Since most of us are seniors I decided to look at the job market, to see what to expect. As we know the economic crisis is effecting small companies and the largest companies. I came accross an article at computerworld.com discussing one of the biggest IT companies in the industry.
The article discusses Yahoo’s recent financial issues. Yahoo announced that it will lay off at least 10% of its global staff before the end of the year. The layoffs are the major portion of Yahoo’s $400 million dollar expense cutting plan which includes measures for achieving their goal for structural efficiencies. Revenue for the third quarter increased only 1% to $1.768 billion compared with 2007’s 3rd quarter. Net income came in at $54 million down from net income of $151 million in 2007's third quarter. The fourth-quarter staff cuts will be this year's second wave of layoffs for Yahoo, which let go 1,000 employees in February. Yahoo ended the third quarter with 15,200 employees, which means that at least 1,520 of them will lose their jobs between now and the end of the year.
Yahoo also plans to save money by relocating operations to places where it's cheaper to do business, consolidating its real estate, improving procurement and seeking efficiencies in its technology platform. Cost-cutting efforts will continue next year. In addition, Yahoo's plunging stock price and the sagging revenue will start the criticism from doubters who blame Yahoo’s CEO and Yahoo's board for causing the collapse of Microsoft’s attempts to buy the company earlier this year. In May, after a three-month pursuit, Microsoft walked away from the deal after a $33 per share offer was rejected by Yahoo's board, which sought a $37 per share offer. Yahoo's stock closed at $12.07 per share on Tuesday.
Yahoo's results look really bad when compared to its rival Google who reported solid third-quarter results last week. The evolution of the search engine market led to Yahoo's problems. If Yahoo had remained competitive in search, it would be generating significantly more revenue from search advertising. Financial and industry analysts agree that over the past five years, Yahoo has lost its technology edge, which has caused it to miss major growth opportunities in areas like search, online video, blogging, syndicated feeds and social networking. Recent rumors have floated about a possible Yahoo-AOL merger. While that deal would give Yahoo a quick market share and revenue boost, industry experts are suspect about whether it would fix Yahoo's problems.
This goes to show that no job is 100% safe right now. It use to be said that those students with majors dealing with technology will always have jobs. Im sure that we will be able to find a job, but after looking at this, it seems as if it may be a little less to choose from. Yahoo isnt the only one suffering. I read an article about Microsoft showing that there profits are down. Which they think is somewhat due to the decreased amount of pc sales to businesses since they are closing.
ReplyDeleteI just hope that by the time I graduate, that the job market will be back to normal.
How awesome is it that we are about to graduate. When I graduate from a 2 year college in 2001; September 11 just happened and the economy went to crap. That was my reasoning for coming back to school. Maybe I should look into graduate school. Maybe then the economy will be decent!
ReplyDeleteNice post Jabari. The job market as of right now is crap, but at least there will always be a need for IT professionals in any type of business. Luckily, I have another year or so until I graduate so maybe this economy won't have such a dire effect on me.
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