TimmyHMySpace Sacks Staff
August 13th 2008 03:14
Reports have been released that suggest MySpace will soon take the sword to more than 5 percent of their workforce. Engineering sales and customer service will probably take the biggest hit.
Parent company, Fox Interactive Media recently missed the revenue target for the 07/08 financial year and fired their CRO Michael Barrett. Speculation is growing that the layoffs which are expected in the coming weeks will be a result of this missed target, with MySpace struggling to compete with Facebook’s new re-design and Bebo in the UK.
But by the same token, MySpace has grown its staff at an astonishing rate over the past two years with more than 100 employees being added every month. At the beginning of 2006 the company employed just 300 personnel, yet today it is rumoured to have more than 1,500 people on the payroll. So this slimming down could be a result of some effective pruning.
Amit Kapur, MySpace’s COO confirmed that the company would be letting people go shortly after accepting the position. But he suggested that this was due entirely to performance. While he refused to state the number of employees who would be searching the job market in the coming weeks, he did says that it would definitely be less than the 5 percent speculation.
“All of the employees we are letting go will be replaced,” he said, and “we are also rewarding top performers. This is an important way to drive a streamlined business,” he added.
Kapur chose to focus his press statements on the upgrades being made to the MySpace management team. But the company continues to hire aggressively and plans to add up to 300 people in the coming months according to Kapur.
MySpace
Parent company, Fox Interactive Media recently missed the revenue target for the 07/08 financial year and fired their CRO Michael Barrett. Speculation is growing that the layoffs which are expected in the coming weeks will be a result of this missed target, with MySpace struggling to compete with Facebook’s new re-design and Bebo in the UK.
But by the same token, MySpace has grown its staff at an astonishing rate over the past two years with more than 100 employees being added every month. At the beginning of 2006 the company employed just 300 personnel, yet today it is rumoured to have more than 1,500 people on the payroll. So this slimming down could be a result of some effective pruning.
Amit Kapur, MySpace’s COO confirmed that the company would be letting people go shortly after accepting the position. But he suggested that this was due entirely to performance. While he refused to state the number of employees who would be searching the job market in the coming weeks, he did says that it would definitely be less than the 5 percent speculation.
“All of the employees we are letting go will be replaced,” he said, and “we are also rewarding top performers. This is an important way to drive a streamlined business,” he added.
Kapur chose to focus his press statements on the upgrades being made to the MySpace management team. But the company continues to hire aggressively and plans to add up to 300 people in the coming months according to Kapur.
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