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.

[GeronL]

I thought colleges that recieved public dollars were banned from getting involved in politics??

They should be!

[GeronL]

hahaha, yup.

They wanna hold yer hand....

[BurbankKarl]

my buddy heard from a tech that SBC is losing 10,000 landlines a month.....due to people dumping their home phones

[Hank Rearden]

AOL is the internet on training wheels.

It's the Internet on welded-on training wheels! Is it possible yet to trash all the "let us help you" crap and just use the net?

Haven't seen AOL in years on anybody's computer, but it really sucked the last time I did see it. No wonder it's dying.

[Fledermaus]

I bet "they got mail" they didn't want to hear!

[Fledermaus]

Compuserve used to be a remarkable service and paved the way for what we see today. The concept of professionals and others hosting forums was fantastic. There wasn't anything left out - finance, tech stuff, politics, (porn too! lol), etc.

And it was the one of the first services to start upgrading modems and going to unlimited monthly service.

I'm still surprised AOL keeps it barely alive. I used to be able to use many of the old Compuserve services after I left with an AOL IM account name. But they've limited that to a few forums and one chat channel. And they consolidated their 7 chat channels into only 2. One general which doesn't allow the language, filth, etc. And one where almost anything goes. And I think they kept an "Imtimate" channel.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

The only reason they had such market share with adults was that their setup and connection software was far easier for the novice than setting up dial up with IP addresses and configuring Email servers, etc.

Now that internet users are getting older, the kids are smarter, and the software is better.. less are signing up and many left for greener pastures. Also, they were always the MOST expensive and really blew the broadband issue.

Without any other knowledge, I determined that the management was terrible. Plus, they are part of Time Warner.

I hope they go down hard.

[At _War_With_Liberals]

Being on their network is similar to being a slave.

[stands2reason]

Is tech help free there? I've heard different things...

[ican'tbelieveit]

Did you have a "traitor" feeling about that Time reporter doing that report with the "opposition" in Iraq?

[Graybeard58]

my buddy heard from a tech that SBC is losing 10,000 landlines a month

Gave mine up about 6 months ago. Now I want them to come get their ugly wires off my house.

[A CA Guy]

The company is dying anyway. This was just one of many waves as it loses most of it's remaining value...IMO!

Unless you are a world traveler, there is no benefit to this service unless you LOVE ads.

[Cicero]

I'm still surprised AOL keeps it barely alive

I'm told by people who know that AOL will always keep CompuServe Classic alive (CS4.02 and CS2.6.1, using different phone nodes from AOL) because there are some businesses who use it for their mail programs and for whatever reason are unwilling or unable to use CS2000 or AOL. But they have ceased development on any of the CS clients, and the beta forum has closed down.

A few of the old forums are still there. I'm a sysop in one of them, actually, which I sort of edged into because, as you say, CompuServe used to be such a great place to ask and answer technical questions. You can still get expert advice there, although it is gradually fading away.