MySpace Lays Off 47% of Employees 206
tgtanman writes "CNN reports that MySpace has announced that it has laid off 500 employees, 47% of its total staff. From the article: 'MySpace's management kept most of the site's developers but gutted nearly every other job role, according to a staffer who survived the cuts ... "Today's tough but necessary changes were taken in order to provide the company with a clear path for sustained growth and profitability," CEO Mike Jones said in a written statement. "These changes were purely driven by issues related to our legacy business, and in no way reflect the performance of the new product."'"
and (Score:0, Insightful)
it will be facebook soon enough
first true post
Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Developers (Score:4, Insightful)
MySpace has developers? What do they do?!
Same as they did before they went there from Yahoo.
Re:How's that working out, Rupert? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody makes it big without a substantial helping of good luck. Not lotto winners, World Series of Poker winners, nor people like Murdoch and Trump.
Re:Translation: preparing for sale (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: They're up for sale, and devs are part of the more valuable "human capital". I wonder who would be buying?
That doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sell, you don't fire the employees first yourself -- what would be the point? Once you're out, you don't care how many employees the company has. Instead, you invite possible buyers to the office and make sure every single body is at a desk, working away like a busy little beaver on countless amazing things, making the company look like an incredible value and pushing the bidding price up. Then the investor walks away thinking, "Wow, they sure do great stuff there -- but they seem to have too many employees. If we buy the company, we can fire half of them and we'll end up with a real bargain!"
Re:Wait (Score:1, Insightful)
This is the problem with many companies (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means it had 1064 employees before the layoff. What in the world could they possible need more than a thousand people for? And why are now able to run with only half that many?
If you can't run MySpace with 100 people -- and that's being generous -- there's something seriously wrong. This is another case of "Somebody (in this case Rupert Murdoch) gave us a lot of money, so we can afford to hire a shit load of people regardless of whether or not we actually need them.
Re:How's that working out, Rupert? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, this is something a lot of young tech geeks don't realize. Companies come, they make a profit and then either innovate and develop new products and make more profit, or die. That's how a free market works.
MySpace launched their service, made profit, didn't innovate and died within a few years time. And that's all right. Google is lasting a lot longer because they keep innovating. Facebook? Well, we'll see what happens. It ultimately depends on their ability to innovate.
Re:This is the problem with many companies (Score:4, Insightful)
When I first saw it, I remember thinking that it *only* has 1000 employees? I find that pretty amazing to have so *little* employees.
Think about it. It at one time (only 2-3 years ago) was one of the most popular, most trafficked sites around. All those those data centers, servers, coding (yes it was awful but code doesn't create itself), arrangements with bands and music licenses. Hell its bread and butter was to need data mining analysts and advertising campaign analysts. They should have a department of 100 each!
Re:Translation: preparing for sale (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't make sense. If you're trying to sell, you don't fire the employees first yourself -- what would be the point?
Because it fudges the profit numbers. Firing people doesn't hurt the revenue stream until a few quarters or even years down the road. But it significantly reduces costs which can provide a temporary bump in profitability. Buyout candidates have been doing this for longer than I've been alive and for some reason it still seems to fool potential buyers.
Re:How's that working out, Rupert? (Score:4, Insightful)
Current most likely way to become rich: Lucky sperm.
Hard work won't make you rich. Only the naive believe that.
That's not to say hard work is pointless. Hard work will still (usually) give you a comfortable life. But hard work alone won't ever make you rich. It just doesn't work that way. I can tell you for a fact that a single mom working three jobs to support her kids is working harder than most CEOs in this country, but she isn't going to get rich doing it.
You need to know People, and have a lot of luck. Even if you are the first with the Next Big Thing(tm), it may languish in obscurity for years or decades without the right resources and connections.
But if the luck thing isn't working out then try being an asshole. That really seems to move people up the corporate ladder...or gets them elected to congress.