Slashdot Mirror
Layoffs Hit Washington Post Mobile Team
imac.usr writes "The Huffington Post is reporting that The Washington Post has gone through yet another round of layoffs, but this time instead of cutting editorial positions, they're apparently cutting IT positions, specifically in the mobile applications department. According to Washington, DC media blog FishbowlDC, 54 people, including the General Manager of Mobile and Director of Mobile Products, were given the axe on Valentine's Day. A particularly damning quote from the FishbowlDC article: '"[CIO and VP Shaliesh] Prakash thinks these are 'inefficiencies' – that is the exact word he uses for human beings who are not useful according to him," said a source who spoke only on condition of anonymity. "Get rid of experienced people to save money, under the garb of streamlining is the new trend inside the Post."' Given that mobile products seem somewhat more likely to succeed than printed newspapers, this seems a strange decision at best."
in always capitalist America. I wish it was like that here in Russia.
I wonder if CmdrTaco is the source.
http://xkcd.com/1174/
Was Malda given the chop? He was supposed to be some kind of Web 2.0 guru for them/ If they gave up on that mirage, his position is precarious. He's unlikely to be welcomed back here as editor. Though we will probably see more of him as a contributor as you cant spend all your life consuming drugs and hookers..
There are many things in Net 2.0 that are very popular, but that do not necessarily have utility or profitability.
For example, just about everyone and their dog (on the internet, no one can tell you're a werewolf) uses Facebook, and before it MySpace, Friendster, Digg, Reddit, etc. But do these services have a working business model? It seems they all flounder at that point.
It seems to me that most Net 2.0 firms have an unsustainable business model, which is:
1. Get really popular.
2. ???
3. Sell company -> Profit!
In the same way, we know we've got a lot of people who like using their phones to tweet, click, troll, sext, etc. But is this actually useful? And other than the cell phone providers, is anyone making money off this with a sustainable model?
Futurist Traditionalism
Removing the need for expensive mobile teams and relying on mobile app stores since 2012.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Agree that if WaPo decided that it's future wasn't in mobile, that would be a strange decision. But I'm reading it as, our mobile operation hasn't been successful and we're bleeding cash as a company. Let's fire the guy in charge of that and all the folks he brought on board, and maybe start again a few months down the road with a different guy, or maybe partner with a tech company.
The true inefficiency, is you & yours, and you KNOW it. You're, @ best, radically overpaid babysitters, where the funniest part's usually that you're the babies instead of the adult in that case (and the results in business + the economy worldwide, show it clearly - argue with the results)
Fact is, I doubt you've even done the job hands-on yourself, & your MBA, which is complete bullshit, since I have a full B.S. business degree (from a top-notch school in it) combined with MIS minor & CSC AAS ontop of that along with decades of experience professionally beforehand doing the job successfully in the computer sciences myself & helped my brother get his no less where he was astounded I still recalled most of the formulas & principle goals of them decades later!
I told him I was further exposed to them in practice, & not with "widgets" as in academia, but the REAL world in motion in business by building tools stooges such as yourself couldn't build themselves, to "empower" you?
For what??
Shit like this???
No thanks!
(I can only thank God above I don't have to deal with that anymore, & have worked for MYSELF for many years now instead (I finally wised up in my 40's), taking all of the profits possible instead of crumbs from the table for paying babysitters like yourself)).
In fact, I saw so many of "your kind" fire away guys that "cost more" that can and DID get the job done (vs. your "helpless henry" type that clearly can't) & product finished solidly too!
Now, you'll PROBABLY tell me "I was executing policy handed down to me, merely orders" yea, well... you STILL had the responsibility of executing them, possibly against your conscience too, now live with it.
I've seen SO many guys with actual skills that better products, if not the world, get fired that can do the job whereas your "illustrious ilk" 9/10 times can't even load an Operating System properly (a child's play level task).
Who the HELL are you to judge anyone you fire?
Question - Have YOU done their job for years-on-end to know it end to end in process + data and principle goal yourself?? Doubt it.
"Leadership" (what a truckload of bullshit, either you ARE a good leader, or you're not, & someone who's never done the job of a subordinate themselves, "walking many a mile in their shoes" doesn't qualify, & that MBA isn't going to give you innate leadership abilities, + certainly NOT the skills of your subordinates either).
"I am a manager and layoffs are not easy, but some pruning here and there must be done from time to time. Sometimes people need to be laid off for the betterment of a company. Sorry, but that is the real world we are living in." -
Yea? How about "PRUNING" the 100 "VP's" corporate bodies in the USA have instead?? WTF do radically overpaid dolts (related to top stock holders on the "boards of directors" many times, or family members) really offer except a HUGE OVERPAID DRAG ON STOCKHOLDERS?
Hmmm??
I don't give a flying "F" what your comeback is, since I can easily point to the economic situation out there, knowing you & yours (& your paymasters) created it... after all:
With great power comes great responsibility, & argue with the results.
Point-blank: You, & YOURS? Can't... period. You're a DRAG ON SOCIETY and yes, business.
APK
P.S.=> Now, if you're the RARE kind of mgt. I have run into in the art & science of computing (or whatever field YOU are in) that actually "came up from within the ranks" & in a HARD PRODUCTIVE SCIENCE (not 'marketing' b.s. artist 1/2 truth spouting thieves & hustlers + blatant liars who since I've seen MANY a Fortune 100/500 payroll nationwide in my time as a coder around them in business)? I take it back... since I too, was mgt. @ times (successfully too, chain wide leading), I can state this validly from experience (& IF you're like that, you KNOW what I mean - too many "fake it till you make it" types that are quick buck artists in it to rip off a company blind, & "do unto others & SPLIT" types/crooks that are RUINING this nation)...
... apk
The source is unhappy they were let go. The 'inefficiencies' terminology was not attributed in the original source article, which includes a copy of the memo; I'm surprised no one has posted a link to the source article yet, so here it is:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/washington-post-layoffs-valentines-day_b96626
According to the original source article, more people than just the mobile team were let go.
I can understand them doing this, particularly since they referenced Web 2.0 in their hiring of Rob Malda (cmdrtaco), HTML5 is enough along that it can be used to deliver the content in a reasonable way, using a centralized paywall, and trying to maintain 7 iOS apps and 100's of Android apps, due to minor variations in platform, makes a browser-based experience a no-brainer, in terms of the money they spend on development.
Overall, I think this does not bode well for non-game, non-vertical market app writers, so for all the people who are thinking that going to app writing is going to be a really lucrative payoff, this is probably the beginning of a trend, and they should consider some other line of work.
If you can fire 54 people from your blog and still have enough to operate, then you really do have too many employees.
Bingo! Which is why you fire the empire-building GM and CIO who made it happen.
Alas, but beware! Computer science != software engineering. Both aspects are important for a successful software developer. If you're in a computer science course of study in academia, I do expect you to be no better in software engineering side of things than a self-taught kid fresh out of the college. Same goes for those who only know the engineering side well, without grokking the mathematical theory.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Is it a big assumption that mobile will do better than newspapers in the future? News on paper exists today only because of inertia.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Trow out the General Manager in charge. Get in a new one. Let him get the department back into shape. This will mean some people will leave and some will get a new responsibility. Some might get fired after a restructuring.
When you trow out both the GM and the people below, you are interest in cost, not in efficiency.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
tens of millions of layoffs as "inefficient" workers are replaced by computers.... maybe they should get a hearty welcome to the real world.
Here's the result cascading into anything connected with it & the "holy dollar" in publicly held companies (no small wonder Micheal Dell's attempting to BUY BACK the company he started - my guess is, even HE realizes it's a road to eventual ruin, & allows the WORST "virus of the spirt" as I call it, in greed, to take over everything).
* "Welcome to the WORLD, in 2013", folks...
More like welcome to the world of working for a for profit business at any time in history. The Washington Post needs to make money or it goes out of business. There are three ways the mobile platforms model can help with that: (1) They could contribute to the subscriber base (2) they could sell ads (3) They could create buzz about stories and link to stories that sell ads.
To pay 54 people including a CIO and a General Manager, you'd need to be generating a lot of money from the mobile business -- more than $5M per year. Obviously top management at the WP took a look at how much money they could possibly be generating out of their mobile business and concluded that it wasn't generating that much money and didn't have any prospect of generating that much money any time soon, nor a plan to do so.
obligatory:
xkcd
heck, even slashdot does this, to some degree...
Facebook made $1 billion in profit last year, so I'm not sure how your argument holds water.
I agree. I'm not even sure if you could call a General Manager and a Director part of "IT". They're management. Yes, they may have worked in the IT department, but they're not really IT. I've seen too many organizations, including my current company, where there are just way too many "Directors", and none of them have a clue, and, personally, I wish we would get rid of some of these "inefficiencies" around the office.
Is it a big assumption that mobile will do better than newspapers in the future? News on paper exists today only because of inertia.
Yes, it's BIG assumption. Making money on news delivery is hard.
Historical models for making money on news delivery:
Methods of news delivery that remain unproven as money-makers:
It has been bandied about for over a decade by consulting agencies who have been hired by corporations who have already decided to downsize.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You can deliver television-like content via mobile.
Getting paid delivering news works for a lot of sites, which are ad-supported. Or slashvertisement-supported.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I agree. I'm not even sure if you could call a General Manager and a Director part of "IT". They're management. Yes, they may have worked in the IT department, but they're not really IT. I've seen too many organizations, including my current company, where there are just way too many "Directors", and none of them have a clue, and, personally, I wish we would get rid of some of these "inefficiencies" around the office.
You're dead-on there.
When you ask knowledgeable management for data/opinions on the departments they technically (or otherwise) manage, they will always seem to provide data that makes everyone under them look like they are the cause of the problem(s) or lack of perfection. When top-level clueless management PAYS knowledgeable management more for this information, it has a baseline that always has to climb to keep that data lookin' good!
Conversely, when things are positive, ever notice how top-level management asks how things got so damn good and the response from the management underneath them is, "Well *I* made some changes that... yadda yadda."
Not to get off-topic, but why don't we start reverse-questioning? When business is sucking, have top-level management ask the management beneath them how things are looking so excellent. Act accordingly on responses. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Wait, that makes sense and might work. Disregard.
Stopped looking at WaPo front page some time ago because of the horrible stories there, but would read stories in it on occasion if linked or sent to me. Stopped reading WaPo entirely after this complete junk free internet story. I live in DC and local blogs are better news sources than WaPo for local news, and for national news there are plenty of other sources. WaPo is never anything but an utter waste of time. Too bad--newspaper of Woodward and Bernstein and all that.
Penny - plain text accounting
Move to Germany, we have not destroyed our industry as you did.
My boss can't find any developers at the moment.
www.vacos.de
Send application to dirk.vialkowitsch@vacos.de. Don't worry about no (yet) speaking German. 50% of English words are (essentially) the same as German words. Almost everybody speaks English here (at least in engineering and sw development). We are based in Stuttgart and so are many American soldiers a. You can meet them in Böblingen in the Irish Bar, if you like to chat to a native American speaker.
You're arguing the wrong question.
For example, just about everyone and their dog (on the internet, no one can tell you're a werewolf) uses Facebook, and before it MySpace, Friendster, Digg, Reddit, etc. But do these services have a working business model?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
But do they pay for researching and writing stories? Sites break down, from what I've seen, into two major categories: (1) adjunct outlets for newspaper, broadcast and cable news outlets (2) aggregator and commenting sites like (majors like Google or Yahoo, mid-rank like DrudgeReport or HuffPost and minor league like slashdot).
The latter category are parasitic, including slashdot. They feed off news content generated by newspapers, television and radio news and contribute little or nothing to news content, although they do arguably help inform the public. But with each such service having a self-selected audience attuned to their sitegeist, they tend not to expand the horizons of your knowledge like a general news service or a local/regional newspaper is likely to do.
I'm not saying WashPost shouldn't have a web and mobile presence. They probably should, but if they can't build it into their dominant source of cash, they have to devote the bulk of their staff to print journalism.
As a local (northern Virginia) I read the Washington Post online. I also have an Android phone. I have not used the Post's mobile apps. Not even once. Before reading this article, it had not even occurred to me that I might want to.
This says something about the value of the post's mobile apps and, by extension, the 54 (54!!) people hired to build and maintain them.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
There are many under/unemployed developers for the formerly industrialised central USA who can't easily move for family reasons, but you could pay them probably 35% less than in Stuttgart.
A few facts to clarify things here.
The Post isn't getting rid of their entire mobile division. Basically, there was a product management team that collaborated with the news room and developers to build these products.
It seems that once the core products were built, it was decided that the news room would just take over maintenance of these products and the people who created them were thanked with a pink slip in order to cut costs.
Washington Post is a print-first company with absolutely no true desire to go mobile. It threatens their core (and dying) business model: maintaining circulation of a newspaper with overpriced ads.
3. Sell company -> Profit!
Call it "chasing the eyeballs", it's just tech harvesting p/r and ad money. It's really funny like a dog chasing its tail.
They can have my command prompt when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
Re: with each such service having a self-selected audience attuned to their sitegeist. they tend not to expand the horizons of your knowledge ... /., every now and then, some of the technically literate (and literally expositorially literate) posters here will write some apropos content in response to an article (e.g. explaining the ins and outs of an airplane's fly-by-wire control system software, or the electrical engineering of a radio system and the underlying carriers, or the arcane but relevent portions of some biomedical system's interacting parts) that actually adds to the information that could not be carried or published in a general news product like a newspaper or magazine. Those kinds of responses make this place worthwhile, as long as the slashvertisements don't get in the way too much.
.
I like your neologism "sitegeist", which I presume to mean the "zeitgeist" of the website. Was that intentional or a homonymnal-typo?
;>)
btw, I also agree with your assessment. I've randomly followed a few newslinks to the washingtonpost and been rebuffed with the "this content is for paying subscribers only". But I can see their point also when aggregators like yhoo and google eat and regurgitate the washpo's work product and give enough of a taste that people don't even want or need to click through.
.
As for
I have just experienced this at my current company. They are just cutting many experienced development positions and then outsourcing those jobs to India. This is for a large thriving ecommerce company.
Or some people just like the way it feels when held in one hand, reading an article, while eating their breakfast with the other.
Holding a tablet, no matter how light, just isn't the same.
Plus anyone will annoy someone else while holding a tablet; they may not do so while reading a newspaper ("Talking to me during newspaper time is expressly forbidden"). With a tablet, well, they may not know when you are or are not reading the online newspaper, so they will inevitably interrupt you.
On that note, I miss the old Wall St. Journal. I liked the wider paper, among other things. Now I have to find a way to get a daily delivery of Le Monde to my door-step, and it appears to be something of a trial.
I am John Hurt.
But the keep adding "services" to there site. Someone said that corporations get "addicted" to making more money. Why would FB add MORE to their site? To make more. I am beginning to think most "non physical things" are going to do this. You keep making more and more until you die to your bloat. Just hope you jump ship at profit and not die state. I am starting to wonder how MOST the internet can do anything? If you use it as a store front, and have something "physical" it works.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
Somehow, that makes me think that only the opinion of those in power will get posted. Call my skeptical.
Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events. - Albert Einstein
isn't that what they did and this is the firing/restructuring.
I got no idea why their mobile division would need 54 people, considering it's highly likely they were subcontracting app development anyways?
they should need just 3-6 guys working on the mobile apps - the stories should come from the common content for wash. post.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Holding a tablet, no matter how light, just isn't the same.
OK, so when the current generation of news readers dies, we can finally stop killing trees so that people can have outdated, noninteractive news?
Plus anyone will annoy someone else while holding a tablet; they may not do so while reading a newspaper ("Talking to me during newspaper time is expressly forbidden"). With a tablet, well, they may not know when you are or are not reading the online newspaper, so they will inevitably interrupt you.
OK, so when the current generation of people who hassle people reading tablets dies...
On that note, I miss the old Wall St. Journal. I liked the wider paper, among other things.
Well, I hate everything about printed newspapers, and to me they can't go away fast enough.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sweetheart, wasn't it the intelligent and money-smart German bankers buying lots of the junk paper that nobody in the U.S. would even touch with a long pole just before the recent housing bust? I think there was a few billion USD worth of that stuff that is being written off by the landesbanks all over the place. Slowly but surely. It got to a point where "boys from Stuttgart" were joked about here.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I am a DC refuge and was a dedicated Post dead-tree reader for decades. These days, I primarily access the Washington Post through their website (which I would happily pay for, by the way). As an avid consumer of online media, I can personally attest that the Post's implementation of "mobile" content is just abysmal. Their iPad app was, until a few months ago, a total embarassment. Many of their "special" mobile features (of which I have downloaded and deleted more then one within minutes of downloading them) crash more often then they work. Frankly, if I were the editor-in-chief, I would have fired the mobile division staff for sheer incompetence long ago.
I have no inside information -- but I wonder if there's a positive take from all of this: the Washington Post has long been behind the curve in reaching out on mobile devices. Perhaps this isn't the end of their efforts to improve their web presence, but the beginning of a more serious effort. Just a thought. Time will tell.
Let me guess: the jobs that were just eliminated will be sent to India. Based on the CIO's surname, it wouldn't surprise me if that's exactly what happens.