So long Kops, thanks for all the umm… rols?

Talk about being hit by lightning. On Tuesday night I was told that the Koprol team at Yahoo! had been building what was going to be Koprol 2.0, a major reimagining of Koprol. The six month work had delivered something that would have been a much better product. It was going to be a leaner and more focused Koprol. On Wednesday morning, I went to Yahoo! Indonesia’s offices to find out what it was all about and later put everything in this blog post. And then this happened.

The layoffs were coming. Yahoo! CEO Scott Thompson announced it a couple of days ago and Sarah Lacy heard that the International Yahoos were likely to be hit the hardest. Former developer lead Michael “Smitty” Smith Jr. penned a post of his own last weekend about this entire situation. Sources told Reuters that Yahoo is going to have an all hands meeting on Tuesday about the future of the company.

Continue reading So long Kops, thanks for all the umm… rols?

Layoffs hit Yahoo! Indonesia, Development Team Available for Work

It’s awkward that yesterday we posted a great news about Koprol, only to find out a few hours later that Yahoo! slashed the whole development team leaving the new Koprol high and dry. It’s inevitable for Yahoo! to make serious measurements in the way they do business, and as a part of that process Yahoo! has to let go 2000 people worldwide.

Product team is said to be the most affected by these layoffs, and since Yahoo! is no longer focusing on product, letting go their engineers just makes perfect sense. And Yahoo! Indonesia is no exception, where almost all members of the product team were given the pink slips. These people are web developers, designers, mobile programmers etc, and I’ll say this: Yahoo! Indonesia had the best engineers for Internet products. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean anything for the product team.

Continue reading Layoffs hit Yahoo! Indonesia, Development Team Available for Work

PHK Massal Microsoft Gelombang Kedua

Hari ini CEO Microsoft, Steve Ballmer menginformasikan kepada karyawannya mengenai rencana PHK massal (layoff) via email. Dalam email tersebut Ballmer menyatakan akan mengurangi hingga 5000 posisi sampai tahun Juni 2010. Ternyata rumor itu benar adanya.

Memang tidak mudah untuk melakukan PHK terhadap karyawan yang loyal, namun agaknya hal ini merupakan konsekuensi dari krisis ekonomi global yang melanda banyak perusahaan-perusahaan besar. Berikut isi memo dari Ballmer kepada para karyawan Microsoft.

From: Steve Ballmer
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:43 AM
To: Microsoft – All Employees (QBDG)
Subject: Update: Realigning Resources and Reducing Costs

In January, in response to the global economic downturn, I announced our plan to adjust the company’s cost structure through spending reductions and job eliminations. Today, we are implementing the second phase of this plan.

This is difficult news to share. Because our success at Microsoft has always been the direct result of the talent, hard work, and commitment of our people, eliminating positions is hard.

Today’s action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the U.S., affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it’s important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.

As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.

For those of you directly affected by today’s announcement, I want to thank you for your contribution to Microsoft and assure you that we will continue to provide support as we did during the previous job eliminations.

And for everyone across the company, I want to reemphasize how much I appreciate the way you have pulled together to help the company respond to this difficult economic environment. There’s no doubt that these are very challenging times. But together, we are making the right choices to ensure that we will continue to deliver great products and position ourselves for strong future growth and profitability.

Thank you for your continued hard work, commitment, and focus.

Steve

Microsoft & Digg Lakukan Pemecatan

Dan rumor itu pun terbukti. Hari ini Microsoft mengumumkan pemecatan 1400 karyawannya di Redmond. Melalui email yang dikirim Steve Ballmer (CEO Microsoft) kepada karyawan-karyawannya, Microsoft menyatakan dengan berat hati harus merelakan para karyawan yang sudah mengabdi di Microsoft beberapa tahun terakhir, termasuk pada masa-masa jaya Microsoft. 1400 orang yang dipecat ini merupakan korban awal dari Microsoft yang merencakan untuk melepas 5000 karyawannya sampai akhir 2009.

Para karyawan dari bagian R&D, Marketing, Sales, Finance, Legal, HRD, dan bahkan divisi IT tak luput dari pemecatan hari ini yang sebagian besar merupakan karyawan di markas Microsoft di Redmond.

Tak sendiri, Digg juga hari ini mengumumkan pemecatan 7 orang karyawannya. Digg yang didirikan oleh Kevin Rose dan Jay Adelson melalui blognya menyatakan bahwa mereka ingin mendatangkan profit bagi digg tahun ini dan strategi yang ditempuh adalah dengan mendatangkan tenaga sales yang lebih memadai, untuk membuat kerjasamanya dengan Microsoft lebih menghasilkan.

Forbes Pecat 9 Karyawan & Merger

Forbes telah memecat 19 pekerjanya hari ini dan mengumumkan penggabungan bagian Forbes Magazine dengan Forbes.com (online). Merger ini dilakukan Forbes akibat dampak krisis ekonomi global, sehingga harus mengurangi biaya operasional. Dengan langkah ini para jurnalis di Forbes Magazine secara otomatis juga menjadi jurnalis di Forbes.com. Proses re-strukturisasi staff editorial ini diyakini mampu memaksimalkan konten baik majalah maupun online kepada 40 juta pembacanya di seluruh penjuru dunia.