can not use. WTF are they thinking? (yes, I want a linux phone i can thinker with. Wheres the thinkerers phone?)
Dell have a very good service here. Too bad they dont see their home marked the same way.
Circuit City? Whats that? Someting like Elkjøp or Clas Olson?
Products coming from US of America these days just sucks to much.
We see Mirosoft, McDonalds and the movie/record industry.
Big corps with shitty products.
Ah, well, I actually found some good beer last time I was over there.
Skål!
All these layoffs, and they think we need a few thousand more Techies to compete for the jobs that are still out there. Only in America..
Employers expect (as professional courtesy) two weeks notice prior to leaving your job.
You'll notice that they never extend that courtesy in return when laying people off...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
In the end, it's not clear that Dell will be down 8,000 employees or Motorola will be down 3,000 + employees.
A while back I read about HP laying off thousands from their world-wide 150,000 employees. They still have 150,000 employees. The article talked about "churn" of employees. Either the employees that were let go were in areas that were unimportant to the company and replaced with workers with skills more valuable to the company or high paid employees were replaced with lower paid folks doing the same jobs, some of them perhaps outside the USA. The thing to do is look at these company's number of employees in a year.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I was laid off from a telecommunications company in the 80s. At 4pm, the computers went down. The word wafted around the building like a bad smell that we ought to grab our belongings and go down to the lobby. There we saw 2 tables. One had boxes of white envelopes. The other had boxes of brown envelopes. You stated you name and the people at the tables looked for your name on an envelope. A white envelope meant you stayed. A brown envelope meant you were laid off. Mine was turd brown. That day, 1200 people were let go. Other layoffs of 800, 500 and 300 followed.
I was 28 years old. I found a good job in another state. It was a very stressful time. Overnight, a streak of grey appeared in my hair. It surprised my wife, who noticed it before I did.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
"Duuude! You're gettin' fired!"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Dog-Eat-Dog/Suvival-Of-The-Fittest trolls claiming something to the tune of "You are not entitled to anything"
At my last Silicon Valley layoff, the HR guy was part of the first wave. So he had to handle his own layoff. Over the beer that night he said that was pretty typical for his job "we're usually the first to go, when you want to cut costs."
So your view of the heartless scheming HR uberdrone may say more about you than the work market.
Let's have a quick lesson in correlation =/= causation, shall we?
Lots of people breathe air. Lots of people get cancer. Therefore, air causes cancer!
Windows is on 95% of the worlds computers. It's not going to be very difficult to find a few businesses that aren't posting the profits they used to that all use Windows in some fashion or another, because Windows is ubiquitous.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
I didn't know that circuit city was still operating- the have pretty much closed all of their stores here in the bay area- or at least I don't know of any that still exist. with dell it was pretty much to be expected, if they are going to be selling at wal-mart they are going to need to do a restructure to their assembly line and concentrate a larger amount of their business on pre-packaged systems vs. custom systems as you get from their website. as far as motorola- they will do better once the whole super pretty smartphone dust settles and people see what crap the iphone is.
"Let's have a quick lesson in correlation =/= causation, shall we?"
Windows OS has pentrated only a small percentage of the CPU based devices in use today.
I.E. Palm, PSP, Modems, Firewalls, Wireless gateways, Automobile computers, Linux systems, BSD based systems(apple), or less than 10% of the OS market for all CPU's.
That said, Windows Visa is a Bloated, Spyware'd, DRM'd turkey and it's defacto inclusion has negatively impacted recent PC sales.
Next time you see someone developing something on an automobile computer, let me know. Otherwise, please re-read my lesson - I don't think you understood it.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Well, now that you've told us what's wrong with these companies, maybe you can tell us what's not wrong with BestBuy, Hewlett-Packard, IBM/Lenovo, Gateway, Sony, LG, Ericsson and all the others that are in the same segments as these poor victims of evil "M$"?
OK
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
http://newsroom.circuitcity.com/releasedetail.cfm
ouch
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.