February 8, 2001

6:06 PM

Motley Fool cuts 115 employeesThe Motley Fool laid off about 30 percent of its staff Thursday, becoming the latest online publisher to recoil amid cost pressures.
posted by shauna (5 comments total)

Read somewhere the running dot-com carnage total is around 50,000 -- thats a lot of people, but not really in the big picture. A single automobile company could lay off that many in one swoop. Yet more dot-com hype. Hype on the dark side.
posted by stbalbach at 8:14 AM on February 9, 2001

Um. What on earth is the Motley Fool *doing* that they need nearly four hundred employees?
posted by Mars Saxman at 11:35 AM on February 9, 2001

Not employees. FOOLS!
posted by crunchland at 1:03 PM on February 9, 2001

er... oops. I thought that was their employment link... which is, uh... suddenly and mysteriously missing from their home page. Boy, do I feel dumb.
posted by crunchland at 1:05 PM on February 9, 2001

stbalbach, it's not that simple. Those figures are total layoffs announced by big firms. There's no count for small firms that have vanished into thin air, and there's a big gray area for consulting firms. Then you have the fact that those numbers include all types of employees.

I'd peg the total at closer to 100-150,000, of which perhaps 25,000 are technical professionals.

In the context of the dot-com industry, that's actually a lot of people.

Mars: not only are there a couple of dozen columnists, at least 2 or 3 for each sample portfolio, there is the news staff, daily and weekly e-mail lists, the weekly newspaper feature, the forums, the quotes, the accessories store,... it's a pretty extensive operation.
posted by dhartung at 1:42 PM on February 9, 2001