AOL Cutting 2000 Additional Jobs

butterwise writes "AOL plans to cut 2,000 jobs, or 20 percent of its worldwide workforce, as the Internet division focuses on advertising sales to make up for subscriber losses. 'The latest cuts will pare AOL's staff to 8,000, down from about 18,000 employees in 2001, when the company bought New-York based Time Warner for $124 billion. The combination led to $100 billion in losses and a more than 60 percent drop in Time Warner's stock as customers dropped dial-up Web access.'"

Actually slightly surprised

[damn_registrars]

more than 60 percent drop in Time Warner's stock as customers dropped dial-up Web access.

Am I the only person surprised to see this? Considering AOL used to be the top ISP in the country (IIRC), and now the cable companies are instead (like Time Warner), I would have expected that AOL-TimeWarner would have broken even on the deal. Or maybe even come out ahead, considering how much more they can charge for high speed cable modem access, with presumably an easier network to maintain than the phone network that is otherwise beyond their control.

I don't think there was any great exodus of AOL customers switching to satellite for internet service or anything...

AOL - a Web 2.0 company!

[Animats]

AOL just needs to promote itself as a "Web 2.0" company. They are, after all. Social networking? Definitely, they were there at the beginning. User-contributed content? Yes, they have that. Interactive client? Yes, AOL has that too. Mashups on the home page? Yes! Mobile phone capable? Of course. They even had virtual worlds with avatars, back in their Q-Link days.

Re:People still use AOL?

[BiggyP]

Yep, people still use AOL for the same reasons that people still use Windows, they'd terrified of change, for these poor souls their entire experience of the Internet is just what AOL and it's massively bloated software suite has presented them with. Hopefully these users will feel suitably alienated and outraged by change in upcoming versions of the AOL software that they'll consider a move to something less proprietary and start to experience the internet the same way everyone else does.

Oddly enough, even when it's quite blatantly obvious, AOL users are often hesitant to blame the AOL browser and crapware for dreadful system performance and are happy to pay through the nose for bandwidth upgrades that they never see any benefit from...

AOL should have called it a day already

[GnarlyDoug]

There is a problem with organizations. They seek to perpetuate themselves long after their purpose has been met. In AOL's case they made a metric a**-ton of money in the early days of the internet. Now, instead of distributing all that money and selling off divisions when the business model no longer was very viable and sending everybody home rich, they blew it all on trying to buy a new lease on life with Time-Warner.

This idea that once an organization or business has been created that it should try to exist for the rest of eternity is stupid. Folding before you have uselessly expended all of your capital when you no longer have a viable business model and you are not structured in a manner that allows you to change business models (very hard to do), is not only smart, but it is a fudiciary duty. Throwing all that money away on a long-shot gamble to simply continue existing is silly.

Re:Obligatory:

[cHiphead]

I used to work at AOL. I agree with every part except the last part. Time Warner related execs should've all been f'ing fired for letting AOL "buy" them with a merger of overvalued stock options in the first place. AOL had its chance to turn things completely around but the pointy hairs in charge wouldn't listen one bit to reason or common sense, the p-o-s aol 'client' was too precious to do away with due to its perceived 'value' to the marketing and advertising data mining. Ah the sweet irony of their crash and burn, just took a few years longer than expected.

Frankly, Silicon Valley can go f*ck itself as far as the rest of us geeks with (somewhat) affordable housing is concerned. ;)

I wish Google would just buy AOL out already, it'd be a real fire sale in terms of the value of the user correlated data mining.

Cheers.

Re:TW are Idiots and they Killed AOL.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno about that. I remember, back late 2002-03, hearing a dev manager at AOL mentioning that he thought "broadband might turn out to be one of those 'disruptive technologies'."

2002!

Re:Here's to hoping they eliminate the other 80%

[archen]

Heh, they had cool CD cases for a while too. I think I still have the tin ones. I got a weird wooden one from my boss who didn't want it. So I use that to carry around my "action pack" CDs to unfuck people's computers. The look on peoples faces when I bring out that case is priceless: "Dude I asked you to fix my computer. You're going to fix my computer with AOL 9.0?"

Re:fun times tomorrow

[ScrewMaster]

Back in 1985 or so, I worked for a software house (video games and educational software, as it happened) and due to a number of factors which can be conveniently lumped under "bad management", they had to institute massive layoffs. "Black Monday" we called it. No warning, no hint of anything to come ... just "there'll be a meeting at 9:00." As we were heading towards the meeting room, our manager pulled me and another programmer aside and said, "Not you two. See me after the meeting." So we went back to our desks and waited, figuring that we were about to get fired or something. Whatever it was, it couldn't be good. But next thing you know, another one of the guys I'd worked with came back from the meeting. Didn't say a word, just made a motion like he was swinging an axe.

In one swell foop, they killed off at least four fifths of the staff: programming, art and animation support, quality assurance, sales, marketing ... all gone. For my part, I was expected to not only continue my current projects, but to also take over the work of half a dozen others. "You have to work 100 hours a week! We have commitments!" I was told. I pointed out that they should have thought of that before they laid off everybody. I lasted another six months ... couldn't take the pressure. One week I worked straight through from Monday morning to Friday afternoon (I went home for an occasional shower and came right back) and my supervisor told me that if I got the product into QC by Friday I could take the next Monday off. So I did, and the bastard tried to renege on the deal. I took it off anyway: being fired didn't seem so bad right about then. As it happened, when I showed up for work the following Tuesday all he said was, "How was your day off?"

I did notice, however, that not a single manager was let go, even though we really didn't need them anymore (ha, nobody to manage.) More to the point, those were the very people that ran the company into the ground. Yet it was the rest of us, the folks that actually created and sold the company's products, who paid the price for their incompetence. Typical, I suppose, but it explains why American businesses seem to be so full of fools and nitwits nowadays.

One late night, me and the other programmer who was kept snuck into the CEO's office, just to see what it was like on the other side. It was unbelievable: very well-appointed, shall we say, On top of that, through a door in the back we found a complete private sauna and jacuzzi! Wasn't like it was his company: he was just hired by the parent corporation to run the place. Spent money like water though.

Last I heard, they'd moved to California and were selling Activision game cartridges.