EDS set to cut 20,000 jobs over two years

Grok Headline matches for EDS set to cut 20,000 jobs over two years

EDS may cut 20,000 jobs over the next
two years

EDS may cut 20,000 jobs over the next
two years 09/10/2004 11:16 AM
Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) plans to lay off between 15,000 and 20,000 employees over the next two years as part of an effort to slash $3 billion in costs, the company's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Jordan said Thursday during a question-and-answer session at a conference.

One guy doing five jobs for nine years

One guy doing five jobs for nine years 04/01/2005 12:25 PM

Driving down here to Richmond, Virginia I was listening to an audio version of Barbara Ehrenreich of Nickel and Dimed, a book about how tough it is for the unskilled laborer in the U.S. and how many of these folks must work two jobs to make ends meet.  Upon arriving here, I found one of my teachers, Rob Roberts, working five jobs simultaneously and having done so for nine years.

In a big metropolitan area the TV station helicopter is a monstrous Bell 407 with four blades and enough horsepower from a single turbine to move the Queen Mary.  The 407 carries a pilot who worries only about flying the aircraft and talking occasionally to Air Traffic Control, a camera operator who points the camera at interesting events on the ground, an engineer who makes sure that the camera and video/audio communications links to the station are working properly, and the "talent", a person with a good wardrobe and make-up whose voice and image skill out into viewers' living rooms.

Richmond is a smaller city and only Channel 12 (NBC) even has a helicopter.  In the afternoons Rob Roberts fires up the HeloAir Jet Ranger and does all four of the jobs that are being done by four separate people in a big city Bell 407.  On days when he is unlucky some neophyte like me gets in and he now has to add a fifth job: flight instructor.

This is one of the things that I like about aviation.  One is very often pleasantly surprised at the supercompetence of the people involved at every level.  The mechanics are craftsmen.  The pilots usually have an impressive range of other skills.  The young ladies at the front desk of Richmond Jet Center are smarter, friendlier, kinder to a wayward Samoyed, and better looking than people working service jobs anywhere else in the city.  How many other fields can we say this about?  The one with which I have the most experience is software engineering.  Despite the higher pay, I would say that the average denizen of the software world is not supercompetent, though often he views himself as such, and the customers are not typically pleasantly surprised.

EDS to cut up to 20,000 jobs over two
years

EDS to cut up to 20,000 jobs over two
years 09/09/2004 08:26 PM
The embattled IT services giant is trying to trim $3 billion in annual costs.

EDS to cut up to 20,000 jobs in two
years

EDS to cut up to 20,000 jobs in two
years 09/09/2004 10:05 PM
ZDNet Australia Sep 10 2004 2:52AM GMT

Jobs among top business leaders of last
25 years

Jobs among top business leaders of last
25 years 01/17/2004 10:38 PM
Apple and Pixar CEO Steve Jobs is among the top business leaders of the last quarter-century, according to PBS' "Nightly Business Report" and the University of Pennsylvania...

Kodak to cut up to 24% of workforce over
3 years: 12,000 to 15,000 jobs

Kodak to cut up to 24% of workforce over
3 years: 12,000 to 15,000 jobs 01/24/2004 10:16 AM
Canadian Press Jan 24 2004 2:19PM GMT

Jobs: iTunes to sell 5 percent of US
music in 2 years

Jobs: iTunes to sell 5 percent of US
music in 2 years 06/14/2004 09:46 AM
In a n interview with the Wall Street Journal, Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that his company's goal is to sell 5 percent of the legally purchased music in the United States within the next 24 months. Right now, said Jobs, iTunes sells about 2 percent. (The article is available to Wall Street Journal subscribers only.) Other highlights of the interview include Jobs' revelation that his company has just finished renewing deals with major music publishers and "prices aren't going up on iTunes." Jobs said Apple's Mac business is "very healthy" and growing, with more than half of users buying Macs at Apple Stores new to the platform.

Steve Jobs to Preview Mac OS X ''Tiger''
at WWDCSteve Jobs to Kick Off Apple's W

Steve Jobs to Preview Mac OS X ''Tiger''
at WWDCSteve Jobs to Kick Off Apple's W 05/04/2004 03:21 PM
Steve Jobs to Kick Off Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2004 with Preview of Mac OS X "Tiger"

Vanishing Jobs: Structural change in the
economy means many jobs are never going
to come back. 12/19

Vanishing Jobs: Structural change in the
economy means many jobs are never going
to come back. 12/19 12/20/2003 05:03 AM
It's been a long time since I heard anything positive about American programming jobs .. Those Good Paying Jobs Are Not Coming Back

money.cnn.com/2003/12/17/pf/q_nomorework/index.htm?cnn=yes
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Dual Jobs Make Jobs Chron 200's CEO Of
Year

Dual Jobs Make Jobs Chron 200's CEO Of
Year 05/03/2004 12:28 PM
"What [Steve Jobs] has done is a unique accomplishment. Both companies... weren't just successful. They're helping to reshape some industries." By Benny Evangelista and Matthew Yi, San Francisco Chronicle (via MyAppleMenu)

Software That Lasts For Years And Years

Software That Lasts For Years And Years 07/14/2004 06:51 PM
We were just talking about the rise of quick and dirty programs as a way for individuals (not necessarily programmers) to solve specific needs. However, as was mentioned at the time, that would be a different "tier" of software programming, and there would still be a need for programmers to do higher level "big" projects. In the past, we've also discussed the problem of data extinction, where old computer systems and formats die out, leaving content and applications virtually useless on ancient media. This is a big problem for many applications, and Dan Bricklin is now suggesting that people need to start designing "Societal Infrastructure Software" that can last for centuries, not just a few years. The idea is that this type of software shouldn't have to worry about new computers or new formats or new anything... but will be able to just keep on working. In order to build this, though, Bricklin believes it will require embracing open source programming, though not necessarily the way people view open source programming today. It's a fascinating concept, but getting people to think long-term is so difficult these days, that you wonder if such ideas will actually catch on.

Pixar vs. Apple, Jobs vs. Jobs

Pixar vs. Apple, Jobs vs. Jobs 08/05/2004 10:50 AM

10 Years Ago

10 Years Ago 12/30/2004 04:35 AM

OK - so I didn't mark this exactly with an October 12th anninversary - but it was 10 years ago that Dave Winer first 'blogged' me - rapping out my Marc's 10 Things.

In honor of this auspicious anniversary - I'd like to comment on or update many of these claims on things that the media should be covering on Multimedia and Interactive TV but isn't.

I wrote (in 1994):

Interactive Music Videos

1. Interactive Liner notes are great. Repackaged old music is fine, but MediaBand has started a new category - called Interactive Music Videos - which are original pieces that combine songs, music videos and videogames. It's a new artform that breaks down the barrier between artist, musician and programmer.

I was in the midst of pushing our 'MediaBand' interactive music video ensemble in 1994 - which put out a CD ROM, performed live, had a screenplay and had it'sd own broadband network to interact with folks - in real-time.

So I was seriously into brow beating all my colleagues who simply licensed Bob Dylan or Prince and cranked out shitty ass CD ROMs. To me - that really missed the essence of what was possible combining, music, video and interactivity.

To this day, this new artform is just kind of bubbling beneath the surface - not really making it out. Dance Dance Revolution is the sign of times - now.

BTW a young artist named Moby took some of our MediaBand Director files and added his own artwork and music to it. :-)

Kid's Content

2. Kids today see the twitchy-ness of Nintendo and they see the production values of MTV. Multimedia today is neither. We need to combine the interactivity of Nintendo with the production values of MTV.

This area certainly has matured and grown. We were in the videogame business back in '81-'83, but we never dreamed that gaming would be so 'off the hook' - as it is today.

But Mimi (my daughter) has a great time playing with the Barbie fashion Designer software - and Dora the Explorer rocks. So I'd say this category has fulfilled it's destiny. At least so far.

CD ROMs

3. We didn't call it a floppy disk industry, so how come it's a CD ROM industry? In fact CD ROM [mentality] is holding back the creativity and growth of the entire interactive digital media industry.

Just take out CD ROM and insert 'web'. Same problem exists today. This is why we have CMSs.

I call the solution to this challenge "scalable content". In fact we were using this term way back in '94. Marqui outputs scalable content - BTW.

So CMSs have matured and we don't have to convince folks to de-couple their content from their form anymore. Thank goodness.

Scalable Content

4. Scalable content is an important concept when developing interactive media today. You don't want to design yourself into a corner, letting the technology define the content. Ideally you'd let the content define the technology. Scalability means downsizing through compression, it means user interfaces that work with both single and multiple users, it means getting ready for Interactive TV.

OK - so I just correlated how CD ROMs 'holding back' creativity were similar to what happened with 'the web'. And I said that we called that Scalable Content.

Now let's take my definition of Scalable Content (back then in '94) and extend that to mean 'dynamic user interfaces' - that adjust themselves to who you are, what level of technology you feel comfortable with and what content you've created yourself.

It's amazing to me to read what I said in 1994, and see how these words influenced my thoughts and ideas over the past 10 years and how some of these ideas remain unchanged, while others have morphed and adapted themselves to world today.

The word 'scalability' is just so malleable that you can twist and turn it to mean anything you want it to mean. But is IT clear - that us humans need to be in charge much more of our user experiences - and THAT's a key part of 'activity based computing'.

Audio

5. The classic line is "Audio is the orphan child of multimedia" - why do people still say this? What is behind the hodge-podge of audio - especially on the PC? How come it's taken so long for manufacturers to include audio on their motherboards? In 1984 it was $3 in parts!

MIDI II?

6. What about MIDI? How many people know what that is? Why isn't there an advanced MIDI format in place? The original MIDI frequency standard (32k) is based a 1Mhz crystal readily available in 1982.But what's the problem today? Why hasn't MIDI evolved and grown?

RAM

7. RAM apparently is not following along the path of Moore's Law. The price is still where it was 5 years ago and systems are suffering. Today MPC II is still speced at only 4M - MediaBand needs 8M. Standard business systems should have at least 16M TODAY!

Tee Hee Hee.

You see I'm a musician by training and we put out the first music product for computers that had a piano timeline notational system, qurter note and eigth notes and a piano and real-time interaction. That was 1984.

So 10 years after that - in 1994 - I was bitching about.... well it's now 10 years later and we still don;t have clean audio solved. But we're getting pretty close. Podcastign is evidence of that.

Time stamp - Dec. 2004 - $60 for a 128M MP3 player. Retail price.

MIDI II got usurped by all sorts of things - including OSC - I keynoted at their conference this summer.

Amd I just love to see Shawn Fanning appear in "The Italian Job" and just adore the notion that Mark Cuban sold broadcast.com for $5.6B.

All this is evidence that they'll be plenty more Googles, Netscapes and Eminems.

Set top tests waste of time?

8. The whole industry hopped when John Malone announced he was going to deploy one million set top boxes with MPEG chips in them. Once it became clear that he was practicing FUD, everyone backed off of their predictions, delayed their test trials and are now waiting for the next thing to react to. The tests going on (or planned to start soon) are not based upon the same technology or even marketing premises. What good will these tests do? Will any of these tests actually grow into a real service network.

Interactive Commercials

9. What exactly is an Interactive TV commercial. Lots of people talk about it, but no one does them.

This one is dedicated to Om Mailk. I hope to see him tomorrow night at the Geek Dinner.

I spent allot of the 90's waiting for and explaining why set top boxes suck. They still do. Oh well.

Set top boxes have always been a kind of thorn in my side. In fact I hope to get a Comcast PVR setup in time for the Alias 2 hour season premiere on Jan. 5th. Wanna guess how long it'll take to get?

And the Interactive Ads future - is in John Battelle's able hands. Search meets ads in the valley of the targeted consumer. It's finally here.

Support?

10. Where's the support? As the industry moves towards 900 # support and low priced consumer software, what happens to support? Dealers obviously can't supply it. Is this a new growth market?

Well we're still looking for good Support.

I don't think that will ever change.

OK - so that's it - my 10 year update. I hope you enjoyed it.

Also - how symbolic that Dave's post show's my old Applelink address which went back to 1985. We were the 10th Mac developer. That's why I was D0010.

10 years

10 years 06/05/2005 11:06 PM
On his site's tenth anniversary, Zeldman thanks you for the memories.

Five Years, That's All We've Got

Five Years, That's All We've Got 12/13/2003 11:02 PM
Much has changed at evolt.org over its five years. Much has not. We are the change we want to see in the world.

Three Years Since

Three Years Since 09/12/2004 04:38 PM
I left work on September 10th at 9:00 PM. An hour before, my coworker was getting nervous. She was leaving on a trip to Italy on the 12th and wanted to meet me at 8:30 AM on the 11th to go over what projects of hers I needed to steer in her absence. I rolled my eyes and complained that no one schedules meetings at 8:30 in the morning, and convinced her to postpone the meeting to 10:00 AM.

Six years!

Six years! 04/09/2004 04:11 PM
Time is flying by so quickly these days, so I didn't notice on March 14th that this weblog is now six years old. Except for the basics (eating, sleeping, remaining alive), I've never stuck with anything for six years straight, so it's hard for me to believe I'm still here doing this. Six years!...

Three Years On

Three Years On 09/11/2004 09:19 AM
Three Years On A sobering analysis by Juan Cole of the strategic motivation behind 9/11.

"three to four years old."

"three to four years old." 08/03/2004 02:42 PM

74 Years Old

74 Years Old 08/05/2004 11:29 PM
"The application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Kennedy and by him referred to the Court is denied." Hours later, James Hubbard is injected with lethal chemicals and dies in Atmore, Alabama. Hubbard , convicted of a 1977 murder, was 74 years old, demented, and retarded. File this one under "it's not cruel and unusual if you don't know what's happening to you."

4AD - The First 20 Years (brief)

4AD - The First 20 Years (brief) 04/14/2004 06:22 AM
An illustrated history of 4AD Records

fedge.net/~desiderata/4ad20.html
track this site | 6 links

Seven years

Seven years 03/19/2005 02:37 AM

I started kottke.org seven years ago this week. I forget the anniversary until after the fact every year even though I know it's sometime in March (for whatever reason almost everything important in my life has happened in March, at least for the last few years). Seven years is way longer than I would have guessed keeping the site going on a near-daily basis...it's the longest I've ever done anything, even longer than all but a handful of friendships. So happy birthday, old friend, it's been fun. (0sil8 started in March as well...nine years ago.)

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were
Four Years Ago?

Are You Better Off Now Than You Were
Four Years Ago? 09/11/2004 12:25 PM
Stop being economic girly-men .. statistics never lie

buzzflash.com/areyoubetteroff
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Two Years

Two Years 06/17/2005 06:08 PM
... ago today, the Pie wiki was created.  During that period, we had interminable naming discussions, a lengthy process of selecting a standards body, endless discussion on dates, and a last call. One week from today, format-09 is scheduled to be reviewed by the IESG.

Four more years

Four more years 12/19/2004 03:55 PM
Bush is reelected President of the United States of America. Four more years of abuse, torture, murder, ignorance and selfishness will follow.

Five years

Five years 01/22/2004 02:36 AM
Meg just wrote and pointed out that Pyra was incorporated five years ago today.

Five years, one day

Five years, one day 01/22/2004 02:19 PM

Yesterday I realized it has been five years since Evan and I founded Pyra, the company that led to Blogger. We used to have a company weblog called pyrAlert! (actually the software we wrote to publish pyrAlert! was what lead to the creation of Blogger). This morning Paulo wrote to point out that pyrAlert! is still online and you can go back into the archives and read what was going on at Pyra in 1999. You may also notice that there are no permalinks on any of the posts, because these posts were made BP, or before permalink! It's funny to see the kind of stuff we used to write about.

Five years!

Five years! 03/19/2003 10:24 PM
The first post to this weblog was made on March 14, 1998, making it five years old last week. I'm trying to recall where all

Jobs at Six Apart

Jobs at Six Apart 10/28/2003 11:08 PM
Six Apart is hiring....

MCI to axe 7,500 jobs

MCI to axe 7,500 jobs 05/11/2004 06:33 AM
Blames 'adverse industry environment'

New jobs at CC

New jobs at CC 06/22/2005 02:31 AM
So we're looking for two fantastic people at Creative Commons -- one to help us with development, and one to replace the irreplaceable Neeru Paharia, who is going to get her PhD at Harvard. The job descriptions are here: Development, ED-CreativeCommons.

O2 to axe 500 jobs...

O2 to axe 500 jobs... 03/22/2005 05:08 PM
...and create 2,000 new ones

IRS to cut 218 IT jobs

IRS to cut 218 IT jobs 08/06/2004 04:56 PM
The affected workers are computer specialists, computer operators and tape librarians, according to an IRS spokesman.

Jobs? What jobs?

Jobs? What jobs? 06/24/2005 07:54 PM
Compare and contrast: Programming Jobs Losing Luster in US and Women's share of IT jobs plunges. Why is it that nobody ever says, "The reason girls aren't choosing programming careers is that programming as a career means that you'll have...

EDS May Cut 15,000 to 20,000 More Jobs
(AP)

EDS May Cut 15,000 to 20,000 More Jobs
(AP) 09/09/2004 08:18 PM
AP - Troubled technology giant Electronic Data Systems Corp. could eliminate 15,000 to 20,000 jobs — up to one-sixth of its work force — in coming years to help reduce costs by about $3 billion, chief executive Michael H. Jordan said Thursday.

IBM to add 15,000 new jobs

IBM to add 15,000 new jobs 01/18/2004 02:46 PM
CNET via Drudge Report Jan 18 2004 6:09PM GMT

"Jobs"

"Jobs" 04/08/2005 10:10 AM

100 Years of Einstein

100 Years of Einstein 12/30/2004 02:22 PM

10 years on and still a long way to go

10 years on and still a long way to go 12/08/2003 02:22 PM
newmediazero Dec 8 2003 1:36PM ET
Grok Description matches for EDS set to cut 20,000 jobs over two years
GrokA matches for EDS set to cut 20,000 jobs over two years

EDS set to cut 20,000 jobs over two years

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