AOL lays off 450 California employees (or 50% of its online workers in CA)

News.com ^ | 12/09/03 | Paul Festa

[BurbankKarl]

In an attempt to streamline its business, America Online on Tuesday consolidated its California operations, cutting about half its software development positions and shuttering two offices.

Of the 450 people who lost their California jobs, 375 were in Mountain View, 50 in San Francisco, and 25 in San Diego. The layoffs affect more than 2 percent of the company's total work force of about 19,000 employees.

AOL offered 100 of the affected workers employment in its Dulles, Va., and White Plains, N.Y., offices. No senior management positions were included in the layoffs.

AOL said the San Francisco and San Diego development offices will close by the end of the year. About 75 developers will remain in AOL's Irvine office for southern California, and about 300 will remain in Mountain View in Silicon Valley, in the northern part of the state.

AOL said the laid-off developers were working on a broad range of projects including streaming media, electronic wallets and address books.

Remaining developers were concentrated in projects such as voice services, calendars, radio and AOL Communicator.

A company representative said the layoffs were part of AOL's ongoing efforts to manage costs.

AOL in July laid off 50 developers at its Mountain View-based Netscape Communications unit. The company has been under intense pressure to improve its performance after dragging down the earnings and stock price of Time Warner, which merged with AOL to become AOL Time Warner before dropping AOL from its name this year.

[ambrose]

I must get a new "two free months!" CD sent to me every other week...

[GeronL]

They could get the same work done cheaper in Alabama =o)

[Ciexyz]

My sympathies to those losing their jobs.

[Cicero]

My sympathies for the workers, too. I used to know some of the techies at CompuServe, and still keep up with a few of them. It was a sad business when they got taken over by AOL.

As far as I can see, real software development has practically ceased there, except for changing the bells and whistles. And AOL never did good software work in the first place. Not to get into proprietary details, their beta testing is a laugh. They were too busy figuring out how to squeeze in more ads.

[Beck_isright]

Not a loss. If they laid off all 19,000 the company might actually improve.

[lelio]

They could get the same work done cheaper in Alabama

Too expensive. Try India.

[gcruse]

I got notice that Netscape is coming out as an ISP.
AOL is getting weird.

[GeronL]

I'm sorry Mr.CEO, I should have known better

[GeronL]

Will the Netscape ISP be a cut rate one like NetZero? Is the competition getting hard for AOL??

[gcruse]

The notice I got was unlimited usage for $9.95 a month. It's actually a good deal. If I didn't have so much invested in my ATT addy, it would be tempting.

[RIGHT IN LAS VEGAS]

They're still in business?

Who would use such c*@p

[GeronL]

Sounds like NetZero and some of the other companies.. they offer straight internet and not all those annoying addatives AOL thrusts upon people. Its probably MORE profitable too.

I used the 2 free months from AOL and then paid for a year of NetZero...

[Amerigomag]

Who would use such c*@p

A whole lot of folks who couldn't spell computer when they bought one.

My guess is that one in 10,000 people who utilize computers feel they are minimally, technically competent. One in 50,000 might be.

[winker]

Lets see, the stock market taps 10,000 today, SBC lays off 4000, and now AOL lays off 450. Did I miss the turnaround in the economy?

[Tamzee]

AOL Time Warner is the top contributor to the Howard Dean campaign:

---

HOWARD DEAN (D)
Top Contributors

Cycle: AOL Time Warner
$61,975

University of California
$54,874

Microsoft Corp
$25,100

IBM Corp
$23,750

Harvard University
$22,650

Dean for America
$19,893

Goldman Sachs
$16,500

Emory University
$16,050

University of Pennsylvania
$15,500

Skadden, Arps et al
$15,449

Stanford University
$15,000

Citigroup Inc
$14,100

Dartmouth College
$13,750

Hewlett-Packard
$12,850

McKenna, Long & Aldridge
$12,700

State of Vermont
$12,680

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
$12,500

University of Texas
$12,299

Morgan Stanley
$11,450

Walt Disney Co
$11,450




* All Cycles displays total contributions to this candidate's federal campaigns since the 1989-1990 election cycle.

[CounterCounterCulture]

AOL = Always Off Line

[Looking4Truth]

AOL = Always Off Line

Don't forget "AO-Hell". As another poster pointed out, their software is junk. I don't know how many problems I fixed when I did computer consulting that were caused by AO-Hell installations. Of course they were Windoze based PC's which usually crashed if you looked at them wrong anyway.

[Siegfried]

AOL is the internet on training wheels.

;}

[CT]

Funny, I was just thinking about suggesting that those of us on AOL start a campaign to change providers.

AOL is part of Time Warner. Time magazine just did the story on the Iraq terrorists. Real close.

As a part of my suggestion, I was thinking maybe we at FR could create our own ISP.

Hell, I only use AOL to come here, he he. Might as well pass them by, and keep money away from them to boot.

Anyone else thinking the same?

Maybe Jim Rob could take FR to a higher level than he already has.