Tag: unemployed

Layoffs and Restructure at Google

January 20th, 2009

JoblessGoogle announced on their blog recently that they’ve not only reduced the number of contractors they’re employing but they’re now reducing the number of recruiters on staff by about 100:


    Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions. #

Also, they are displacing up to 70 engineering employees by closing offices in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden, Alan Eustace, SVP engineering & research said.

In a Wall Street Journal story commenting on the changes at Google, Jessica Vascellaro reports:

    Google spokesman Matthew Furman said the closing of engineering offices in Texas, Norway and Sweden wasn’t motivated by cost cutting and that Google will offer jobs to the 70 employees affected by the changes. Alan Eustace, Google’s senior vice president for engineering and research, wrote in a blog post that the moves would help Google better coordinate its efforts across different geographic areas.Mr. Furman added that the 100 recruiters let go represents less than a quarter of Google’s total recruiter population. “Overall, we will be working with [those recruiters] to try to locate them other jobs at Google,” he said.

    He said that the company didn’t have plans to announce any further cuts at this time. In recent months, Google has taken measures such as reducing the hours of its food service and giving employees cellphones instead of year-end cash bonuses.

Popularity: 45% [?]

Laid Off and Blogging About It

January 2nd, 2008

I’ve spoken about Robert Florida’s awesome book, “Rise of the Creative Class” before. In essence, the take-away for me is that companies do a great job of making widgets that are cheap and efficient, but companies do a horrible job of taking care of people.

One thing sure to accelerate the flight of talented people away from the uncaring companies of the past is the fact that the faceless masses, once relegated to statistics in headlines and gone-and-forgotten notes in dusty employee files, is that those who are laid off have a real, powerful, and persistent voice against the companies who let them go.

For example, I hope the phrase WaMu Careers gets linked often to this blog post, not the WaMu jobs site, so that people get a more open and real view of what’s happening. (src)

I’m sure marketing and HR veeps will cringe when they think that their once-valued, but now unemployed, employees may actually have something to say back… and that Google might return their results higher than their own press-releases when being researched by future candidates.

Its all part of leveling the playing field, which I absolutely love.

Popularity: 18% [?]