Six Apart to Cut 8% of Staff
Six Apart, the company behind the popular MoveableType and TypePad Web publishing platforms, announced in a recent blog post that it will be forced to lay off about eight percent of its current full-time staff, also cutting the entire management salaries by 15% in order to face the current economic downturn as well as other issues concerning the company as a whole.
Chris Alden, Six Apart CEO and Chairman, wrote on the company blog:
Everyone is aware of the challenging economic times we face. The uncertainty of 2009 has made planning very difficult but it is clear that next year looks very different now than it did just a couple of months ago. While it would be easy to just blame “the economy” for these changes, however, the truth is more complex…
In the post, Alden then goes on to say that, despite the growth the company has been facing during the last year, with now over 200 employees, an entirely new array of services launched and the last quarter report indicating that the revenue is still growing, the team wishes to follow the trend set by many companies during the latest months and keep its expenses as low as possible, making sure they can face the downturn period accordingly.
The other reason given to support the layoffs is that the year-long process of migrating TypePad to a new platform is about to be completed, and that the company has now to rebalance the staff according to their new needs and to prepare for the next stage of the company.
Alden seems to be relatively confident about the company being able to successfully face the downturn, partly because of the current revenue figures, and partly because “blogging was born out of the last recession in 2001 - 2002, and [...] during tough economic times creative voices look to powerful, cost-effective ways to connect and communicate with the world around them“.
All employees leaving through this layoff will receive a severance package with additional payments to cover health care benefits, while the company is taking some measures to face the crisis, mostly growing support and services for its clients.
Tags: economic downturn, MoveableType, Six Apart, TypePad
Dario Borghino
Dario Borghino is a computer engineering student at Turin's
Polytechnic, Italy. He started writing science and technology related
articles in February 2008 and his articles have appeared on sites such
as ISEdb.COM, eHow and Suite101.com. You can visit his personal Web site here.
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