Step 1: Give
an assload of dough. She's the one in the middle with her arm around Newt Gingrich.
Step 2: Fire an assload of people as clumsily as possible.
The "Disgusting" Way AOL Supposedly Fired People Yesterday
Nicholas Carlson
An ex-AOLer reached us this morning to say he thought it was "disgusting" the way AOL handled layoffs yesterday.
According to this guy, people got fired in groups of 20 to 30.
Source:Managers had no clue if anyone on their teams were getting laid off. They were called into a separate meeting as a diversion, and then those being laid off were called into another and axed in a big group setting.
They pulled 20-30 people into a conference room and told them they "Don't have roles at aol anymore." [Severance is] 1 week for every year worked.
It's really quite appalling.
Step 3: Issue a a memo apparently written by robots programmed with nothing but Buzzspeak Bingo vocabulary that speaks inspiringly about branding and hyperlocality but fails to mention the massive fucking layoffs that are happening at that exact moment and are (I'm just guessing here) going to be the complete front-and-center focus of every actual living human at AOL, except by noting obliquely and fleetingly that management sorta regrets having to feed so many people to the rats (all emphasis added by me.)
From: Armstrong, Tim
Sent: Thursday, March 10, 2011 5:46 PM
To: Armstrong, Tim
Subject: AOL's Next Step
AOLers -
Today is the next critical step on the comeback trail for AOL. We are creating a next generation hyper-local, national and global media company, and every action we've taken since AOL became an independent company has taken us further down that path. Our strategy remains clear: create high quality content experiences for consumers, at scale. As the digital landscape quickly evolves, so must our business, and we must continue to transform our organizational structure to one that works for today’s Internet.
Today, we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth. The structure will also impact areas of our team -- making the decision to reduce staff levels is a necessary part of rebalancing our workforce...
...
AOL is a global brand and a global opportunity and we are doing the hard work that will once again make the company an industry leader.
...
There are three important aspects to the structural changes we are making today. ... The third is our shift from India being a business process center to India being a consumer products group focused on the APAC market.
New Structure: Investing in our Brand Portfolio
AOL’s brand portfolio...
...an AOL brand architecture...
...build best-in-class brands...
AOL’s brands are measured with a consistent set of criteria...
...will continue the brand refinement process over time...
AOL will have four areas of significant brands...
We have a clear path to brand success...
...turbo-charged with the addition of the Huffington Post to our brand portfolio...
(driftglass aside/ In my head, this was the precise point where that thing happen when you have repeated a common word over and over to the point where it momentarily becomes complete meaninglessness and I started to ask myself, "Wait a minute, is 'brand' even a word?" Because by now it has started to sound so weird -- "Brand"..."Brand"..."Brand" -- that I worry that it is really some sort of trance-inducing, semi-subliminal, thought-clouding incantation and I have been cleverly ensorcelled into thinking that "Brand" was once-upon-a-time, in fact, a word with a definition and an origin and everything when is instead obviously just a dead, empty syllable banging against the window in the wind. Corporate glossolalia. "Brand"..."Brand"..."Brand". See what I mean? Just fucking gibberish. Which, I suspect, was sort of the point./ End driftglass aside.)
We have an AOL brand that enjoys 99% brand awareness...It goes on...and on, but I haven't the heart.
...our commitment to reinvigorating the AOL Brand...
...begin to shift brand perception of AOL...
...named as one of the top 50 brands...
...continue to invest in the AOL Brand...
...support best-in-class brands...
Step 4 (Still top-secret and TBA): Reset the every clock in the world to 1994.
Step 5: Sit back and watch the underpants gnomes poop out one million ingots of solid WIN!
More HuffingJoy consolidated here.
15 comments:
Laid off in groups of 20-30? Um, what's unusual about that? Were these people expecting grief counselors?
From 1988-200? I worked with over 7,000 clients, writing resumes, cover letters and related materials. What happened to these AOLers is pretty much par for the course.
Not saying it's a good way to handle lay offs, just that hardly any employers make any effort to soften the blow. Corporate America is run by Team Asshole, always has been and, given the way the Dems bend over for Wall Street, I'm guessing it will always be that way.
Brand - perhaps the prototypical weasel word. Works the best when it says the least. On a related note, I heartily recommend Don Watson's "Death Sentences," a thorough evisceration of mgmt-speak and its insidious creep up into all of our grilles. I think another entire book could be written about the "brand" marketing approach to national politics of recent years (see: Obama, Barack), but I'll leave that to Naomi Klein. As to the layoffs and the methodology thereof, that's how it's gone for most layoffees for a long, long time. It just flies under the radar much more stealthily when it's happening to $8/hr temp workers in a factory. The difference now is that what was once the fare of Joe Schmoekowicz now sits in front of the Johnny Ithoughtiwassomebodies of the world.
The AOL "brand" is nothing but a joke to most of the world. Adding a Tabloid gossip magazine won't help them.
I was herded into an auditorium with 400 people, we were all fed mediocre sandwiches then told our facility was being closed and we were all out of a job.
Groups of 20-30 sounds positively luxurious by the fuck-you standards of Corporate America.
When I was laid off at Westinghouse in 1992, which was the fifth and final layoff before the attempted sale of the company (which took two more years to accomplish with the govt's okay), my group of unknown number was approached by various management and told that they could go home then.
No severance was offered if you weren't a manager.
Quite a shock to engineers who had worked there on average for over 10 years. I had been there 14 after being recruited from a company that was still in business. (But no one was hiring then.)
See what a good deal they really got?
Lucky for them this is not the end of the Cold War (or hot).
"Brand" always makes me think of Christopher Llyod's character in that Amazing Stories episode taunting "Mr. Braaaaand!" Except that AOL is much more evil.
Liked the post. Liked the comments more.
If you don't like corporatism, don't apply for jobs at corporations. They suck.
Taylor Wray: That's easy for YOU to say, since you obviously don't have to pay for food, rent, care & fuel, Kid's clothes & other necessities. Must be nice.
Perhaps if you replace the word 'brand' with the word 'failure' the repetition would have more meaning.
I guess this repetitious emphasis on branding is to be expected in an organization that knows most of its customers are lame, but has not yet figured out that the management makes the customers look like wizards.
Looks like the asshole who wrote the memo went to the Lee Abrams school of bullshit memo writing.
Short selling your adjectives in a down market
Driftglass, I love you, man.
we are announcing an organizational structure that will significantly improve AOL’s ability to focus on growth.
Much easier to have "growth" when your office consists of 3 dudes, a telephone, and a 9600 baud modem.
lets remember that a "brand" was, and still in a way is something burned into the skin of cattle with a red hot piece of metal to show who owns the right to fatten them up and slaughter them to sell the meat.
Reading you always reassures me that somebody is still using this language to make sense. It happens so rarely these days I sometimes forget what it's like. Find myself thinking I might as well learn Spanish because English native speakers talk nothing but gibberish anymore.
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