October 6, 2006
Telecom Industry Layoffs
A couple of disturbing articles on layoffs in the mobile industry today. The first, are gloomy predictions published on Om Malik's blog :
100,000 will soon be fired in our industry, including well over 30,000 at Deutsche Telecom and tens of thousands more at Alcatel Lucent, Nokia Siemens, and AT&T BellSouth.
Many of those fired, especially older folk, will never find a decent job again. Klaus Kleinfeld and other Siemens executives are giving up 5 million euros in pay increases to enhance the fund for fired ex-Siemens workers at BenQ, after a massive public outcry led by German clergy. Few other CEOs are likely to follow that example.
And The Guardian, reports on a mammoth restructuring of Vodafone's UK-based global marketing division. Under a cost-cutting plan announced earlier in the year, roughly 200 of the company's 500 marketing people were to leave.
Though it's unclear whether Graeme Ferguson, Vodafone's global head of content development's departure is a direct result of the cull, The Guardian reports Mr Ferguson last year urged an audience of game developers to stop making "crap" film tie-in games because "consumers aren't mugs" and such games do not sell."
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