Layoffs at OSDL 179
daria42 writes "Open Source Development Labs - which employs Linus Torvalds - has apparently cut nine of its fifty-seven staff (although Linus has retained his job). The cuts come as the organisation re-structures. It will establish a European office and expand into Asia. "We're a small enough organisation that what would be a small change in focus for a bigger company has a large effect on us," said a spokesperson."
Restructuring Methods (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Restructuring Methods (Score:1)
They'll need those 9 people to babysit the existing operations while others are supporting the new operations.
Sounds like a troubled expansion plan to me.
Re:Restructuring Methods (Score:1)
Lay off more workers. It's more important for the new expansion areas to show solid numbers than for the home office to be ahead of the game. It's okay if the home office goes into a little decline to get the expansion areas off the ground.
But they will want to really watch everyone left in the company, and layoffs are a great way to send the message that employees had better peform. Sadly, layoffs have the side effect of tur
Office Politics (Score:2)
That's encouraging..... (Score:2)
Re:Restructuring Methods (Score:1)
This is not a correct number. He said:
First round (9) (total remain: 48)
Second = 60% * 9 = 5.4 = 5 (43)
Third = 40% * 5 = 2 = 41 remaining after potential three round cuts
Heh (Score:1)
My split personality found my
{{{ZZZZZZT]]]
Er... I found my split personality's
Re:Heh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Heh (Score:2)
Re:Restructuring Methods (Score:1)
Nope, generally it's the percentage of the first round size. So if 1000 people get laid off of from a company of 25,000... the next round will see approx 600 layoffs. And then 240 after that. But that's only if the management is using a formula. Sometimes they just pull the numbers out of their butts (and when they pull the numbers from that lower region, you will see them linked proudly on this website [fuckedcompany.com].
I don't know what (Score:5, Insightful)
I would be surprised if nobody donated a ton of cash, to say that they are paying Linus' salary.
Re:I don't know what (Score:2)
The HPs and IBMs and Novells chip in a few bones, and they all avoid cost and risk for developing a kernel.
Perfect business sense.
Re:I don't know what (Score:2)
Well, would you rather be the Henry Ford of software development or the Peter Carl Fabergé?
There's room in the world for both.
Re:I don't know what (Score:5, Informative)
OSDL - home to Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux - is dedicated to accelerating the growth and adoption of Linux in the enterprise. Founded in 2000 and supported by a global consortium of IT industry leaders, OSDL is a non-profit organization that provides state-of the-art computing and test facilities in the United States and Japan available to developers around the world. OSDL's founding members are IBM, HP, CA, Intel, and NEC. A complete list of OSDL member organizations is provided on the member page at OSDL Members.
Re:I don't know what (Score:1)
Re:I don't know what (Score:5, Informative)
That's a lot for what's really a club membership, without the golfing and semi-nice place to eat. For most like vendors, OSDL membership doesn't drive sales and on the technical side, you can be a free-rider. IMHO, this doesn't look like a winning business model.
Re:I don't know what (Score:3, Informative)
No matter what non-profit your running, you still need to make money above your expenses to fund expansion, capital investments and keep a few bucks around for a rainy day or unexpected expenses.
In the US, there's rules for how much you can retain depending on how you solicit funds. I can't recall the particulars at this point, sorry... Non-profits operating as charities that keep large margins between income and expenses can still get aro
Expense stream (Score:2)
I'm a little surprised that the industry sponsers aren't keeping up with this. Surely RedHat, IBM, Monte Vista, Wind River, et. al. are making far, far more on Open Source than a measly $10 Million a year?
Re:I don't know what (Score:2)
Passion and free have to end somewhere (Score:1, Troll)
'Center of Gravity' (Score:5, Funny)
Re:'Center of Gravity' (Score:2)
Balance? (Score:4, Funny)
Wow, they cut workers on both sides of the fulcrum. Sweet!
On a side note, doesn't ZDNet have a spell checker?
Re:Balance? (Score:1)
Re:Balance? (Score:1, Offtopic)
"Organisation" is a correct spelling. As is "centre".
Remember, this is ZDNet Australia.
Re:Balance? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, "organisation" and "centre" are valid spellings of those words.
Re:Balance? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Balance? (Score:1)
First, when using "sic" it should be enclosed in square brackets - [sic].
Second, it is bad form to use [sic] to show off that you found a trivial error.
Re:Balance? (Score:1)
On a side note, "centre" is a valid word, but they probably meant "center", unless they are a "centre" that deals with gravity.
Re:Balance? (Score:1)
Re:Balance? (Score:2)
Re:Balance? (Score:1)
But it reminds me of one of my bosses... Who also said there was a typo with 'organisation':
We had hired this nitwit from Seattle, to come work in Vancouver (Canada), and I had asked for time off to go to my girlfriend's family back in Regina (Saskatchewan, Canada).
He goes, "COOL! I've always wanted to go to Iceland!"
(I'm
Where's my scissors? (Score:1)
Re:Where's my scissors? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Where's my scissors? (Score:1)
Re:Where's my scissors? (Score:2)
Now, the UK/USA housing marketing... watch out for that bubble!!
Outsourced (Score:3, Funny)
It will establish a European office and expand into Asia.
Lets be honest here. They are outsourcing those jobs. Hey, I'm not complaining. Hooray for the Europeans and the Asians. But the US is slipping further and further behind in the world of techonology.
Re:Outsourced (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not outsourcing, it's expanding. Linux doesn't just exist in the US, you know. There are big opportunities in other parts of the world, and apparently they want to be there.
Re:Outsourced (Score:2)
If that were a true statement, wouldn't they be adding jobs instead of just shifting them geographically?
Indeed, the US is not where the growth is. (Score:4, Insightful)
The key markets for information technology in the next few decades are not the US, Western Europe or Japan. The key markets key, as in where the majority of goods will be purchsed and consumed-- are Mainlaind China, India, Eastern Europe and South America.
Where do I get that idea? Easy, hardware manufacturers. People in the wealthy nations often have a hard time imagining how hardware can get any cheaper and still remain profitable and yet it does relentlessly continue to decline in price. The answer to how it remains profitable is simple, volume. And that volume cannot and will not exist in the highly profitable and yet relatively sparsely populated wealthy countries. There simply are not enough consumers.
So, as a manufacturer, you simply enter new markets by lowering your costs until the real masses, the billions, can afford your products. And you can bet that WiMax is going to be one of the enabling technolgies that is going to make this push into the "third world" happen all that much faster.
Which means it makes perfect sense for OSDL to have a real presence in these markets. In fact, you could argue they're moving too slowly.
But none of that has the slightest thing to do with "outsourcing". It's just the reality of where IT is going.
Re:Outsourced (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not outsourcing, it's expanding. Linux doesn't just exist in the US, you know. There are big opportunities in other parts of the world, and apparently they want to be there.
They are firing people in the US and replacing them with people not in the US. You could make the "expanding" argument if they weren't doing the firings. They are not "expanding". They are relocating.
Re:Outsourced (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Outsourced (Score:2)
What is this "other parts of the world" you speak of? Is that were all those exotic callsigns I talk to on my ham radio are?
Re:Outsourced (Score:1)
Re:Outsourced (Score:3, Informative)
So when Linus moved to the US from Europe back in the 90's, did Europe complain that Linux development was being "outsourced"?
Re:Outsourced (Score:2, Interesting)
What the fuck? I mean seriously this got and insightful mod? People get a clue here!
Outsourcing Linux (Score:1)
Problems may arise if they cut further jobs and the outsourced responsibilities begin to splinter and fight among themselves.
In fact,... (Score:2)
Probably not a big deal. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hopefully they didn't ditch anyone too integral to the programming. Also, they mentioned consulting positions, so they might have simply decided to not renew some contracts. Without the breakdown of what positions were downsized, it's hard to tell what they are doing.
The one thing that happened to our company during this process is that some of the engineers got fed up (myself included) and left. We had about 15 people total and only 5 were programmers by the time the restructuring finished. Imagine this: 10 people telling you that we need Product X yesterday, and it gets added to your list of 10 other things that were promised to your top clients.
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2)
"to take larger amounts of venture capital"
They're non-profit and membership based. I don't think VC is the issue here.
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2, Interesting)
I never said that receptionists were useless. On the other hand, if a company doesn't need receptionists then it isn't thier duty to hire them just so they can pay rent. If you need to downsize, you get rid of non-critical personnel first. Receptionist are definitely in that category, especially
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2)
Perhaps this is true for a non-profit, but in the real world if your main function is "to turn out code" you probably won't be in business very long.
"Receptionist are definitely in that category, especially since they are most easily replaced out of any staff members."
Good receptionists are much harder to replace than good programmers. It's a buyer's market f
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2)
If you've been trying for months to hire someone for an non-executive position and haven't succeeded, your need must not be very great.
I've worked at companies that had jobs open for years that were never filled because their requirements were out of sync with what they were willing to pay. They had a long list of
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2)
I live in the San Diego area as well and I would much rather live here than in Silicon Valley or shoveling snow somewhere else. To each his own I guess.
I can see you've never run a small company (Score:5, Insightful)
I can see you've never run a small company. If you had, you'd realize that a good (or bad) receptionist can make (or break) your business. Think about it--here is one person who typically talks to every employee several times a day, and most of your customers every week or two. The person who watchs who and what enter and leave, gets to see the unguarded moments, the body language, hear the idle gossip--in short, the best clue catcher you'll ever have.
I'm always amazed at the money people will pay consultants for clues they could have gotten in far less time just by asking the recptionist. Often, the receptionist is the only person in the whole outfit that sees the big picture.
--MarkusQ
Re:I can see you've never run a small company (Score:2)
I'm always amazed at the money people will pay consult
Re:Probably not a big deal. (Score:2)
No offence to your friends, but if those were their full-time positions (which may not be the case -- I can't tell from your phrasing), I don't have any trouble believing they were expendable.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:2, Funny)
"We had some dead weight around here, and we wanted to avoid lawsuits for firing them. So, we decided to call it a layout due to restructuring."
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a common one too. I worked for a startup that laid off about 20% of their workforce because the CEO was an idiot and didn't get enough business. To save face, he told some of his buddies that ran the other programming firms in the area that he cut out some dead weight. The 20% of the people let go were mostly really good developers that were let go bec
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:2, Troll)
Let's start with you mattmentecky: what's stopping you from starting your own company and running it exactly as you suggest here? Perhaps you can grow a company from start up to a beloved worldwide corporation and never lay anybody off!
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:1)
(Sorry, I just couldn't resist)
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, sometimes it actually IS restructuring. Maybe it is too expensive to do your own customer service, so you hire a customer service company to do it for you. What to do with your current employees in that ar
Re:Most typical line ever (Score:2)
If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:2)
The employee will write it.
the free coder will write it if he wants to. sure, he'll write open source, but he'll probably develop something else instead of just another boring business administration program.
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a job writing proprietary software, which I don't like, but at least it puts food on the table. In my spare time I write open source software. All the five minutes of spare time (average) per month that I am not burnt out from work. Expect a 0.0.1 release around this time the next millenium, if I'm not dead by then.
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:2)
I see you are a worthy PHB in the making. I fear for all the innocents who will toil under your ignorant and despotic regieme.
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:3, Insightful)
Many of the major Open Source and Free Software projects these days are actually done by professional developers, e.g. the Linux kernel, Red Hat, SuSE, MySQL, gcc, Eclipse, ...
At the moment, it's cheaper to hire developers in China and India rather than the US
Re:If you're fired by an Open Source company... (Score:2)
Like practically everything else in the universe, the answer to this is, "It all depends."
As a (painfully!) personal example, I was downsized three years ago by the small software company I had worked for for nine years. The parting was as amicable as such things can ever be: I completely understood their reasons, and even agreed with them -- the cold equations made it clear that someone had to go, and the pa
Yipee (Score:1, Flamebait)
A word of advice to the 9. (Score:2)
Seriously, I doubt this will have any real impact and given the current job market they may be better off. It seems a lot of employees latched onto their jobs fearing they'd never find another not realizing that the employeers often took the same attitude and didn't feel the need to pay the employee as much. I think this is changing in the market.
/. Editors (Score:2, Insightful)
Seriously, if they can't pick up the dupes, the typos, RTFA themselves and filter out the blog-whoring shite from prostoalex & rpiquepa then wtf *do* they get paid for?
Re:/. Editors (Score:2)
Read that as "OSTG".
Here we go again... (Score:1)
Re:Here we go again... (Score:2)
disclaimer, i didn't bother reading this article, because i read the previous one.
Was Andrew Tridgell one of the unfortunate? (Score:4, Interesting)
What the? (Score:2)
Does it have any influence... (Score:2, Interesting)
It would be very interesting to OSDL to be on countries that doesn't acept software patents.
It's sad when outsourcing mixes with open source (Score:3, Insightful)
This is bizspeak for what the rest of humanity calls outsourcing.
Pretty words to hide real actions.
Re:It's sad when outsourcing mixes with open sourc (Score:2)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:3, Insightful)
Opensource is where people code it, mostly.
It already is (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2, Interesting)
That's precisely why there's very little significant OSS coming out of India. Read The Cathedral and the Bazaar [catb.org] and Homesteading the Noosphere [catb.org] and then read The Magic Cauldron [catb.org]. Take particular note of the bits about 'massive independant peer review', the ownership, tenure, customs and in particular the discussion of the quality of the programmers that make it in open source.
When you're done there, pick any for
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:5, Insightful)
Or maybe it just shows how little you know about what is being developed where.
The myth that US software developers are so much better than their Indian counterparts is just crap. And the idea that Dell support was any good when it was on shore is just plain baloney. It was rubbish then, now its rubbish and cheaper with a more dodgy accent.
You do know of course that many of the finest mathematicians on the planet are Indian. That senior posts in many technology companies in the US are taken by Indian people, not because they are cheaper but because they are better.
Rather than moaning, and slinging mud, about elements moving to India, wouldn't it be better to ask how come all these "superior" US developers couldn't break a 50% success rate on projects. Not so hot [it-cortex.com]
As a friend of mine said
"We like to pretend that its India thats rubbish, in fact its pretty much everyone".
And the worst lot are the ones who moan that the other guy is crap, while never checking out the fact that they are worse.
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:4, Informative)
Hold the phone thunder.
Before they outsourced, I could call up Dell parts and give a base description and get a part.
Now, if I call up Dell parts I have to search the internet for the part number and give that to them.
Pretty much the same thing for anything else involved in support now.
The quality has gone down hill and no matter how you want to spin it... you can't change that fact.
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:3, Interesting)
With respect, the population of India is absolutely massive, so of course there are going to be more great Indian mathematicians than those from Malta. (You don't need to be a great mathematician to figure that out
That having been said; yes, the Indians do have a good reputation for mathematics and the like.
I can think of one other country that seems to have a disproportionate amount of technically gifted peop
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, and while you're at it fanboy why don't you also explain to the PHB's that not all Indian engineers are super geniuses. My wife's company regularly poaches from the top five percent of their graduates and then brings them up to the US on
Two different arguments... (Score:2)
You're mixing two completely different arguments here. Development and support are entirely different beasts.
But if we're going to talk support, let's talk support:
Fact of the matter is that support, once moved away, has gone downhill, not just for Dell, but for other companies as well. Probably my worst sup
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2)
*end sarcasm*
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2)
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:3, Informative)
This is nonsense. There has been an Swedish minority in Finland ever since the country was a Swedish province; they're well established in society, and the Swedes are pretty much an integral part of the Finnish nation. Finland has a rather liberal system of minority and language rights. Finns learn Swedish at school. And while Finns might some
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2)
Well, this doesn't really speak poorly of India, so much
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:1)
Because you're one of those awesomely smart Aryan ubermensch, you typoed "OSDL", who employ Linus Torvalds, to "OSDN", who employ CowboyNeal.
Smrt!
Re:Outsourced ?. (Score:2)
Re:more evil than ibm (Score:2)