MetaFilter posts tagged with layoffs

Fear and self-loathing in America’s Rust Belt

geoff. — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:30:35 -0800

"It turned out 30 employees were let go that day. The Dirty Thirty. Back in March, 30 others were let go. And before that, 25 were shown the door. ‘All difficult but necessary actions’ we were told in a group staff meeting following the first cuts. Then the company stopped convening staff meetings to talk about its problems ... Kevin, my manager for five years and editorial director at the organization, never said a word to me. No goodbye. No handshake. No apology. No compassion. Nothing." Matthew Newton on job loss. (Part I, Part II)

Layoffs and Buyouts at U.S. Newspapers in 2009

netbros — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 22:19:26 -0800

Paper Cuts tracks U.S. newspaper layoffs and buyouts. Roughly 24,000 jobs lost in 2008-09. It includes all newspaper jobs, from editor to ad rep, reporter to marketing, copy editor to pressman, design to carrier, and anyone else who works for a newspaper. Mapped papers that have closed or stopped publishing a print edition.

Black Thursday

Muddler — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:44:30 -0800

Welcome to Black Thursday, a day quickly becoming known among the legal community as the date where major law firms across the world announced major layoffs of both staff and attorneys. The short list includes such well known firms as DLA Piper, Cadwalader, Epstein Becker, Faegre & Benson, Holland & Knight, Goodwin Procter, Bryan Cave, and Dechert. Dozens more, such as Nixon Peabody, Luce Forward, Paul Hastings, and Merchant and Gould announced layoffs in recent weeks, and more confirmations from yet other firms are likely on lucky Friday the 13th. This was predictable. Harrison Barnes of BCG Attorney Search, a headhunter firm, has some interesting and seemingly altruistic advice (as he sits seaside in the shade) - if you are a part of the layoffs, don't use headhunters. Good luck, folks.

Livejournal circling the drain?

rmd1023 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 05:50:38 -0800

Is the death of Livejournal immanent? After being bought by a company in Russia just over a year ago, Livejournal may be on the rocks. They've just announced big , big layoff of tech folks at Livejournal. allegedly with no severance for or warning to the employees. If you want to back up your livejournal, here's a couple of ways:

ljdump
ljarchive (see also the post here)

Merry Christmas, Mayor Daley

Iridic — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 12:02:30 -0800

Last week, the Chicago Reader laid off four of its best journalists: John Conroy (previously), Harold Henderson, Tori Marlan, and Steve Bogira. The cuts almost certainly mark the beginning of the end of the paper's role in Chicago as an investigative force and a corruption watchdog. The New York Times responds with a salute to Conroy and a defense of muckraking's relevance. Conroy made his name through years of ceaseless investigation into police torture. For the time being, the Reader retains a full online archive of that work. Henderson's Reader blog (which proclaims him "The World's First Blogger") also remains online. Marlan's work includes the post mortems "Death of a Scientologist" and "Killed by a Cop Car." Bogira is the author of the remarkable Courtroom 302, which HBO is developing as a miniseries.

Stupid Management Tricks at Circuit City

storybored — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 18:57:20 -0800

Stupid Management Tricks at Circuit City. Is your retail electronics company losing money? Want to cut costs? Then how about firing some of your people? I know! How about singling out those store workers who are making too much -- 3,400 of them, and get them to reapply for the same job at a lower wage?

You heard it here first (maybe)

ubiquity — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 10:37:37 -0800

IBM is laying off people in Burlington, Endicott, Rochester and Austin today. The presumptive reason is Indian outsourcing — some employees have posted that they were asked to train their replacements. Why hasn't this made the news?

AOL Kills Netscape

kirkaracha — Tue, 15 Jul 2003 15:58:12 -0800

AOL Kills Netscape AOL "has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they’ve even pulled the logos off the buildings)." According to some former Netscape employees, "everybody in CPD is getting laid off." Meanwhile, Mozilla goes on at the new Mozilla Foundation. [via Zeldman]

Another Bad Day in Silicon Valley

Captain Ligntning — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 14:54:51 -0800

Applied Materials to Slash 14% of Its Work Force How many of you work in the Silicon Valley semiconductor business? How do you feel about an industry giant like AMAT having yet another layoff? Or, if you work for one of AMAT's competitors, what does this do to your own sense of job security?

Report on layoffs killed

four panels — Sat, 04 Jan 2003 16:41:43 -0800

Shooting the messenger. "The Bush administration, under fire for its handling of the economy, has quietly killed off a Labor Department program that tracked mass layoffs by U.S. companies." (via madamjujujive)

PrinceValium — Tue, 30 Jul 2002 11:03:24 -0800

Get laid off in public. Vanguard Airlines suspends operations; posts its system-wide pink slip on its HOME PAGE for you all to see. "Wages and salaries owed you as of today are "prepetition wages" and likely will not be paid for a matter of months, if not longer.... Any Vanguard stock you hold (including stock purchased in the Employee Stock Purchase Plan) is almost certainly worthless and it is likely you will be entitled to claim a capital loss on such stock this year." But not all is gloomy: the CEO "wish[es] you the best in your future career. You will be in our prayers." Aww, shucks.

WolfDaddy — Thu, 25 Apr 2002 18:36:55 -0800

Verisign to lay off 10% of its workforce. I don't have anything to substantiate my intuition (other than the supposed 'insider' info posted here, which now seems to be highly prescient), but I have a gut-wrenching fear that Verisign is going to go POOF soon. If it does, what will happen to the 'net as we know it?

owillis — Mon, 11 Feb 2002 02:56:14 -0800

The world of the laid-off techie. "Human resource experts say the underemployment trend in the current economic cycle is just starting to emerge. Many workers got the ax when mass layoffs peaked in the summer and fall of 2001, and they coasted on several months of severance and unemployment insurance, which generally lasts six months. With the tech job market still in the doldrums, they're now considering new gigs as waitresses, bartenders, forklift drivers or baby sitters--anything to pay the rent. " I wish the media hadn't/didn't focus so much attention on the suits who seem to only be able to "fail upwards" versus the folks in the trenches. (via /.)

owillis — Fri, 14 Dec 2001 06:16:38 -0800

LaydOff is from former employees of Enron, saying that they "would like to be the forum to expose financial and cultural abuses of corporate power by providing apparel to express our distaste for apparent unethical and unwanted behavior." Right now they're just selling t-shirts. Ted's Turnovers was another (more vitriolic) site started by laid off workers.

gimonca — Mon, 08 Oct 2001 14:43:10 -0800

You know those exploited Nike workers in Indonesia we hear so much about? Good news and bad news: the good news is, a bunch of 'em aren't being exploited anymore. The bad news is, it's because they were laid off.

Local manufacturers blame the soft economy on the WTC attacks, so yes, even this ends up being a WTC post. You cannot escape.

epersonae — Tue, 18 Sep 2001 21:04:49 -0800

Boeing lays off approx 30,000. Wow...in my neck of the woods, this is a big deal. Combined with yesterday's stock losses, and potential airlines bailout.... (more inside)

gloege — Wed, 05 Sep 2001 10:38:30 -0800

As the technology industry lays off thousands, a division of the German conglomerate, Siemens, takes a different approach. I like the idea of having a sabbatical of sorts with half pay instead of simply being laid off. Of course, this would never happen in the U.S. - we love laying people off here and contributing to overall unemployment and higher welfare rates. Just look at what Salon has to say about it.... (note, you need to scroll down to midpage).

darren — Mon, 12 Mar 2001 11:32:36 -0800

More proof CNN layoffs have screwed CNN.com "Completely destroyed?" (Paragraph 3) Man, I learned not to use that redundancy in freshman J-school. Geez. Turn out the lights, Ted, the party's over.

aaron — Mon, 26 Feb 2001 14:31:07 -0800

Schadenfreude update: eToys has officially announced it will file Chapter 7 and liquidate in 5-10 days. And, as expected, Disney started Round 2 of layoffs from its cash-hemmoraghing operation, this time gutting ABCNEWS.com and ABC.com. Predictions as to who's next?

capt.crackpipe — Thu, 15 Feb 2001 23:00:48 -0800

The Layoff Binge The last piece on the page gives a worker’s perspective on the recent attack in the Class War.

crushed — Tue, 06 Feb 2001 08:00:09 -0800

eToys announced plans today to fire its remaining 293 employees. However, the company plans to continue exploring alternatives to closure.

crushed — Fri, 02 Feb 2001 00:37:52 -0800

51,631 dot com layoffs as of Feb. 01, 2001. Is it that the web allows us to simultaneously view the usual failure of 99% of new businesses, a sign of the coming recession, or just a result of bad business plans and get rich quick schemes? Or was it simply too good to last? Whatever the reason, it's depressing.

tranquileye — Tue, 30 Jan 2001 15:52:16 -0800

Amazon.com to cut 1,300 jobs. Is this the beginning of sustainability for Amazon? Or is it the beginning of the end?

lizardboy — Tue, 30 Jan 2001 05:49:05 -0800

While IjustGotFired.com seems to be in full-swing, handing out free @ijustgotfired email addresses to the many people who are finding themselves being cut in the world of lay-offs, the site's founder, Wrybread, of WryBread.com fame (a great site to waste enormous blocks of time at, looking at fun-but-useless mayhem type of stuff), has been unusually quiet with his own site since November.

Anybody in the S.F. area know anything about this? He didn't walk perilously close to the edge of the Earth and fall off, did he?

mathowie — Thu, 04 Jan 2001 16:54:54 -0800

Etoys to lay off 70% of its workforce in their never ending quest for profitability. Does it really take 1,000 employees to run an e-commerce site? I hope not, since there will only be 300 left after today. I imagine most of those employees were in the fulfillment end of the business.