450 laid off at AOL headquarters as company restructures away from dial-up Internet

[OhioChick]

Published: December 13, 2006

McLEAN, Virginia: About 450 workers at the Dulles headquarters of AOL were laid off Wednesday as the company continues restructuring away from its traditional roots as a subscription-based provider of dial-up Internet access.

AOL announced in August that it planned to cut about 5,000 jobs — or roughly a fourth of its global workforce — as it embarked on major changes designed to shift the company's revenue stream from subscription fees to online advertising. Many of AOL's key features, like e-mail accounts, are now available for free.

AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein said Wednesday's layoffs essentially represent the final round of job cuts.

Worldwide layoffs roughly matched the 5,000 figure cited back in August, but fewer of the cuts came at the Dulles headquarters than had been anticipated. In all, about 500 were laid off in northern Virginia, compared to initial estimates of about 1,000.

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/12/13/business/NA_FIN_COM_US_AOL_Job_Cuts.php

[Virginia Dare]

1. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays ya'll...

hopefully for their sake most of those folks got in while they were practically giving away the stock.

[Megahurtz]

2. And yet More Bite the Dust.

[A HERETIC I AM]

3. This can't possibly be a shock to anyone, ESPECIALLY those being laid off....

This writing has been on the wall for so long and in such large letters you would have had to been blind not to see it.

AOL sucks, to be sure but they did what they did fairly well (providing internet service to most of America relatively cheaply) and the advent of broadband in most locales was inevitably going to push them away from the dial-up servers they had in every little town.

[KatyaR]

4. They're closing the entire call center here in OKC--900 employees

by the end of January, I think.

Not a good holiday for many this year.

[VegasWolf]

5. What is a dial-up connection? Is that something from the Jurassic Age? nt

[superconnected]

6. What a time to announce it, 1 1/2 weeks til Christmas.

[mcscajun]

7. Most corporate layoffs come at the end of a quarter.

So management can report good results. :puke:

I've been on the wrong end of layoffs, restructurings, outsourcing and offshoring over the course of my career; one was even just in time for the holidays (my last day in that case was literally New Year's Eve.) For anyone in the corporate world who pays attention to the internal atmosphere, they are "sniffable" elements in the corporate wind.