You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone - Al Capone
|
|
|
RIM announces job cuts
CANADIAN GADGET MAKER Research in Motion (RIM) has decided that it needs fewer staff for its purposes and will release around two thousand of its employees back into the wild.
This might sound like a blessed release, after all the firm was recently accused of running a sweat shop with Soviet-era like working conditions, but it could be indicative of deeper problems.
Perhaps not, though. According to RIM these are not redundancies, they are part of a cost optimisation programme. This is a nice piece of semantics of course, and has been designed to be lighter on the ear than saying it's "a job centre queue optimisation programme", or a "I don't care, just get them out of my sight programme".
"In addition to the management changes outlined above, RIM today provided further details on its cost optimization program, which is focused on eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources to focus on areas that offer the highest growth opportunities and alignment with RIM's strategic objectives," said the firm in a statement.
"The workforce reduction is believed to be a prudent and necessary step for the long term success of the company and it follows an extended period of rapid growth within the company whereby the workforce had nearly quadrupled in the last five years alone. As part of this broad effort, RIM is reducing its global workforce across all functions by approximately 2,000 employees."
The company is not rushing to reveal which staff will go, and for now has only said that it will start telling workers whether they should contribute to any leaving card donations or just wait to pick up their own, later this week.
As well as polishing the boot that will expedite the departure of some 11 per cent of the company's staff, RIM's COO, Don Morrison is also planning to retire. µ
Tags: Hardware
Share this:
Share
RIM Jobs Trim Down
p.s. @Gray one - you obviously forgot to come up for air...
They have more staff than is needed for R&D and operations and even sales, so they clearly have low-level jobs and manufacturing plants. Now whilst most contract out to some Chinese company to manufacture, can they afford to cut much in that area without affecting there govermental clearances they have. In a way that is there core business, govermental contracts.
But a external audit would do wonders, if they listerned and the culture they have is from experence first hand extreemly nepatistic and descrimatory unless you play all the silly PR games instead of actualy doing the work. In that they have lost alot of good people and now won't be getting any more for a while until they sort there house out.
RIM still has a future; and QNX despite what some say was a realy good astute move and those fruits will come to fruition if they stick with it. Alas there a listered company and as such exposed to public opinion and banks who we all know act realy responsible. But if you look at the asset value of RIM and there capital, the share price cant realy go any lower without being exposed to asset stripping; Albeit dressed differently thesedays due to laws, but it happens.
Now if Google don't buy them i'm sure Oracle might sniff for there empire.
I'm also sure if Mr Murdoch showed an interest them people would wake up fast, it could happen.
But alas there are a lot of longstanding individuals who either have there heads up there ass or somebody else's and that has only grown over time. Sadly it won't be those who pay the piper in these 2000 and more good workers will be lost.
I would love to know how what the percentage of marketing/sales people they have in realtion to the total size of the company and in that I mean all people not involved in producing/supporting the product.
But to compare the working enviroment to "a sweat shop with Soviet-era like working conditions" is a insult towards russia. It also depends on what office you work in. Rule of thumb is are the coffee machines etc the same in all locations and upto a comparable standard.
Either way it does somehow point to some epic failures made by HR for a company to be that bad to work in.
One pondering question, has anybodies RIM email account ever been hacked; And what would be the implecations if it was. With that many disfunctional people in one place you can bet alot of oversights and mistakes and mismanagments happened. They have direct links to all telo's they support, and many other weak links. But hey - if it had of happened, would RIM managment even know or have a clue if they had been, I garantee that the answear is no if it wasn't made public; But thats the case with alot of companies nowadays due to managment being technicaly out of touch }- .
...that never stops being funny
If this article was in a tabloid newspaper, would the headline probably be "RIM jobs cut"?
Sorry, I thought it was funny...