Items tagged with jobs
It could end up being a tough summer for some Microsoft employees, depending on how things shake out. It is being reported that Microsoft is planning an internal reorganization that could see the Redmond outfit laying off employees. While details are rather scarce at the moment, it is said that layoffs could occur early this week, possibly starting with today, one day before America at large celebrates Independence Day.According to Mary Jo Foley at ZDNet, Microsoft's sales team is likely to be the hardest hit by the layoffs. That is due in part to Microsoft focusing its reorganization effort on improving the way it sells its cloud software and services, such as Azure. Like many companies, Microsoft...
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Scoot your booty, LinkedIn, and make room for Facebook. The latter is encroaching on the former's territory by testing a new feature that allows administrators of business Pages to post job listings in search of new hires. Admins can also receive applications from potential job candidates, giving business even more incentive to concentrate their social media efforts on the largest social playground on the planet."Based on behavior we've seen on Facebook, where many small businesses post about their job openings on their Page, we're running a test for Page admins to create job posts and receive applications from candidates," a Facebook spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch after it noticed...
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Nobody should feign surprise that robots are taking over. A new report by market research firm Forrrester predicts that robots will terminate 6 percent of jobs in the United States by 2021, jobs that were previously held by flesh and blood workers. To expect anything less would be naive, as collectively we're the fools who put this all in motion. Think about it. We used our highly evolved brains (comparatively speaking) to create these awesome and complex machines, then we gave them artificial intelligence. We even glorified their capabilities in Hollywood films, a practice that dates back to when flicks were broadcast in black and white. And to top it off, we arrogantly celebrated the culmination...
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Microsoft might be trying just a little too hard to identify with today's youth by throwing down lingo that comes off as wildly inappropriate and cringe worthy from a professional entity. Hey, we're all for letting incoming interns know that there's a party going on and there will be beer pong, but referring to recruits as "bae intern" complete with a heart emoticon is where we have to draw the line. Not that it matters, because Microsoft stumbled over it in embarrassing fashion and is now apologizing. It all started when Microsoft sent out an email inviting San Francisco Bay Area interns to an exclusive party. The invitation began with "HEY BAE INTERN! <3" in bold, pink text and went on to...
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The smartphone sector is a place where are giants are born and, in some cases, eventually fall on hard times. That's the story behind HTC, once a massive player in the smartphone market when Android was young, and now a company that's struggling to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung at the high end, and Chinese competitors like Huawei on the low end. Instead of quarterly gains and obscene revenues, HTC is cutting staff just to stay afloat.We knew it was coming. HTC's Chief Financial Officer, Chialin Chang, warned a week ago that "significant" job cuts were on the horizon and that they would take place "across the board." He also said they'd extend into the first quarter of next year,...
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HTC was a dominant player in the early days of Android and often enjoyed record sales and profits. That seems like a million years ago now that Apple and Samsung are dominant players. HTC also faces stiff competition from Chinese players in the low end of the market, and all combined, it's taken a toll. No longer king of the mountain, HTC is reportedly planning to slash its workforce and scale back the number of smartphones it offers.Chialin Chang, Chief Financial Officer for HTC, told reporters that the job cuts won't be concentrated in any single division, but will take place "across the board," Reuters reports. He also warned that the job cuts "will be significant," adding that they'll extend...
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Non-compete agreements are pretty common among highly technical white collar jobs. It's one of the best ways for a company to protect trade secrets from the competition. For example, if you're working for Spacely Sprockets on an new and innovative type of gear that took years to develop, a non-compete agreement would prevent you from jumping ship to Cogswell Cogs and screwing over your former employer. It makes sense, but why is Amazon making even its seasonal warehouse workers sign them? That's a good question. Here's the deal -- Amazon processes a lot of online orders. Things get especially busy during the holiday season, so it brings on board temporary workers to help fulfill all the additional...
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It's been a rough year for Samsung. Despite being the world's top seller of smartphones, its profits took a precipitous dip after being unexpectedly left with unsold Galaxy S5 handsets and facing increased competition, particularly in the low-end and mid-range markets. Samsung has tried numerous strategies to turn things around, the latest of which is a freeze in wages for employees in South Korea.It's been six years since the last time Samsung did this on such a scale, and that was the result of the global financial crisis. However, it's not the first wage freeze in recent times -- the South Korean electronics company had already frozen wages for high level executives as it sought to cut costs.Samsung...
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Back on October of last year, Sony said it planned to eliminate 1,000 jobs in its mobile division. Now three months later, Sony crunched the numbers and is reportedly going to hand out an additional 1,000 pink slips, the latest of which will mostly affect its smartphone operations in Europe and China, according to reports. By the time Sony is finished laying off workers, the company's mobile division will be left with 5,000 employees, representing a 30 percent reduction by the end of the company's fiscal year ending March 2016. Image Source: Flickr (Kārlis Dambrāns) Many prominent smartphone manufacturers are having trouble competing in the cutthroat market. Samsung and Apple sell the most handsets,...
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If you were to bump into a random Microsoft employee, odds are high the worker would be a white male. The odds increase if the Microsoft employee also happens to hold down a tech related job or is in a position of leadership. So says the diversity data that Microsoft posted, and though things are improving, the Redmond outfit readily admits that "much work remains" in building a truly diverse workforce. When examining all of Microsoft's workers, 29 percent are now women, up from 24 percent just a year ago. There was also a bump in the number of senior executive women and minorities, which jumped from 24 percent to 27 percent in the past year. And on Microsoft's board of directors, the percentage...
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It's not too often that you see technology firms reveal data on diversity in the workplace -- or lack thereof -- so kudos to Yahoo for stepping to the plate with a bunch of figures. In a blog post this week, Yahoo disclosed details about gender, ethnicity, and how they break down across technical and non-technical positions, as well as leadership roles across the company. According to Yahoo's reported data, women comprise 37 percent of its workforce. In terms of race, half of Yahoo's workers are white, while 39 percent are Asian. Out of the remaining 11 percent, 4 percent are Hispanic, 2 percent are black, 2 percent are two or more races, and the rest are undisclosed. "These statistics are only...
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Oh, how the mighty have fallen. It seems like a thousand years have gone by since Acer was on top of its game and talking about how it was going to supplant Hewlett-Packard as the world's top PC maker (in terms of shipments). Instead, Lenovo was the one that leapfrogged into first place, while a series of missteps and CEO changes ultimately dragged Acer down to the No. 4 spot. Be that as it may, Acer deserves a bit of kudos. The company is underachieving and while part of its has to do with the PC market being in a slump, Acer brought most of its financial troubles on its self, starting with the ousting of CEO Gianfranco Lanci, who landed at Lenovo as a consultant. However, rather than announce...
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Looking for a job this holiday shopping season? It's one of the busiest times of the year for hiring employees, and that includes for companies that are primarily based online. To wit, Amazon is planning to hire an astounding 70,000 full-time seasonal employees across its various order fulfillment centers in the U.S. That's a 40 percent hike compared to the 50,000 workers the e-tailer hired in the same season a year ago. Plus, there's the chance that a seasonal position could turn into a full-time gig. The company has already converted over 7,000 temporary workers into full-time staff, bringing its total workforce to around 88,400 employees. Dave Clark, Amazon's vice president of worldwide operations...
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Breaking Bad may be all the rage on the television waves, but it appears that folks aren't buying new sets to catch hot new shows on... at least, not at the torid pace that we were seeing a decade ago. As the hype surrounding the HDTV has cooled, and many families have already made the leap into the HD universe, OEMs far and wide are facing massive demand issues. Profit margins in the HDTV universe are already wildly low, and Toshiba has just announced that it will have to hack around 50% of its TV staff in order to try and make the unit profitable once more. In sum, two of its three overseas factories are going to be shut down by the end of this fiscal year. In order to make ends meet, it's...
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BlackBerry may be on the way to the grave, and we aren't saying that with any sarcasm in the background. The company formerly known as RIM has been slipping in a major way of late, with the new BlackBerry 10 devices doing little to rekindle interest in a waning brand. It's tough to know what BlackBerry could've done to prevent such a massive drop-off, but none of that matters now: the reality is that Android and iOS have taken the mobile world by storm, and there's only a distant third to be had after that. Now, BlackBerry is issuing preliminary financial results for its fiscal Q2 2014 -- and it's not because it just can't wait to share positive news. The company is expecting a net operating...
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President Barack Obama is scheduled to deliver a speech on jobs at Amazon's Chattanooga warehouse later today, and in anticipation of his visit, the e-commerce site announced that it's looking to hire 5,000 full-time warehouse employees to work throughout its growing network of U.S. fulfillment centers. According to Amazon, median pay inside its fulfillment centers is 30 percent higher than that of people who work in traditional retail stores, and that's before factoring in stock grants that full-time employees receive, which over the past five years have added an average of 9 percent to base pay annually. "We’re hiring more than 5,000 people to join our team and help us continue to innovate...
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As BlackBerry continues to try and turn around its fortunes and regain relevance in the ultra competitive mobile market, more workers are falling by the wayside. Well, a more accurate way of putting it is that more workers are being pushed over the side of BlackBerry's wavering ship. In the latest round of job cuts, BlackBerry handed out pink slips to around 250 workers at its headquarters in Waterloo, Ontario. The company formerly known as Research In Motion (RIM) already parted ways with thousands of employees last year, and more recently, the Canadian handset maker hinted that more job cuts might be on the way. It's not clear if these 250 cuts are the last of them. BlackBerry's Z10 is one...
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We've known for quite some time that Ashton Kutcher (and not Noah Wyle or George Clooney) would be playing the part of the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in the upcoming biographical drama, "Jobs," which actually already premiered at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. The general public has had to wait a bit longer, as the movie was originally scheduled for a theatrical debut in April before being pushed back to August 16, 2013. In the meantime, the first official trailer for "Jobs" has been released, providing would-be moviegoers with around 2 minutes and 20 seconds of footage. Check it out below: In addition to Ashton Kutcher, the movie stars Josh Gad as Steve Wozniak, the other...
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Google has reportedly begun slashing the workforce at its Motorola Mobility division where it's planning to reduce the headcount by around 1,200 employees. That's a greater than 10 percent reduction in workers, though deemed necessary by Google to put the smartphone maker back in the black. The Wall Street Journal viewed an internal email sent out to Motorola Mobility staff members, and in it, Google lamented that its "costs are too high." Google also said that Motorola Mobility is operating in markets we're it's not competitive and is ultimately losing money because of it. Image Source: Flickr (Titanas) "These cuts are a continuation of the reductions we announced last summer," a Motorola spokesman...
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A long, drawn out legal battle with Apple notwithstanding, Samsung has been on a roll lately. It's Galaxy S III recently jumped past 30 million units sold to become the top selling smartphone, surpassing the mighty iPhone. More recently, Samsung said it shipped 5 million Galaxy Note II phone/tablet (phablet) hybrid devices. Life is good, at least on the retail side. As far as manufacturing goes, a recent audit conducted by Samsung revealed several labor violations at supplier plants in China. Underage workers wasn't one of them, but overtime hours in excess of local regulations and the imposition of fines for lateness or absences, along with other "inadequate practices," were uncovered. "We are...
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At a time when consumers are trending towards mobile products like smartphones and tablets, Texas Instruments has decided it can flip a bigger profit by focusing its energies elsewhere. As such. TI is planning to slash 1,700 jobs as it scales back its mobile processor business and transitions to other areas, like cars and smartphones. The planned layoffs add up to almost 5 percent of TI's global workforce and are part of a broader cost-reduction effort. "We have a great opportunity to reshape our OMAP processor and wireless connectivity product lines to concentrate on embedded markets. Momentum is already building with new embedded applications and a broad set of customers, and we are accelerating...
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"Working here stinks!," a Google employee was heard saying NEVER. When was the last time you heard a Google worker complain about his or her job? You probably haven't, and there are lots of reasons for that. Pay is one of them, but there are all kinds of perks to becoming a G-Man or G-Woman, like benefits that extend into the afterlife (seriously), on-site physicians, free haircuts, discounted legal services, and the list goes on. We're not the only ones that think working for Google would be a groovy gig. In CNN Money's list of the 25 best global companies to work for, Google is No. 2. "Google moved up by two spots in this year's ranking of global workforces," CNN Money explains. "The highly...
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