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Sony Slashes 10,000 Jobs
redletterdave writes "Sony will cut about 10,000 jobs, which equates to about six percent of its global workforce, by the end of the year. The move comes after the Tokyo-based electronics firm more than doubled its loss forecast on April 5 to $2.9 billion, and the recent hiring of a new CEO, Kazuo Hirai, on April 1. Hirai looks to downsize Sony and pivot the company in a new direction to get out of the red for the first time in four years. The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division, cutting about 3,000 workers in the process, and also make cuts within its small and midsize LCD operations. Sony did not say if it would cut these jobs in Japan, abroad, or both."
Just wanted to note this before slashdotters get all jiggly about the evilness of PS3 and Sony's music divisions. They are actually Sony's most profitable divisions, and it seems like Sony wants to cut out the less profitable divisions like chemical products. PS4 is already in the production and as noted on Slashdot before, will contain even more DRM. So this is not really "news for nerds" at all, as it's completely different divisions of Sony that will get the cut.
I understand they're still looking for rootkit developers.
They'll close their DRM-peddling division. Of course with my luck Sony will be repositioning themselves as a DRM company
long overdue
Maybe they should fire the shovelware writers that write the stuipid applets that sys inthe syste tray that get installed when ever you install a device driver for a sony peripheral.
Gee, I install the SONY monitor and now I have a systray applet eating CPU time and whatnot and while it supposedly is supposed to help me control the monitor but it leads itself in the tray so it doesn't "Take so long to startup" when I run it that one time to adjust the monitor settings.... When running it from the start menu and waiting an extra 2 seconds for it to load is going to take more time than the cumulative 30 minutes over the lifetime of the PC that is wasts because it slowing everything else down with it's CPU usage and memory consumption....
Sorry, I just hate installing drivers and having to install stuipid shit that I have to go back and remove after every damn driver install. Drivers are "supposed" to be only the driver, I don;t need no damn systray applet for USB Hub, Printer, scanner, DVD writer and LCD monitor.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_rootkit
never forget, never forgive
I wonder how many millions of dollars bonus the CEO will earn by cutting the workforce so drastically...
The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division
So what is sony chemical division, like if you buy Sony-brand acetone then you can only use it in Sony-brand test tubes? Sony-brand chemical storage only holds Sony-brand hydrochloric acid that costs 10x as much as commodity HCl? That's how they run their electronic division...
I LOL when I thought of it, but I'm seriously betting they sell a line of completely incompatible ground-glass-joint glassware for chemists. Like instead of standard 14/20 taper, theirs is probably 16.335/23.235, that spec is trademarked and copyrighted up the wazoo, and costs 10 times as much as normal glassware and they aggressively sue anyone trying to use it with normal taper glassware. (On a slightly related note, what is it with you european chemists, on this side of the pond we use two tapers, "big and small (14/20 is the small)" yet we're taught that you guys have something like 10 mutually incompatible tapers... whats up with that... I would think you metric EU people would simply have the one taper to rule them all but no we're told you've got a dozen in common use)
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
...but that's 10,000 people with a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach and 10,000 more people competing for jobs with new grads.
Still feel like cracking jokes?
There was a time - in the 80s, 90s - when Sony was perhaps THE company to buy quality products from. A Sony CRT TV or VCR was sturdy, reliable, and offered a high quality (visual) experience for the time. A Sony Walkman or Discman was, again, a quality product that was most usable and dependable. A Sony Betamax or VHS home-video camera, and later its much smaller (digital) handycams would, similarly, give you a quality home video experience. Then, at some point, Sony started going downhill in terms of corporate philosophy: Putting proprietary, expensive & incompatible Sony memory-sticks into Sony digital cameras? Selling 60GB HDD videocameras with no manual focus-ring, and not entirely reliable always-on autofocus? Putting DRM on music CDs, in PC Games, and all over the Playstation 3 experience? Branding handycam lenses "Zeiss Vario-Tessar" to lure buyers, even though the lenses are manufactured by Sony, not Zeiss (Sony just bought the right to call them "Zeiss" lenses)? Selling large, heavy, expensive LCD TVs while advertising that they include the fantabulous "Bravia Engine" (a collection of very, very mediocre video sharpening/upscaling/color/contrast algorithms). Sony Vaio laptops that are seriously expensive, while offering only very mediocre hardware specs? Killing HD-DVD, then failing to offer a decent (low) price on BluRay players and movies. Being a main player in demanding that all HD content be played back through HDMI cables - what was so bloody "wrong" with analogue HD cables? While Sony was slowly loosing its "focus on the user experience" and on "end-user and buyer sattisfaction" in particular, once far lesser brands like Korean Samsung zipped onto the scene with products that look, perform and, overall, please better, and without Sony's premium pricing attached. I'm sorry that Sony has fallen so low. It used to be my go-to brand for consumer electronics. But Sony isn't a company that learns from experience. I personally think that Playstation 4 will flop badly - at least initially - if Sony persists in forcing hardcore DRM and always-on-internet-to-play type shit on PS4 gamers. Wake up, Sony! Wake up before your corporate-crapfest-philosophy costs another 10,000 or 20,000 Sony employees their jobs. (Will Sony actually wake up? Not a chance, I think. PS4 will quite likely wind up being a horrid DRM fest that may actually drive some gamers back to gaming on a PC...)
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
So, downsizing their customer base didn't work anymore?
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
How is your war on users going? Is that working out for you the way you expected? Perhaps, just perhaps, your customers are not your enemies? Think about this please, you could be such a great company if not for a small handful of policies.
I don't really know who produces the music I listen to. I am not going to buy a popular recording because of a label. But with all the negative publicity, I would be more likely to buy a non-sony product than a sony produce. There is still at least a perception of a premium, and the premium is certainly not worth it to me.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
http://www.sonycid.jp/en/products/ (I'm sorry to post something informative rather than something bashing Sony and/or hilarious "jokes".)
I am going to have to disagree with your opinion. From what I have read from other articles, Sony is losing money on LCDs and is trying to get out of the market.
Manufacturing LCD is very capital intensive. That is, the initial outlay to build the plant is high. So while Sony is making money on the variable costs (i.e. the cost of materials, labor, etc) is can’t justify all of the capital that’s tied up to it. It can’t sell it because there a glut of LCD manufacturing capacity right now.
So they are turning it into a Zombie. They won’t invest any more money in the plant, and they don’t expect anything from it, but they will just let it putter along as long as they can cover the variable costs.
There has already been an update to this story posted earlier over on Kotaku where Sony denies the claim.
It was despicable but it was just one division (a joint venture at that) and it was 7 years ago so I think it is time to move on.
I would have been happier if there had been a proper apology but I still think its time to move on.
Disclosure - I did work at Sony from 2005 until 2011 but on the electronics side. If the root kit had become public a few months earlier I would have turned the job down. I have no current obligation to Sony.
Well, xxxbunker.com could be one option.
xhamster.com has served me well long time.
The question I had to ask myself with Sony from then on was- have they learned their lesson and can i trust them? Do I want to put this on my computer or do I want to look for alternatives?
Corporations have to try harder to reduce the number of sociopaths in their hierarchies so a bunch of them can't get together and do something like THAT.
I say we don't move on until at least one Sony exec serves serious prison time for using their music CDs as a vector to install a virus onto users PCs.
An ordinary hacker would have served time, but because Sony is a super-criminal with countless victims they remain free. Not acceptable.
It was despicable but it was just one division (a joint venture at that) and it was 7 years ago so I think it is time to move on.
I'm not going to "move on" when they still have the same exact attitude: harm your customers (with DRM) to stop the big evil pirates. I'm tired of collective punishment. One recent and obvious example of this mentality is the removal of OtherOS (some people like to justify it by saying that harming only a few of your customers somehow makes it okay). Another is the planned DRM for PS4.
No, they haven't changed. At all. They had no reason to.
I was actually just thinking, 6%? Yup, that would just about account for anyone left with a shred of morality in the company.
Sony's most profitable business? Life insurance. I kid you not.
"Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without your accordion." ~General Norman Schwarzkopf
I usually implement 10-year bans myself. Well, basically 1, 10, life. Sony has had enough 10-year bans in the last 10 years to qualify for life at this point. I will NEVER buy another Sony product again.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Other than American businesses, nearly every other business in the world is loyal to their nations. As such, they will go to extreme to help their nations. So, yeah, I expect Sony will do most cuts abroad, and then a bit in Japan.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We'll be waiting for your Sony bash
Sony bash hasn't been around since PS3 firmware 3.21.
And thehun.com
Come on now. Do people really believe that DRM protects products from piracy?
Some people seem to. It doesn't in 99% of cases.
But you know what? I don't care if it does or doesn't. I believe it's wrong to hurt your customers trying to hurt pirates. It makes me wonder how anyone can defend this practice.
My point was that use of DRM is easily excused by saying "pirates", but the real motivation behind it is to limit the rights of paying consumers. Pirates break any DRM, so it doesn't really affect them.
Like the banks, too big to punish
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Unlike American companies, Japanese companies cut jobs overseas, often without cutting any at home.
Foreigners are dispensable.
I've looked over my shoulder and scrolled, so in my peripheral vision I've read "Sony Slashes Jobs (10,000 Cuts)".
Well, too late I guess...
Troll 2.0 Fear my asocial networking!
I was thinking if we fire 5,000, perhaps from one of the smaller companies where no one will notice--
Fire 10,000.
But, sir, five thousan-- Yes, sir, 10 thousand, right away, sir...
"The company will reportedly sell off its chemical products division"
This just boggles my mind, these half retarded asswipes cant even release a music CD without it exploding into a world wide shitstorm and they were allowed to even think about a chemicals division, let alone have one to sell?
I actually feel scared now, what the fuck else do they have? A nuclear weapons division with its passwords stored on PSN?
what are you talking about? Jobs is dead!
Sorry I know this is getting old, but just imagine Mr. Kazuo Hirai saying...
"The job cut is OVER 9000!!!!"
Kazuo Hirai opened his desk and found three envelopes on April 1st.
When he opened the first envelope he found a letter inscribed with an incoherent mix of numbers, letters, Kanji, and shapes.
Looking inside the second envelope, he found a Sony MiniDisc. For a week, he unsuccessfully searched the company for a device that could play the NetMD format. After finding a player on eBay and having some engineers reverse-engineer the missing proprietary power adapter, he listened to the voice of his predecessor tell him (in Japanese), "The path to success starts with cutting costs and closing unprofitable businesses."
The year that followed was filled with disappointment in Sony's most profitable lines of business. Media sales continued to plummet as HD Netflix and iTunes streaming sales for the first time produced record revenue while BluRay disc sales saw its first decrease. After three movie launches incurring studio losses including Spiderman 4, Men in Black 3, and the Total Recall remake, Columbia Pictures was shut down with remaining assets transferred to Sony Pictures. At E3 in June, EA announced that Madden 2013 would be released exclusively on iTunes for the powerful new iPhone 5 with wireless HDMI and bluetooth strap-on motion sensors. Time quickly followed with its cover story, "Who killed the console?" Another round of floods in Thailand and the Taiwanese earthquake caused Sony to push back the launch of the PS4 to January 2013. Without enough compelling content, demand for PS4 pre-orders failed to materialize in the Christmas 2012 season. The start of the double-dip depression toward the end of 2012 triggered by the continued rise in energy costs, the collapse of the Euro, and the second freezing of worldwide credit markets led the embattled Sony CEO opened the third envelope containing another MiniDisc. "Prepare three envelopes for your successor."