Verizon Lays Off More Yahoo/AOL Employees (cnn.com) 44
Verizon is laying off 150 U.S. staffers this week across multiple teams in the organization. CNN reports: Verizon Media employs around 10,500 people [across media brands that include Yahoo, AOL, TechCrunch and HuffPost], so these cuts will amount to 1.4% of its work force. It's unclear which brands will be affected. In January, Verizon Media laid off roughly 800 employees, or about 7% of its staff at the time, as the division's revenues failed to meet expectations.
A spokesperson for Verizon Media confirmed the layoffs to CNN Business. "Our goal is to create the best experiences for our consumers and the best platforms for our customers. Today we are investing in premium content, connections and commerce experiences that connect people to their passions and continue to align our resources to opportunities where we feel we can differentiate ourselves and scale faster," the spokesperson said in a statement.
A spokesperson for Verizon Media confirmed the layoffs to CNN Business. "Our goal is to create the best experiences for our consumers and the best platforms for our customers. Today we are investing in premium content, connections and commerce experiences that connect people to their passions and continue to align our resources to opportunities where we feel we can differentiate ourselves and scale faster," the spokesperson said in a statement.
continue to align our resources to... ugh, no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do these spokesdroids even understand how utterly soulless these collections of corporate buzzwords sound? I guess they need to say something in response to layoffs, but... damn. It's sort of crazy that it's someone's actual job to spit out meaningless phrases like this.
Re:continue to align our resources to... ugh, no.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well they can't tell the truth now can they?
Why not?
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Contestant: Alex, I'd like to buy some punctuation for $200.
Alex: I'm not sure it would help you.
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The phrase " "Our goal is to create the best experiences for our consumers and the best platforms for our customers" guarantees three things for the future:
- fewer employees
- more degradation of the customer service experience (there is always room to do worse)
- much larger management bonuses.
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National messaging on the PC has effectively been banned by the shutdown of AIM and YIM, Verizon seems to have bought both to strengthen SMS.
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How else are we supposed to play buzzword bingo?
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You don't understand the purpose of these statements. They aren't aimed at you, and they aren't aimed at the people being laid off. They're aimed at investors, who, granted, mostly disregard them as boilerplate, but it's nevertheless what they want to hear.
xmas layoff (Score:4, Insightful)
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Those British miners did not take it particularly well as they smashed the all of the windows of his car, caused all kinds of damage at his, sent him an absolute torrent of abuse over the phone and basically drove him into hiding. When they couldn
Re:xmas layoff (Score:5, Interesting)
Firing someone in the US from the last week of November until Christmas generally deprives that person of up to 6 weeks of job search time, since no one outside of retail is hiring for serious positions until after the holidays.
As to why they may do it, managers of global firms sometimes overlook religious holidays they have personally never celebrated nor experienced; and companies that end their calendar year in December likely wish to expense the severance packages before the new year.
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This being a mining town the mine was what the place was basically built around so most of the miners would probably have had to either accept long-term unemployment or moving away. After Thatcher stopped the government from propping up u
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here in Europe actual closures have to be announced well ahead of time.
In the Untied States, that's not the case except in a couple of states that have specific laws about it. My dad knew people who showed up for work on a Monday morning to be greeted with a sign on the door that the factory had closed and 200+ people were now out of work.
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"managers of global firms sometimes overlook religious holidays"
Christmas is a non-religious celebrated all over the world, as well as a religious holiday celebrated by Christians. I personally have seen Christmas in Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia.
No one is waging a War on Christmas except American Christians.
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companies that end their calendar year in December likely wish to expense the severance packages before the new year.
I've seen several Christmas Massacres at a firm that has a different accounting year than calendar. I think they do it so before the profit-sharing vests. Plus, it avoids having to give out those nasty Christmas bonuses.
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Well in simple times yes but its 2019. You need to remember that something like half of this country has less than $2400 in savings (provided you don't raid retirement accounts).
So a good lot of those people were probably out rushing around spending money they don't have on the holidays. Its actually a kindness to warn them its not coming. Much much better to disappoint little Timy with no Nintendo Switch under the tree than to tell him Mommy and Daddy have to return so we can pay next months mortgage and
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Pre-holiday layoffs were a pattern with AOL. Guess Verizon got something out of their purchase...
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You aren't looking at it the right way. It is a Christmas present for Verizon execs. It will bring the warm love and generosity of Christ home to them.
Some people (Score:2)
Welcome to the gig economy.
Presumptions (Score:2)
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That will not protect you from an AOL/Yahoo layoff in any way, shape, or form.
The word is "frees". Not "fires". Never "lays off" (Score:2)
Nobody wants to work at the evil empire.
But usually, you don't have a choice in this de-facto slave job market.
This here is giving them freedom.
But like with any other slaves, after all that damage and mind molding, the question is whether they are even still mentally able to use it to empower themeselves (=start a business of their own), or if they will just fall back to "Give us jearbs! We beg you!"
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4 some odd percent unemployment! Employers are not really the problem!
Want to know what is the problem ASSET PRICES! There is exactly ONE thing keeping more people in the jobs they are in and that is an unwillingness or inability to relocate. That has a lot more to do with our highly rigged real-estate market place than anything else. Of course the real-esate situation is what it is because it has to support the insane valuations of the banking sector needs to market their assets to least we go all financi
The One person (Score:3)
left at AOL, is still in charge of that light switch. Heres to hoping they turn it off soon.
Bonus time already? (Score:2)
NYT/NYNEX/Verizon has become fairly evil when it comes to employees.
From forcing craft to contract so they have to pay their own benefits and rent the tools/trucks from VZ to a constant layoff that's been going on for at least 10 years.
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When FiOS rolled out in my area many of the installers were linemen and copper techs who were re-trained to terminate coax and install internet routers and set-top boxes.
The word from management was "re-train for FiOS or GTFO." That's even if you had more than 20 years at the company.
They were *PISSED*.
Had to see it coming (Score:2)
I can't get over thinking that anyone who was still employed at either AOL or Yahoo, had to know this was long overdue. Heck, these companies have been on life-support for more than a decade at this point. Those companies peaked in like 2000 or so, and tried to be relevant for maybe a few years after that?
The writing has been on the wall for a long time, they've had plenty of time to find other pros
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Verizon actually has support staff? (Score:2)
Yahoo support doesn't exist, AOL support is only there for those paying $5/month for AOL Gold(the old piece of garbage program from 20 years ago that old people keep clinging to). If you find that your account has been hacked, don't expect to be able to get it back, because Verizon doesn't believe in the concept of support.