An analyst with Sanford Bernstein, Toni Sacconaghi, had estimated that Sun needed to cut 20% of their workforce to be able to get closer to righting themselves, mainly by raising operating margin by 5% - 7%.
Well, Sun has now announced a restructuring, which is hopefully realigning the company to be leaner and more efficient, while also laying off between 15% - 18% (translated, 5,000 - 6,000 employees)
San Francisco based music startup Imeem, which has raised about $19 Million in funding, is the latest to lay off staff, asking a quarter of their 80 employees to leave.
The original rumors were wrong. (See my original blog post). Yahoo is cutting 1,50o people (10% of their workforce) instead of 3,500.
But I feel Yahoo is wrong - they should clean house a bit more, get rid of the people who no longer want to be there. And then hire new high performers - they will be among a smaller set of companies hiring in this economy.
Loic Le Meur's Seesmic has asked about 10 of their roughly 25 - 30 employees to leave (most last week, and 2-3 about three weeks ago).
Seesmic is all about video conversations - upload your videos, join in the conversation. Great. I wonder what the Seesmic team is talking about now.
Just as with most of the other companies going through layoffs this early, Seesmic has a bit of money in the bank (including a recent $6 Million round of funding, and another $6 Million last year), and is tightening its belt for the upcoming economic winter.
I had forgotten to mention earlier, but eBay, as expected, cut 1,500 jobs.
Their latest earnings report was ok. And they're finally getting serious about selling off Skype, even as Skype revenues keep growing... making it an attractive spin-off.
I'm hoping eBay gets its act together, but I really don't like using them any more.
My old employer, Milpitas based LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, has asked some more people to leave. This is sad, as unlike startups, most people at LifeScan have been here for a large number of years, sometimes a couple of decades.
The layoffs are only partially related to the economy; the first factor is that LifeScan is slowly moving more functions across the ocean, to Switzerland. And the second factor is a reflection of the changing face of diabetes, and diabetes testing. The entire diabetes market is growing at a slower rate, and most companies and patients are now eager to move to continuous blood-sugar monitoring, instead of the episodic monitoring that is currently used.
LFS is a $2 Billion company, and has a lot of brilliant minds leading it. Here's wishing them the best.
Menlo Park based Jaxtr, which offers voice-over IP services (and yes, a social network as well... why not?), has laid off 13 people, about a third of their employees.
Jaxtr has raised a total of $21.5 Million, about half of that this June. As such, they seem to be in a good position, as long as they keep costs contained for a while. I like Jaxtr, I think they have a great product, and am pulling for them to come out strong on the other side.
Per a Valleywag tipster, Yahoo is about to cut 3.5K jobs in early December. The job cuts have long been rumored, but the number sounds higher than earlier guesses.
What seems a bad move - the layoffs are going to be announced within a week of an over-the-top holiday party. And, of course, there are rumors that the severance packages will be pathetic.
Not I'm normally ok with holiday parties - layoffs are exactly when you need to put something else up to boost up the morale of remaining employees. LifeScan, a Johnson & Johnson company, did this while I was there, after their first layoff in almost a decade. But the timing isn't good. And, of course, if severance packages are bad, this reflects poorly indeed on the judgement of the executive team.
Most of the layoffs are rumored to be in Finance and Sales/ GA.
Yahooooooooo
About a week earlier, Silicon Valley-based law firm HellerEhrman had started shutting down, laying off everyone. Given that HellerEhrman had grown to quite a position of strength over the 2001 - 2007 period, this is a bit hard.
Their website now seems to reflect that they've completely exited. The screenshot below is all you will see if you go to http://www.hellerehrman.com/en/.
The Placement Opportunities link takes you to a page with a list of firms hiring, as well as placement firms.
Poignantly funny - check out the Disclaimer they have on the Placement Opportunities page. Yes, this used to be a law firm.
Mountain View P2P company SkyRider, yet another Sequoia portfolio company, seems to be shutting down. Its all still a rumor!
Adbrite, another Sequoia portfolio company, is feeling the pressure of Sequoia's doom-and-gloom lecture, and is laying off 40 of its 100 people, including the VPs of Finance and Marketing.
San Francisco-based Adbrite, which was spun out of Philip Kaplan's FuckedCompany.com half a decade ago, has $35 Million in funding, and made almost the same amount in revenues in 2007. They are one of the top ad networks, serving over One Beellionn ads. But the coming ad slowdown is going to affect them, no doubt. Adbrite folks think they'll come to about break-even after these layoffs, but my guess is they'll stay below profitability for a while.
Latin American favorite Hi5, which lags behind MySpace and FaceBook but has figured out a nice growth strategy, has asked 15 - 20 of its 100+ employees to leave. Thats sad, I know some very good folks there.
Too many layoff and shut-down announcements coming too close to each other. This is starting to get depressing. Again, hope these companies protect the remaining jobs by managing their cash flow more closely.
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