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Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Jobs
An anonymous reader writes "According to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, geeky tech publisher O'Reilly Media has slashed 14% of its workforce, or 31 people. Founder and tech pundit Tim O'Reilly comments on the layoffs by exhorting people to 'get more with less.' According to the article, 'Just this week... both tech giant Google and book retailer Barnes & Noble announced their first layoffs ever. Other publishing houses, including HarperCollins, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Random House, and Simon & Schuster have frozen salaries or cut jobs, or both.'"
"we've. fixed. the glitch"
Can anyone recommend a good therapist for me.. er.. my schizophrenic network card?
If you go online, you can pretty much download any of their books for free from their website. Maybe they can make it back through providing service...
Seriously though, what are the must-have books being published today? As far as I can tell, technology pretty much stagnated in the last 5 years and we are simply seeing rehashes of rehashes of old technology. Every new language solves problems already solved by Lisp. Every new technology is just a piggyback on the crumbling HTTP layer. Every new programmer only thinks in terms of Java and/or Ruby.
There's no real need to go buy books anymore since everything is so dumbed down and stupifyingly simple. These days you can write your "programs" with nothing more than a mouse and a spiffy GUI. That doesn't really lend itself to sitting down and studying or using books as a reference.
O'Reilly, O RLY?
read some interesting stuff at mightyinteresting.com
All these companies keep beating up on Steve. One company is cutting him, another is slashing him, no wonder he looks so thin.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
Any more cutbacks, and they'll fire the Garamond typeface.
"If you go online, you can pretty much download any of their books for free from their website. Maybe they can make it back through providing service..."
We could always go back to the good old days when someone with money (lets call them kings) would pay someone else (lets call them scribes) a sum of money to create a one of a kind product that would go perfect in one's personal library. I predict a growth market (lets call them paperbacks).
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"The Digital Media branch was restructured into one publishing division along with the companyâ(TM)s Missing Manual group, Oâ(TM)Reilly Technology Exchange and its Head First series, Winge said."
Without actually seeing the company's financials, this could well just be standard streamlining for better efficiency, perhaps a proactive move before they're seriously hit. The story noted that they've been through much worse before, after they had to seriously trim their 300+ employees after the dot com bust.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Google lay offs = fifth horse of the Apolocalypse
So has any website sprung up to replace fuckedcompany? TechCrunch has their Layoff Tracker as does Forbes. But nothing quite like the original.
It's getting depressing out there.
Know what would be *news*? A report that some company's leaders have decided to bite the bullet and weather the storm. Not, massive layoffs, declaring bankruptcy, or trying to pass the problems to the consumer. Let's hear about a company whose execs are man enough to at least *try* to ride out this slump.
I am already sick and tired of everybody using "the economy" as their excuse for everything. And I don't remember seeing an article about how O'Reilly for instance, tried things like cutting unnecessary expenses, reducing executive bonuses, or really anything imaginative at all. No, the first we hear about trouble, they are addressing the economy by doing their part to make it worse. 31 people worse, to be exact. Come on, seriously, what all did they try first? Or is this just the first instinct?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Most independent book stores are gone. B&N went though a bankruptcy and Borders is for sale. But books have good margins if you control inventory. I remember a decade ago, the large bookstores had huge sections devoted to tech books, but it has deteriorated (because of poor sales and rapid obsolescence) to a couple of book cases. In many ways it is just like the science and engineering section. Limited and focused demand of a small base for quality books and a shrinking base of noobs needing books. While O'Reilly is the gold standard, the market isn't there in depth anymore and the book market is being disrupted by online purchases (long tail, smaller runs, marketing issues), electronic delivery (cheaper but the cost savings are not passed on), and alternative sources of information (many technical solutions are a search away and seldom require the depth of a book).
Actually layoffs are pretty much all that do make the news, regardless of what else is being tried first. What you see are "Company X lays of Y workers". You never see "Company X keeps Y workers a little longer than they otherwise might have", nor do you later see headlines like "1 worker gets a job elsewhere" repeated Y times.
No doubt things are going to get worse, with loads more layoffs. As it is, companies have been quietly laying off. For example, verizon, comcast, and qwest have for months doing layoff. But the good news is that lots of new companies will come out of this just due to necessity. We will see lots of new innovations all over the world.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Profit Margins in publishing are usually razor-thin. (The mega-blockbusters are the exception.)
Barnes and Noble shows a 2% Margin, for example, with a 36% drop in stock price this year.
It's hard to make a profit in books, even good books.
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
Tim says at TFA: "The layoffs, which were spread across the company, were part of an overall reorganization to create more focus on some new opportunities, as well as a response to today's very tough economic climate."
Cut the crap, Tim. Why can't CEO's just say it:
"We laid of 30 people to save money so we don't lose the whole company. Sales are down, profits are impacted. If we don't lay off, we will die."
Be real. It'd garner a lot more respect from the people you NEED supporting you.
+++OK ATH
This economy has been going on for over a year and half. These companies have already been weathering it for some time. Take advantage of it. Think of new ideas and work on a company for it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
China isn't remotely a communist country by the real meaning of the word. The only reason their economy has been booming in recent years is because they have opened up their markets (unlike a true communist country such as North Korea). Basically, you can have an authoritarian regime without communism (like china), although I've yet to see an instance of a communist regime that isn't authoritarian. At this point in time, I wouldn't be surprised if China's markets are actually freer than most of Europe's markets.
Phil
The hemmoraging will stop when people start forgetting that they've been told (by someone else, usually the media) that the economy is "bad" and go back to buying and selling things at higher levels than they are right now.
Go do what you're going to do: The economy will take care of itself, if you're working toward useful endeavors.
+++OK ATH
There are a few big publishing houses that print a tremendous percentage of our books. Fewer than there were a few years ago, due to consolidation.
But at least one of the six major houses has stopped purchasing new books from authors, either completely stopped or near-completely stopped. Times are tough for everyone but bankruptcy lawyers. (And their times are tougher when ours are better.)
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
http://mediacow.tv/node/166
From October 2007
In short, the deregulation of credit derivatives and lowered lending standards created a real estate bubble. The depression will ease once homes return to their pre-bubble prices, which is still a ways off.
The only way to soften the impact of the trillions of dollars of equity disappearing in a few short months is to create jobs through government spending. If you give the money to anyone else, they will just hoard it in today's economic climate, so you have to keep the low and middle class working and spending, and at least direct money towards infrastructure improvements. We could easily afford it by halting foreign wars and slashing military spending, but that seems unlikely at this point.
As far as China is concerned, they will emerge from this crisis as a new economic superpower within five or ten years. They have huge growth potential internally, and they are essentially the manufacturing engine for the world. America will continue to slip behind unless we reinvest in education and the manufacture of high tech products, and drop our costly engagements in South America and the Middle East.
The hemmoraging will stop when people start forgetting that they've been told (by someone else, usually the media) that the economy is "bad" and go back to buying and selling things at higher levels than they are right now.
The ones that have a job anyway.
Maybe if by "China" you mean "Hong Kong" ...
Call me when you can own land in China?
I have a large bookshelf of IT tech books, mostly O'Reilly, but they are all gathering dust.
Whenever I need some technical information,I just google it, and it appears instantaneously. For items that are new to me I look for an online tutorial. Why ruffle through the contents and index of a book, often more than once, to find information.
I can't remember when I last bought a new tech book.
Bookwormhole.net -- over 7000 published book reviews.
If you want to be like that, you can't technically "own" land in Australia. You buy a 100 year lease, which can be renewed when passed on to family members.
Bet most Aussies don't know that one.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
Sure, this is really bad for people who bought within the last decade. But a Million-dollar mortgage has always been the equivalent of selling yourself into lifetime indenture. Maybe the slaves should have revolted before.
Bruce Perens.
Tim O'Reilly on truth drugs:
Folks, dead-tree publishing is hardly the wave of the future. People don't even buy our reference works any longer, they just google. We can sell them more tutorial works, and we can make money from advertising coupled with online references only if ours are consistently better than everyone else's, because there is no shortage of online references for computer software and languages. Half of you do things we don't have much use for any longer. We've got to radically redirect our entire business, and that doesn't mean just getting rid of some jobs, it means that some of you older folks who don't have the flexibility will be replaced with young, shiny, eager folks who know the new paradigm.
If there's one thing we've learned about the modern world, it's that the guild system doesn't work to deliver value to employers over the long term. Our only choice is to let you go, or go out of business ourselves. And you know what? We might still fail anyway.
Bruce Perens.
Sometimes I think their model of communism is better than our capitalism. Why? Because they potentially can now control our government's priorities.
In other words, it's better, because it appears to be working at the moment? Social Darwinism on a grand scale?
See, I don't think that makes them "better". Possibly more effective, though we still don't know.
I would argue that the problem with our capitalism is mostly the fact that we've let a free market devolve into, in many cases, corporate oligopolies. Effectively, it means our country is no longer a democracy, we're an oligarchy.
Their communism, on the other hand, always was an oligarchy, despite the facade they have of democracy. Free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion (and freedom from religion)... These aren't luxuries, they're basic requirements for a democratic republic.
At the end of the day, at least I can say whatever the fuck I want about our government, be it the elected government, or the effective corporate overlords. Were I a Chinese citizen, I wouldn't have that right.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
WTF. At first glance, I thought O'Reilly slashed Steve Jobs.
... when it's convenient to do so (i.e., bad economy) just to trim the fat, whether they need to or not. Some companies just trim every couple years just to streamline. I'd like a company to have the balls to say "hey, we could weather the storm, but we owe it to our shareholders, NOT our employees, to make them money."
Not that I don't think it's shitty, but some honesty would be nice.
We figured out a long time ago that it's easier to elect seven judges than to elect 132 legislators.
"The federal government is about to near double the deficit in a single day, we're not one of the companies that won that lottery, and we have no idea what will happen to the economy (or our tax rate) as a result. Heading for the bunkers and seeing how long we can hold out".
Remember that actual spending and wages are not down that much yet - companies are cutting back big time in anticipation of something much worse ahead. Though your end motive is right, they are just trying to do what they can to keep the company going long term.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Now, tutorial books can still sell.
That's an area most easily covered by the web and also an area that tends to go out of date quickly. I don't know they sell that much more highly than a good reference.
Do you really use reference books any longer?
All the time, but then I'm an O'Reilly Safari subscriber. Otherwise I probably would use the web resources instead. Either way, paper technical books are pretty much dead to me - but the content of the books if properly refreshed, I usually find more valuable than most web resources.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Interesting, do you have any further information about the Australian system? I googled for a few minutes but didnt find any readily available info.
And just FWIW:
http://www.heritage.org/index/Country/China
The hemmoraging will stop when people start forgetting that they've been told (by someone else, usually the media) that the economy is "bad" and go back to buying and selling things at higher levels than they are right now.
It's not just emotional: people really have less cash to burn. The housing bubble ended the happy days when homeowners could get huge loans, or when flipping houses was a major business activity (not that it produced any real value, of course.) Today you can borrow money only if you can prove that you do not need it.
Salaries also took a hit. Many are unemployed already; more will be; and often those who are still allowed to go to work every day are told that their salaries are reduced. What can they do? Business wise, sales of stuff (of all kinds) are dropping. People have less money to spend, so the industry has to reduce the manufacturing, so previously employed workers become unemployed. They don't need the media to tell them anything about the economy - if they have no job they already know themselves.
Add to that the news that many states are approaching bankruptcy and trying to increase taxes to cover the deficit. Or they can send state workers packing, that will save money but unions won't allow that. So everyone may need to pay higher [property] taxes using their reduced income. That leaves no money for toys and non-essentials.
Finally, people who had their money invested into the stock market lost big - as much as 40%. If they were investing into specific stocks, they can be wiped out completely. Look at how much value of banks' stock was destroyed - and banks were thought to be safe, long term investments. People holding bonds are not immune - now and then a bond issuer defaults, and then you have nothing. So one way or another, people have less money today, even though yesterday a lot of their money was of imaginary, speculative nature.
The number of jobs goes up and down with the number of people who are spending, living, and ignoring the media's claims that the world is coming to an end.
Right now, people want to believe things are bad. The pendulum will swing the other way when they get tired of that song-and-dance...
+++OK ATH
rubbish. i own my own property and have known a few people to inherit estates and nothing of the sort has been mentioned even as a formality. i say your talking out your arse good sir.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Amen to all of the above, Bruce. My house luckily just held steady. (I'm in the center of the country.) We're all kinda looking toward the shores (L.A., N.Y., Florida) and even a little toward the midwest and wondering, "What the HELL were you all THINKING?"
But then again, out here -- we're used to huge boom/bust cycles in business, and used to people moving here, then moving away, in droves... again and again. Those of us who actually want to live here, don't count the booms as gain, nor the busts as a huge loss. We just wait...
Conservative fiscal policy starts at home...
+++OK ATH
At this point in time, I wouldn't be surprised if China's markets are actually freer than most of Europe's markets.
1. If you look back at what was done in preparation for the Olympics, the Chinese government unilaterally shut down hundreds of factories and dirty power plants, many of which haven't been allowed to reopen.
2. Almost all of last year, the Chinese government had price ceilings in place for many food items, liquefied petroleum gas, and coal
I don't know if you can call that a free market.
And even if it is, it certainly isn't freer than Europe's.
The last time anyone put price ceilings on a commodities was the 70's and 80's.
(Many States still do it with certain energy monopolies)
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Now Jobs will have to stab O'Reilly with a broken bottle.
Guess there just weren't enough H-1b visas issued, huh?
Seastead this.
The hemmoraging will stop when people start forgetting that they've been told (by someone else, usually the media) that the economy is "bad" and go back to buying
"people" dont have money, sure they can get cheap credits, but credits are to blame for the crisis in the first place. America is not producing goods any longer, you all live off forein credits (mostly China). This living on debt cant go forever you know, you will go under, hiperinflation and all.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
If you want to be like that, you can't technically "own" land in Australia. You buy a 100 year lease, which can be renewed when passed on to family members.
Bet most Aussies don't know that one.
You're probably thinking of Canberra, ACT (Australian Capital Territory), not Australia. Canberra didn't really form until after WWII and so 99 year leases haven't become an issue yet.
---
You communist! Breathing shared air!
The cash they were burning was never theirs, for one thing. (Burning other people's cash is a great way to end up a wage-slave for the rest of your life. If you like the work they give you to do at the end, fine... but if it's not exactly your life's ambition of a job -- you're headed for revolution at some point. Not everyone can be an Astronaut when they grow up.)
Salaries took a hit? Most IT workers haven't had a raise that was more than inflation in a decade. Now mix that knowledge with, "Honey, let's take out a big loan against the place we need to LIVE IN!" Pretty stupid, eh? Not here!
States and Unions and all of that... yeah, lovely stuff our voted politicians did with their surpluses, eh? How few people were voting for fiscally conservative politicians during the good years in the normal 7-10 year business cycle? Do those who voted for non-conservatives take any blame for their local government being out of cash? Are they willing to pay up NOW to cover who they voted for?
Unions: They'll eventually be busted, one way or another. It's not like sending billions to Detroit is going to suddenly teach GM how to make a car that lasts as long as a Honda. Guess what people are going to buy when times are tight? You buying a GM product, or a Honda/Toyota/Acura? I know which one I want if my car budget is tight.
Stock Market: If those people were truly INVESTING (by definition investing is using money you DO NOT NEED TO LIVE ON FOR SOME TIME YET), they aren't in trouble. They knew if they needed to live on it in the next five years, they were already out of stocks and into less risky assets. The real issue with the stock market right now is there are people dorking around in it pretending they know what they're doing, and who are being ripped off by mutual fund managers and the whole market is being gamed by hedge funds, etc. The reality is, the market's rigged to make big money, big money. The little guy has to be very intensely engaged to follow big money's moves and continually make money. The fallacy of the mutual fund is that it removes the RISK. It doesn't. It means we all go up and down together. The market is packed to the gills with Baby Boomer 401(K) money that should have already started to have been diversified out of the stock market. Oh well, it's out now... poof. Bye-bye. 40% losses on a true INVESTMENT sucks, but it's not supposed to change your LIFESTYLE, if you did it right.
So yeah... people were imagining they were creating wealth, and it bit them in the ass. Now the key to recovery is to GET TO WORK and really create some wealth. Do we have any companies that can make things of a quality level seen back in the 1950-1969 era? Can we do it?
I think we can.
Oh, and in most cases... sorry Slashdotters... SOFTWARE is not the answer. INTEGRATION and really thinking HARD about the big picture of what a company is accomplishing long-term with their products... is the answer.
+++OK ATH
Or...
We have to buck up, think hard, and build things worth buying again. It can be done...
To use a popular political catch phrase... Hope and Change.
The problem I have with that is: I don't want my Hope and Change to come from the GOVERNMENT.
I want it to come from ME and the people I work with for our own gain, which we'll happily share with our vendors/suppliers, the community, and if the world likes it... the world, via our goods and/or services.
And I know the people I work with, and they CAN do it... if only the red-tape and procedures are moved out of their way... which is the never-ending struggle at good companies.
Bad ones work on creating new/different procedures.
+++OK ATH
In other news, the local Amoco that carries a large selection of tech rags just laid off 40% of their workforce, or 2 employees.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
Didn't Google just a month or so ago report record profits in spite of the downturn and are yet cutting staff?
Are companies really slashing staff because things are looking bad or do many that are doing just as well as ever see this as an excuse to try and slash some dead weight without too many questions being asked? Or is it just because they think despite profits being up now things are going to get worse and they want to prepare?
Is he ok?
I wouldn't be surprised if China's markets are actually freer than most of Europe's markets
buh? Based on what? And why Europe specifically? The OECD country that gets shit most at WTO meetings is the US, for constantly putting protectionist tariffs on imports. cf steel, cotton, sugar, ethanol, etc, etc
I swear to Gawd, the first time I've read the headline, it said "Tech Publisher O'Reilly Slashes Dots"!
Me is sorry for poor engrish. You ar enco... ecnu... please tell me, when i is wrong.
People's spending before was based on credit and rising property prices. Now property is down, and the credit has dried up, people cannot spend at the levels they were spending before. The economy was over-inflated, it's merely returning to its natural level.
Plus you can't expect people to spend money when they don't know if they'll have a job next week.
I know O'Reilly hasn't exactly had a great Mac section but really , this is going too far!
Are you from the ACT perhaps? Certain locations are subject to a 99 year lease (see Australian Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act 1988), but your broader assertion is wrong.
You are mistaken. Land in Australia can be held in 'freehold title' which is the highest form of estate in the land and represents full private ownership. See Here for the stats. Much of the land in Australia is Crown leasehold, but it is certainly possible (and common - see Victoria) to own private freehold title.
of course... in any country owning land is only a technicality. I can't think of any country that doesn't have some form of eminent domain laws on the book. Technically they're supposed to compensate you with full market prices, but I know that doesn't always happen, and doesn't account for the personal significance often associated with a location. If a business is allowed to operate on a set piece of land that they paid for indefinitely, it's the same to them as owning it. While the government can seize it or force it to cease production (known to happen in china, and elsewhere), this obviously isn't the standard case. If it happened to every business that operated in China, no one would be spending the money to open new factories there. It's how the market works.
And by free market, there are many different aspects involved. These include overall tax rates, tariffs (if they exist), regulations, government incentives, etc.
Phil
If you want to combine business with philanthropy, you're welcome to do so. However, you shouldn't assume that is somehow the duty of business owners. The businesses exist to make a profit within the bounds of law. That is not evil, hearless or cynical. That's the way things are supposed to be.
Moral obligations apply to human beings, nonprofit organizations and the government. In fact, the only truly effective moral actor is the government. If the government (aka "we the people") decides that a corporate owners should carry a special burden, they will enact a tax law and collect the tax evenly from the commendable and heartless business owners alike.
> You buy a 100 year lease, which can be renewed
> when passed on to family members.
I'm an Aussie and I can categorically say that this is false in over 99% of Australia.
The only place it is true is in the national capital's territory (the ACT, or Australian Capital Territory) where the capital Canberra was created. In the ACT the leasehold system is used apparently to prevent land speculation in the nation's capital.
In the rest of Australia freehold land is the norm.
HTH
Sorry, I screwed up the above slightly : even in the ACT leasehold system, the lease can be transferred at will to other people ('buyers') who are not family members.
I've bought and sold houses in the ACT, and we treat it just like it was a freehold sale.
On expiration of the 99 year (not 100 year) leases the ACT government renews them for a peppercorn fee (I think the fee is 5 cents)
Sometimes I think their model of communism is better than our capitalism. Why? Because they potentially can now control our government's priorities. We go down, we take them with us. That is really the only reason that China didn't call the mortgage years ago.
If you want to be like that, you can't technically "own" land in Australia. You buy a 100 year lease, which can be renewed when passed on to family members.
Bet most Aussies don't know that one.
This limitation is for time share units not for property.
The first time reading that I thought it said employees were being exhorted to "get more with ass." Which I thought was either brutally honest job advice or a complete change of direction in the business plan. Or perhaps some bizarre hybrid. PHP Booty Call.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Yup. My house is paid off. I have absolutely no debt. I don't owe on anything. I don't know what my house and property is worth right now, but I really don't care. My investments consist mainly of Canadian 1 oz maple leafs and cash which I keep at home. I'm a saver, not a spender.
The poor man, he has cancer and now some idiot attacks him with a knife!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Aesthetics aside, the title really should read, "Tech publisher O'Reilly slashes jobs."
Useless capitalization makes it difficult to read properly, I thought this was something having to do with Steve Jobs (given how much Apple and himself are discussed here and elsewhere.)
Belgium has state mandated maxiumums for petrol, diesel etc.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's not enough for me to have been financially conservative. If my customers haven't been, they're going away, and they'll take a lot of their income with them.
As an employee, I consider myself to be a one man operation, with one huge customer. Luckily, my employer/customer seems to be conservatively managed. But I don't know the quality of their customers.
-- Support a free market in the field of government
So what are all those cute little pandas, and snakes, and groundhogs, and camels, and loons going to do for work now? Life always was hard for the animal models getting in at the ground floor, but now it's even bleaker. Perhaps they can have an adopt an O'Reilly animal campaign.
Reply to That ||
On this kind of economy we have right now, pathetic losers like you have just one use: become fat live targets for the 70 bullets on my AK47's holder. [etc, snip]
I find your ideas interesting and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
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Am I the only one who read the headline the wrong way? I was expecting the first line to say "Steve Jobs filed charges for aggravated assault after an altercation with Tim O'Reilly..."
Useless did you know #887: My
- Line art-drawn animal
- another line art-drawn animal
- Line art-drawn animal
- Line art-drawn animal
Governments always are the final power, as they hold a monopoly on force. That doesn't mean there isn't a world of difference between systems.
The differences are largely down to two factors--the legal (limits on government action, and adherence to the law), and corruption. China offers far fewer protections for property even in the ideal than any "western" country I can think of. Additionally, Chinese politics (especially at the local level) is known for being exceedingly corrupt. A very dangerous combination for personal liberties.
The hemmoraging will stop when people start forgetting that they've been told (by someone else, usually the media) that the economy is "bad" and go back to buying and selling things at higher levels than they are right now.
Only if they forget that they don't have any damned money. Wages have been stagnant for decades, and the economy is propped up on credit. The problem isn't a mindset, it's that the middle class is broke.
I'll be sure to tell that to a friend of mine who was making somewhere north of $40k for the last several years (not rich, but he was doing OK) and is currently working part-time in the dorm cafeteria at a local university. He'll have a lot more free time to shop, too, once he's done filling out all his foreclosure paperwork. No, I'm not kidding or making up this example to prove a point. I wish I was.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sorry Bruce, but as somebody who runs a publishing company, and was an e-book author back in 2000 with what was at the time a high-profile e-book, I have to disagree with this statement: "Folks, dead-tree publishing is hardly the wave of the future." Dead-tree books are going to be the standard for the foreseeable future.
I've been tracking this for some time. While there is a downturn in book sales - which is hardly surprising, considering the economy - e-books are not making any serious headway in the market. The AAP (Association of American Publishers) recently published the statistics for domestic book sales in the United States for October 2008 (they track it on a monthly basis, and there is around a two-three month lag on results), and had the following numbers (all numbers are net sales):
Total book sales for the month: $644 million
E-book sales for the month: $5.2 million
Audiobook sales for the month: $18.4 million
(Source: http://www.publishers.org/main/PressCenter/Archicves/2008_December/StatsOct08.htm )
E-book sales are about as high as I've ever seen them, but after eight years, they have only achieved 0.8% of the book market. Compare that to audiobooks, which are sitting at 2.9% of the book market.
Now, I'm not saying that the market hasn't shifted when it comes to computer reference books - indeed, I think your observations about how people are dealing with troubleshooting issues and computer reference materials are spot-on. It is far easier to google a specific problem than to buy a compendium for reference purposes. But, a shift there does not translate into a shift across the board, and at the rate e-book sales are climbing we are probably looking at around twenty to thirty years before they occupy any respectable share of the book market.
For that matter, considering the technical issues involved with e-books compared to the ease with which one can deal with a printed book, even if the e-book does manage to get 30% of the book market in about 30 years, I can't really see a way for it to supplant the printed book.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
capitalists are always the same and will never change. Some people have understood that and many attempted to overthrow it, and still do, with very positive results.
Yeah, I bet most Aussies don't know that, because it is not fucking true. Don't let that stop you from spreading your lies.
I think O'Reilly was a fairly large employer in Sebastopol though and I am sure that this layoff is hitting the city hard. I used to live down the way from them in Rohnert Park and Petaluma. To the best of my knowledge the employees were rather attached to their jobs there and the job market in general in Sonoma County has sucked since foreign telecom manufacturers (Singapore mainly) ruined the telecom alley.
I am not sure where these people will get technical jobs next as highly trained technical people have been flipping burgers in Sonoma County for a few years now. I had to leave the area after twenty years over lack of jobs. Good luck to them.
As I said, I don't know Tim personally, but I would like to think he felt paternal about his Sebastopol employees and probably hated having to lay off anyone.
As I said though, he was arrogant to me, so I am not sure about what I just said. I think Sonoma people are nice in general and I hoped he was, but who knows?
I check on the old company now and then, and it seems they have faded away. I guess blowing off the founder who had the prime technical base wasn't that good of an idea. The odd thing though is that everyone involved knew what a crook my partner became, but continued to do business with her anyway because she seemed to be able to sell product. For a while anyway. I am talking about you Dawn and your husband Ray.
I guess I am glad that I am not in the position of having to lay off employees that have been devoted to my company. Although I would have taken good care of them along the way, times are bad and I might not have been able to keep going.
Although people talk a lot about how bad it is to be laid off, I am sure it is hard to watch your staff lose their positions and suffer, especially if you suspect your company will go down soon also. Those owners and managers that are good people aren't having that much fun these days. Things are tough at both ends of the stick.
So most of the land in Australia is owned by the Queen of the fucking Britain??? When are you guys are going to have a revolution and throw away the monarchy??
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
I agree with you, but that doesn't negate my point.
People who hadn't SOLD anything who are trusting that their house is "worth something" are idiots. You don't make money until the sale is inked.
People wondering if they'll have jobs next week -- are they doing better than average work, and are they working for the most profitable portion of the company? If so -- they have little to worry about. The others, okay -- I get it.
+++OK ATH
Barnes & Noble was laying off people in 1997-98. I know. I laid them off.
Fiscal conservatism includes at least 8 months of living expenses stashed away as CASH prior to buying ANYTHING not essential to live on. Minimum.
Most of the time any average worker can find work somewhere (hint: maybe not where you live today, maybe not what you're doing today) in 8 months.
More conservative would be: 12 months in cash.
Anyone who thinks they "can't do that" who's working at any reasonable middle-class job, is lying to themselves, and not buying only essentials.
Then... leading on to your employer/employee questions, ask yourself: Does my company sell things that are ESSENTIAL to someone (they'll ALWAYS buy it until they go out of business trying to buy it), or do we sell things that aren't necessary.
That will give you a good idea on whether or not you'll have a job in a severe economic downturn wherein *everyone* has to sacrifice. (We haven't even gotten close to that point yet. Not buying name brands and buying generic isn't sacrifice. That's just inconvenience.)
+++OK ATH
Driving home tonight to the 'burbs, I saw a lot of people driving nice cars, going to nice houses, and generally doing all the same things they did last year.
We haven't SEEN a broke middle class. We're seeing a whiny bitchy middle-class who thinks toys and shiny new things are the key to their happiness.
When you see real sacrifice, and then beyond -- you'll also see revolution, because the middle-class masses really are dumb enough to think that "times is hard" while they're still eating, still have roofs over their heads, still have cars to drive...
Seriously. What a bunch of spoiled brats we all are.
I agree we're propped up on credit -- but that's mostly because people think they deserve "stuff" they don't. They don't save for things, they don't plan ahead, they have no savings for a "rainy day" and they believe this is how it's SUPPOSED to work.
Ask any of the few folks who lived through the entire Great Depression how they survived, and how they lived, and note that to a person, almost ALL of them are very deeply HAPPY people right now, even in our so-called "economic crisis".
They saw real economic crisis, and it was a lot worse than this.
The middle class needs to get off their asses and CREATE opportunity for themselves instead of asking companies and government to hand it to them. They also need to mix it up a bit more with the truly poor, both helping them, and also seeing them -- dare I say, CARING for them enough to look and listen -- and they won't bitch about having a "menial" job, or a roof over their heads ever again.
My experience with this was during what should have been my second semester in college. I didn't want to study what I was studying, and something compelled me to move to a very commune-like organization in Chicago and work with homeless people.
Doing that will change your life view forever. Having to "cut back" to beans and rice, or mac-n-cheese, is nothing to me... I could do it and be happy that I was WAY better off than most of the world, after spending serious time with the homeless.
(Another thing I learned is that Chicago politics is THE MOST CORRUPT anywhere in the U.S., and we just elected a President who moved from Hawaii and made his way through its ranks. Wow. Never thought I'd see that. But I guess it isn't surprising. The Ward system in Chicago breeds political sharks capable of killing without remorse, and they do.)
+++OK ATH
So he lived past his standard 8 month emergency fund? Or did he have one? If he was making $40K, he had the capability in just about any market in the U.S. (other than overpriced SoCal and the East Coast) to sock that much of an emergency fund away.
But then you throw in the kicker -- he's in foreclosure. Ahh, he thought he made enough money to buy a house/pay a mortgage at $40K a year? How big was the mortgage?
(I don't care if they'd give him the loan... that's not the point. The point is, what made him think he could afford say $100,000 house on $40K a year?)
Did he save up a 10% down-payment before buying that mortgage hanging around his neck? The point of the traditional 10% down wasn't to just get the 10%, it was to show that someone had enough character to save that much money. If you're able to live and save enough for 10% down, you have adjusted your budget to where paying the mortgage will be easy. Even if you lose some of your earning power (as your friend has) you're probably living safely enough above what you make to continue to pay the debt you willingly took on.
I'm not sure your point here. You're correct that he's not going to be spending money, he's already bankrupt. Have you learned anything by watching his life?
That your friend isn't going to buy things because he willingly ran himself into debt and probably needs to declare bankruptcy? I agree.
But there are PLENTY of people who haven't gone under yet who are just believing the hype that their world is going to fall apart. With personal sacrifice (Got Mac-n-Cheese?) and less chasing after the Jones'es for "happiness", you can lose your job tomorrow and know you can live for 8 months. A year if you stretch it.
If this "credit crunch" does nothing but drive some whiny middle-class folks to realizing that they need to cut spending on stupid stuff, and really think hard about what's a NEED and what's a WANT, so they can build up that savings account, fine.
That cutting back on their trips to the mall for crap they don't need -- will cause an "economic slowdown" for a while, which people reset their expectations to reality.
But again, there ARE a lot of people out there just scared for no reason. The U.S. (all of it, even the expensive parts) is still one of the best places on Earth to live. Your friend may be bankrupt, but he's eating, isn't he? Millions aren't eating tonight...
It's all about perspective. His complaints that he can't own a home, has to work in a "bad" job at a cafeteria, and that it's not enough for him to be happy, would make my Great Depression era grandfather smile a bit, and maybe even chuckle. His stories of that time prove that people can live far more frugally and still be happy.
He's 90 and no worse for the wear... still kickin', still sharp, still driving, enjoying life even in this so-called "down-turn" because he has his priorities straight.
+++OK ATH
Ah poor Steve
Too bad the facts don't meet your storyline. Wages are down, unemployment is up, no one is buying, no one is hiring. The economy, and the middle class, are in tough shape. The only mindset in need of a reality adjustment...is yours.