Novell lays off just under 100 workers

Correction at 1:31 p.m. PST January 31: A much lower figure for the layoffs has been added. My apologies to Novell, though I am glad to hear that the layoffs are much less severe than my source told me).

An inside source at Novell just informed me that Novell laid off a considerable percentage of its workforce on Friday. (That source, as noted above, was wrong. He has been a good source of information in the past, but he got this 100 percent wrong, and I was wrong to post that original number without waiting for comment from Novell.)

The news came in too late to seek comment from Novell on Friday.

On Saturday, Ian Bruce, Novell's public relations director, contacted me to let me know that fewer than 100 people have been laid off worldwide, which represents less than 3 percent of the total workforce.

These Novell layoffs add to the mounting woes of the already enfeebled technology industry, which has seen tens of thousands of employees lose their jobs.

Novell is by no means the only open-source company to resort to layoffs. Sun Microsystems has announced a staff reduction of up to 18 percent, while several of the most prominent open-source start-ups have more quietly laid off significant percentages of their own employees in an effort to achieve profitability more quickly than originally planned.

The leading open-source company, Red Hat, has yet to announce any layoffs.

While it's exceptionally painful and I hate unemployment (from terrible personal experience within my extended family), one thing is clear for Novell: it can and should be doing more with less. I've been saying for years that the company operates with far too much overhead. Novell has long been a meeting culture where some people exist solely to attend meetings.

These layoffs, horrible as they are for the individuals and families involved, position Novell to become a much more agile and tough competitor (and, frankly, Novell will likely need to cut more at some point, in my opinion). Those who have lost their jobs will slowly feed into the various economies in which these people live, including Omniture, Infor, Symantec, and other companies with strong Utah presences (as well as companies in Waltham, India, and elsewhere that experienced the layoffs), and they and these companies will be the better for their presence.

But for Novell, it needed to pare back and force itself to compete lean and hungry.

[Mr. Dee]

Its pure chaos.

[Matt Asay]

Can you give more specifics, Mr. Dee?

[David Mohring]

History repeating?
http://www.ondotnet.com/pub/a/dotnet/2001/08/16/corel.html

[Papa Chango]

Good call David, right on the nose.

[MSSlayer]

This is why real journalists have to get confirmation from 3 sources and why CNET has no real journalists.

[odubtaig]

Sorry, have you ever seen Fox News? There are no requirements regarding accuracy and truth in the USA.

[Balders1]

Apologies after printing FUD are pretty meaningless. The damage is done.

Only bad can come of printing something like that. It appeared to be written with some measure of glee, and almost as if you couldn't wait to be the first.

However, the saving grace is that purveyors of rumour and gossip, like you apparently are, come off looking worst, and you've just flushed any integrity and credibility you may have had away.

I tire of internet gossips.

[EnterpriseIT]

I find it hard to believe that you are senior member of any firm. Although I find that some of your post have become more mature over the past year, this type of thing is not done by senior corporate leaders. You can print that these are your views and not that of your company; but the truth is it does affect the way people see your company.

[MSSlayer]

Exactly, I would never do business with company that would hire Matt Asay in any senior position.

Now, if he were the janitor, I wouldn't hold that against the company too much.

Then again, few businessman are blessed with intelligence, morals, ethics, and a sense of fairness.

[geevee8]

Now that Matt got his information completely wrong, the whole gist of his post, whatever comments he has, especially with regards to Novell, is no longer relevant.

The right thing to do is to pull this piece out, or rewrite it completely.

But as commented above, the damage is done. People would have read the original post all over the world.

tsk, tsk, tsk.

[bob-o-rama]

What a wonderful age we live in. The ministry of information simply alters the title to "Novell lays off just under 100 workers" and its as if Matt were correct all the while. Matt, perhaps with agressive therapy you could move beyond the quarterly schadenfreude Novell pieces.

[Matt Asay]

Actually, there's more truth to what I wrote than the correction suggests. I'm hearing from many different corners of Novell that the cuts are ongoing, and more extensive than 100 employees. I talked with Ian Bruce (Director, PR), and he indicated that they were fewer than 100. Hovsepian then went on the record to say there would be no more (beyond the 100). But the very next day he told German employees (as required under German law) that more cuts are coming.

I'm glad that the cuts aren't as extensive as my source told me. Ecstatic. Who wants to see people laid off, and I've long since lost my Novell bias.

But let's be clear: there's more to this than Novell's statement that "no more than 100" will be laid off. Everything I'm hearing is that this is not true. Why doesn't Novell just come out and admit that the economy is in the toilet and that it's therefore being prudent and cutting heads?

[kingrob76]

Guys, give Matt a break. He missed one, it happens to every journalist / blogger eventually, he corrected the information and owned up to the mistake. If Matt had good info from a good source, his only mistake was not getting the vaunted "second source" that most newspapers go with for breaking an article. And he may well have gotten second source confirmation that was wrong as well, I'm not sure either way.

I would expect more cuts as the economy globally continues to suffer, not just from Novell but from many companies.