meltdowns

CEO's $500,000 Salary Burns Startup Into Fire Sale

Owen Thomas · 02/27/09 09:04PM

8020 Media hoped to revolutionize the magazine business. Instead, it has circled down the drain, ending up in the hands of shadowy investors after a new CEO with a Condé Nast résumé looted the startup.

Google's Loss of Innocence: 100 Jobs Cut

Owen Thomas · 01/14/09 05:13PM

The Magical Kingdom of Larry and Sergey has laid off 100 full-time recruiters, a tipster tells us. Inevitable, given the economy. But a crushing blow to Google's self-image as a kinder-than-thou employer.

The Russian Bear Slashes a Social Network

Owen Thomas · 01/06/09 02:24AM

The bubble in social networking has burst, decisively. LiveJournal, the San Francisco-based arm of Sup, a Russian Internet startup, has cut 12 of 28 U.S. employees — and offered them no severance, we're told.

A Six-Figure Car at Silicon Valley's Repo Man

Owen Thomas · 12/26/08 04:12PM

The first reaction of those who dwell in California's cradle of technology to the recession was blithe indifference — Wall Street's problem, not theirs. How swiftly they learned otherwise. A tipster sends in photographic evidence.

Get ready for a three-year recession

Owen Thomas · 12/14/08 05:00PM

Everyone's ready for the Greatest Depression to be done. Economists think it will be over by the middle of next year. What if it isn't?

The long goodbye

Owen Thomas · 12/10/08 01:40PM

Everything takes forever at Yahoo, the once high-flying, now famously sluggish Internet giant. Today's layoffs of 1,500 employees have been expected for months. And yet the strange thing is so many Yahoos seem unprepared.

Yahoo's secret layoff doublespeak revealed!

Owen Thomas · 12/10/08 03:02AM

Yahoo isn't firing people en masse — it's "getting fit." That noisome euphemism for today's layoffs of 1,500 people must have hissed forth from the brain of some overpaid management consultant. Likewise for pages upon pages of instructions on how to sack employees — which Valleywag has obtained.

A guide to Yahoo's mass layoff

Owen Thomas · 12/09/08 07:20PM

Yahoo hasn't been able to do anything right lately. Why should Wednesday's job cuts be any different?

Facebook cancels employee stock sale

Owen Thomas · 12/04/08 07:20PM

So much for Silicon Valley's latest get-rich-quick scheme. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cancelled a plan to let employees cash out their shares early.

Recession officially a year old

Owen Thomas · 12/01/08 03:00PM

What, now they tell us? A recession is not a recession until the number-driven meritocrats of the National Bureau of Economic Research declare it to be one. And now they have. The current recession actually began a year ago, in December 2007. The past 11 months? Blissful ignorance. [MarketWatch]