Their point: Yahoo made about 1 million euros per worker from Yahoo France alone last year, and used to hype how "it's important to have [locally] concentrated engineering activities... to innovate" in France, where it would base "one of [its] most important centers in Europe." Yahoo France's engineers will now stop working until Yahoo agrees that they shouldn't have to stop working. At least they're fact checking the internet company's hype along the way.

Comcast paid an un-fucking-believable $125 million for DailyCandy — just a simple shopping e-newsletter, if you're not familiar with it — just over a year ago, greatly enriching former AOL exec Bob Pittman, who had previously acquired it for $3 million. Amid all the investment, DailyCandy expanded from New York to London, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, Dallas, DC, Boston, Atlanta, Seattle and Philly.

DailyCandy will now stop publishing city-specific editions in all but five of those 12 cities: New York, London, LA, Chicago and San Francisco. Subscribers in the other cities will now receive an "Everywhere" edition, supplemented with local news and events twice a week.

The big bashes are off this year, a tipster tells us. Which is just as well: Last year, there were YEPs in New York, Los Angeles and the San Mateo headquarters; these plus the departmental parties meant that many Yahoos easily got to four parties a year, a tipster told us at the time. All the festivities came despite a wave of layoffs, which left Yahoo in the awkward position of having to set up metal detectors at its LA party, and of featuring Vegas-style showgirls in dollar-bill getups at the main headquarters party (see pic above) in the face of all Yahoo's bloodletting.

The 2007 party featured a Neil Diamond tribute band, so at least Yahoos apparently won't have to worry about any such torture this year. Ironically, though, 2009 has been a much better year for layoffs at Yahoo than 2008 was.

Know what any other tech companies are doing (or not doing) to celebrate the holidays this year? We're dying to hear about any conmpany parties: drop a line toryan@valleywag.com.

(Pic by Phil Hollenback)

Oyster's schtick when it debuted to much fanfare in June was that it would hire experienced staffers to stay in hotels and write reviews, giving it a competitive advantage against user-submitted sites like TripAdvisor.com. Sure enough, the site hired 20 reporters and at least three editors—veterans of the New York Times, Money, Fast Company, the Village Voice, Rolling Stone, and all sorts of other former lions of print—to fly around all the time and stay at hotels. "We pay for all the expenses, the plane ticket, taxis, meals, rooms and, of course, salaries and benefits," co-founder Elie Seidman told the New York Times in June. He added that he hoped that by the end of 2010, he'd have 150 full-time staffers.

Well, that couldn't last very long, could it? After just under two quarters of operation, the site has engaged in what we hear are massive layoffs: 75% of staff is gone, our tipster says. A spokeswoman for Oyster confirms the layoffs, but says the 75% figure is laughably high. She declined to offer the accurate numbers, or say how many staffers the site currently employs. UPDATE: Oyster's rep got back to us with figures that indicate the site laid off one-third of its payroll, though the mix of full-time and temp staffers isn't clear: "At our 2009 production peak, we had more than 30 people, full-time and temporary. As a result of both economic conditions in the market and our decisions to slow our rate of new market additions after 18 months of torrid growth, we now have more than 20 people — full time and temporary."

In a statement, Seidman said Oyster was just limiting its coverage area:

After a burst of massive growth over the past 18 months, we've covered a very large percentage of the U.S. leisure market with a product that has been incredibly well received. In order to focus on winning in the markets we've already covered, we've decided to slightly slow our rate of new market coverage.

(That 18 months figure must include a lengthy pre-launch "burst of massive growth," because it hasn't been 18 months since Oyster launched in June of this year.)

Anyway, if you're a reporter terrified of losing your job and dreaming of an online gig where you get paid to travel and stay in luxury hotels and write about it, that escape hatch just closed. Maybe it's time to think about law school.

UPDATE: Two sources confirm that 17 staffers got the axe at Oyster, including 11 reporters. It's still not clear whether that constitutes 75% or 33% of payroll or somewhere in between, but it's a huge chunk of the site's editorial staff. Four reporters remain, we're told. To make matters worse, one tipster says the company sent eight non-editorial staffers on an all-expenses trip to Jamaica last month, which was explained as a gift in lieu of bonuses. And they were buying everybody free lunches every day until late October, when they apparently realized they needed to stop spending money and start firing everybody. One former Oyster reporter writes, "This is a sinking ship, and a severe case of entrepreneurial hubris. Shame."

If you know the details on who got fired, or how many people it was, let us know.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong (pictured) said in a memo to staff (below) that the company is looking to lose 2,500 workers, or a third of its total staff. He'll be forgoing his own 2009 bonus, and is offering executives up to nine months pay if they volunteer for buyouts, according to Business Insider. Interestingly, rank and filers are being offered a weaker deal than their recent colleagues over at Time Inc.; AOL will pay them three months severance, whereas Time Inc.-ers get that plus two weeks for every year of service. Apparently unions are nice things to have in situations like this.

As it prepares to offer shares to the public next month, AOL has been on a diet plan in other ways, too:

• After steady increases, ad revenue from a deal with Google started falling this year, according to Peter Kafka at All Things D. The deal provided $700 million in ad revenue last year, about one third of the total, but was off $42 million in the most recent quarter.
• AOL surrendered bustling celebrity-news site and cable network TMZ to Time Warner; Tim Armstrong said as recently as July that he hoped to "actively" discuss whether to retain TMZ with Time Warner and that "‘If the value of TMZ increases, it's a really good thing for us."
• AOL may sell MapQuest, according to Kara Swisher at All Things D.

Pic above by Yaniv Golan.

Armstrong's memo to staff:————-

AOLers –

"Employees First" is the way that we have run the company since April and that mantra is something I take very seriously because our company is a collection of people and our brands are the work of our teams. We started by working together to determine AOL's strategy, then the correct structure for the strategy, and, as we have discussed, we are now faced with making sure we have the correct cost structure for the strategy. You have seen daily and weekly updates on Project Everest and many of you have been involved in trying to align our resources to maximize AOL's opportunity.

AOL's cost structure is something we have worked on for the past four months, and we have spent hundreds of hours reviewing ways to fix the cost structure as well as the revenue growth engine. As we are coming to the conclusion of this work over the next few weeks, it is clear that we will need to have a significant reduction of costs at the company and across almost all functional areas and geographies. Headcount costs are going to be a majority of the cost reduction recommendations coming out of Project Everest.

As I mentioned in our last Project Everest update, the idea for a voluntary layoff was suggested and we agree that it is an option that gives people more choice and decision-making ability instead of waiting for the final cost recommendations and involuntary layoffs. Starting December 4th in the United States and ending a few days after we spin out from Time Warner, we will allow employees to choose a voluntary exit from AOL. Additionally, tomorrow we anticipate beginning the communication process for voluntary layoff programs in certain international locations. We will be looking for up to 2,500 volunteers. For context on the target volunteer number, over the next several months we will be looking to reduce approximately one-third of our overall workforce at the company. We will need to do an involuntary layoff if we do not reach the target numbers through the voluntary option.

The reduction in costs is aimed at making AOL competitive for the future of the Web and it will allow us to focus the company on growth in the non-access areas of the business. After the cost reductions, we will have a company that is aligned and structured to drive our strategy in a competitive way. The number of potential reductions isn't aimed at getting us through 2010; it is aimed at resetting AOL at the correct baseline for the future.

As a member of our team and the person who takes accountability for the results of the company, I am making the decision to forego my 2009 bonus. That decision is a personal one and is not a sign for the future payout of the overall bonus plan for employees. That plan is based on performance and overall company outcomes and it will be management's recommendation to the compensation committee of the Board to approve our performance-based bonus payouts for 2009. These are challenging times and today's news is difficult. But every day we are making changes and progress and we are on our way to re-engineering AOL for success. – TA

According to quotes compiled by blogger Dan Lyons, Dodge used to say things like "Microsoft is a great company to work for" is "always putting employees first." But he's changed his tune, now that he works for Google. A new post on his personal blog starts with this dig at his old employer:

Laying off 5,000 people when you have $37B in cash and huge profits isnot cool. But hey, thanks for pushing me on to the Next Big Thing.

And suddenly, Dodge has a new viewpoint about Gmail. Before:

Even Microsoft's online version of Outlook called Outlook Web Access is far better than Gmail... Gmail... doesn't compare to Microsoft Outlook.

Now:

Outlook... was getting kind of tired. Gmail is new, fast, web based, and has all the features I need. I especially like the way it threads conversations making it easy to keep everything in context... One other subtle thing: no spam. I never realized how much corporate spam invaded my Microsoft inbox.

But he "realizes" now!

Thanks for all the "thanks," Don, but the "fuck you" is still implied. Not that we're complaining.

(Pic: Dodge, by Jay Goldman)

Current announced it will eliminate 80 jobs while shifting away from its trademark short-form video packages and "towards proven 30-60 minute formats" from more outside sources. This would mean less video production in Current's Bay Area home base, as reported previously by former Valleywagger Jackson West at NBC Bay Area.

Which means everything is totally awesome and on track, according to a Current press release:

This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year. This financial stability will allow the company to re-allocate resources in order to put further emphasis on areas of the business believed to best position Current Media for continued long-term growth.

Financial stability leads to sad job layoffs glorious resource re-allocation, gotcha. More good news: Current journalists no longer have to travel all the way to North Korea to hear propagandist doublespeak!

UPDATE: Current COO Joanna Drake Earl said in an interview that the layoffs hit San Francisco and Los Angeles offices the hardest; and while the firings were not "driven by a need to cut costs," they will indeed result in a net reduction of costs.

She added that "It's always a very sad day to eliminate positions" but that the layoffs were "about being a good media company listening to our consumers... any media company in the business of show production is... watching the dial" in terms of results and adjusting as necessary.Indeed, it sometimes seems like Current is becoming more like the traditional media companies it was intended to serve as counterprogramming against, what with the outsourcing of production, devotion to "consumer" feedback (like ratings!) and layoff rounds.

But Earl said the company remains "very committed" to audience contributions, albeit in "different ways" than through collecting short-form videos, a format now dominated by YouTube and "somewhat confusing" to viewers anyway, according to Earl. Not all short shows have been eliminated; some, like Vanguard Journalism, have actually been lengthened.

So maybe Current TV can grow with its hippie, San Francisco soul intact. That's going to mean acting more like ruthless capitalist media barons. But it's probably the best hope for the remaining employees at the all-too-baffling (and all too obscure) cable network.

(Pic: Gore at a Current TV event last year. By Simone Brunozzi.)

AOL is expected to complete mass layoffs after its spinoff from Time Warner is complete, supposedly by the end of this year. But it sounds like some cuts are too obvious to wait. One hundred firings is modest for a company of around 6,000 workers; AOL continues to work on "Project Everest" to plan the rest, our tipster said. If you know more, email us.

UPDATE: Kara Swisher at All Things D, who has written two books on AOL, was told by her sources that 100 or so layoffs are indeed coming down today. PaidContent later reported likewise.

Meanwhile Electronic Arts is laying off 17 percent of its workforce after the company saw net sales drop 12 percent from the prior year. Which, if you think about the state of the economy, is bizarre: Why aren't you unemployed people out there buying more videogames? Staying home is cheap.

(Image via Zazzle t-shirt/sticker)

Here's a rundown of some of the more promising names in child-labor media. Some of the names will probably look familiar to you, since these kids are famous. Far more famous than most media hacks. In other words, they're coming for your job, loudly.

The Dating Advice Kid

Name: Alec Greven

Age: 10

Summary: His dating-advice book How To Talk To Girls is supposed to become a movie; he now reportedly plans How To Talk To Moms, How To Talk To Dads, How To Talk To Santa and How To Talk To Grandparents. Original publisher HarperCollins is presumably working with him on all of the followups.

More: Here's video of young Alec.

British Blog Boy Wonder

Name: Scott Campbell

Age: 14

Summary: Started British news website, contributes to BBC and various newspapers

More: Campbell is CEO of Net News Daily; with co-founder and editor-in-chief Nathan Adam, he claims 100,000 unique visitors per month, and has scored freelance gigs with the BBC (left) and writes a regular column for the newspaper First News. Asked earlier this year in a Guardian profile how the economic downturn was affecting his business, he said, "I'm 13, so therefore don't have a lot to lose in the financial crisis."

The Lil' Food Critic

Name: David Fishman

Age: 12

Summary: Aspiring food critic profiled in the New York Times; his Upper West Side New York tablehopping has been optioned by Lorne Michaels for a movie.

More: "As I left, I knew that soon enough this would be one of the most ‘hip' places in the city."

(Image via Rachel Ray)

The Pint-Sized Political Pundit

Name: Jonathan Krohn

Age: 13

Summary: Talk-radio regular and self-published author became a smash hit when he spoke at the CPAC right-wing convention.

More: The home-schooled youth practiced public speaking at Christian Youth Theater plays and calling in to Bill Bennett's radio show. Has appeared on CBS News and Today. His endorsement was sought by a Georgia gubernatorial candidate.

Barack Obama's Journalist 'Homeboy'

Name: Damon Weaver

Age: 11

Summary: A successful quest to interview President Barack Obama made him the talk of cable news.

More: After ending an earlier interview with vice presidential contender Joe Biden with, "Senator Biden is now my homeboy," got permission from Obama to also be the president's "homeboy." Has completed such other White House Press Corps rites of passage as attending the inauguration on a media pass and dissing an MSNBC talking head.

The Teenaged Tech Titan

Name: Daniel Brusilovsky

Age: 16

Summary: Founder and CEO, TeensInTech.com; product evangelist for video-casting service Qik; writer for TechCruch; has 120,000 followers on his "Verified" Twitter account.

More: He's an adviser to at least two companies; his parents used to shuttle him to and from tech conferences; says you should be persistent to reach your goals. More here.

(Pic by Randy Stewart)

Microsoft has said it will lay off 800 in this round. A tipster tells us it shed at least eight 11 people from the Cambridge, Massachusetts office of its "FUSE" social networking research initiative, announced just last month by Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie. Our tipster said the Cambridge operation has been going for a year and a half, though, so it seems likely this is part of the restructuring that created FUSE from three existing Microsoft groups. This is the group, by the way, that brought Twitter search to Bing.

Among the victims: Klaus Kneale, nephew of CNBCer Dennis Kneale, and Lauren Sherman, girlfriend of Silicon Alley Insider's Dan Frommer. We're told the layoffs are hitting both the magazine and print Web sides of the publication — and that they're not yet done. Still, we're told the growing list of names is long enough to soon meet expectations of 40-60 layoffs.

We first reported about a new round of layoffs at Forbes three weeks ago, and the rumors have only grown louder and more persistent since then. Editor-in-Chief Steve Forbes finally confirmed them earlier this week, blaming "seismic shifts wrought by the Web." He had shot down layoff rumors just five months earlier — a period of time that, in the context of print journalism, used to seem like a brief flash, but which can now deliver brutal new realities.

UPDATE: We're told the Los Angeles bureau has been eliminated, along with LA-based staff writer Evan Hessel. We also hear Scott Woolley has been axed.

UPDATE: Other casualties we're hearing about: The London bureau; one correspondent each in Japan and roving Europe; Becky Buckman, lured from the Wall Street Journal to Forbes' Silicon Valley bureau; banking writer Bernard Condon; plus "a bunch of junior people." Killing so many — virtually all? — the bureaus is apparently part of a concerted effort to save on real estate costs.

UPDATE: Former Forbeser Peter Kafka tweets that he's seen a list of 27 editorial staff let go today alone. We've heard the layoffs will span multiple days.

Last Monday, Wired laid off at least six staff, including longtime editor Ted Greenwald, New York editor Mark Horowitz and, we heard, West Coast ad director Moira McDonald, whose tenure dated to the days when founders Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe owned the magazine more than ten years ago.

Where was Anderson that day? Delivering a no doubt gainful lecture for Hewlett Packard in Silicon Valley. A spokesperson tells us Anderson was in the office "all morning," when the firings occurred, before heading off to HP. But Anderson's absence for so much of such a sensitive day at Wired is great ammunition for his critics at Condé Nast, who have long said Anderson's too distracted by his approximately 50 annual lecture gigs, some in far-flung locales like Norway.

It's one thing for Anderson to delegate editorial tasks to lieutenants like executive editor Thomas Goetz or his predecessor Bob Cohn, who jumped to The Atlantic, in plusher times. But with advertising down 50 percent through May, Anderson should — arguably! — be a fixture on the front lines at Wired. Instead he's tweeting his two-week book tour schedule, which reads as follows: "SF, Munich, Naples, Capri, NYC, Toronto, Chicago, Copenhagen, Billund, Manchester, Orlando. Sigh..."

"Sigh" indeed, Chris. But at least all that time away from home and office will help bolster your independent revenue stream. Bet your ex editors wish they had created one of those! When they weren't picking up the slack for absent co-workers, that is.

UPDATE: Anderson tweets he left the office on firing day because he was on a "sales call" for Wired at HP. More sales calls are a good thing — on different days. (We had told a Wired spokesperson we'd heard Anderson was at a "speaking gig" that day and were told, "he was in the office all morning until then.")

(Pic: Anderson, by Dan Taylor)

Wired.com managing editor Marty Cortinas and copy chief Tony Long were laid off last week, sources tell us, though it's expected the two will stay on through the end of the year. The loss of two people, even high ranking ones, might not seem too brutal but for the website's recent history: it lost a quarter of its staff last November, along with a closely-aligned development executive at parent company CondéNet; then in April it lost more staff, including managing editor Leander Kahney, two other full-time employees, an unknown number of freelancers and several writers at Wired Digital's Ars Technica website.

On top of that, people close to the company whisper that the two founders of social news website Reddit, and potentially other staff, may soon be out the Wired door. Co-founder Alexis Ohanian is planning a celebration to take place on the third anniversary of the site's acquisition by Wired Digital on Oct. 31. And there's reason to think this will be more jovial than your typical Halloween party: Three years is a typical outer limit used in "earn out" agreements, in which startup founders vest progressively more money from their acquirers as time goes on. This gives them incentive to integrate their creation into the acquiring company rather than bolting for the door. Ohanian, believed to be hitting his final earn-out date along with co-founder Steve Huffman, declined to comment.

Of course, there's nothing unusual about entrepreneurial Silicon Valley programmers moving on to new challenges. Reddit would likely continue operating just fine without Ohanian and Huffman. And Wired.com marches forward under editor Evan Hansen.

But it's not lost on some Wired.com insiders that the further reduction of Wired Digital comes as New York-based parent company Condé Nast clings to a magazine-centric business model that's been a real disaster lately. After hiring McKinsey & Company's consultants, Condé closed four magazines and slashed magazine budgets, by 25 percent at many titles. And while Wired Digital's already-bled websites and blogs may have strong traffic, advertising and critical notice — they were recently nominated alongside the Washington Post, BBC and New York Times for the Online News Association's general excellence award — they've been included in the cuts.

So how is Condé expecting to survive the next big tumble in magazine advertising, if not with its websites? Through the vision of print side editors like Wired's Chris Anderson, who seems, to some Condé Nasties at least,to have spent so much time on books and speaking gigs he's forgotten to help sell ads — or to try and truly integrate his magazine with his website? Anderson's ad-hemorrhaging Wired print, mind you, has thus far escaped unscathed by the McKinsey cutbacks, we're reliably informed. Despite his good fortune, Anderson is even rumored to be advocating that Wired.com get by on more crowdsourced, written-for-Free blogs like GeekDad. Asked about this, Anderson wrote, "Evan Hansen runs Wired.com, not me." Hansen declined to be interviewed.

Or maybe the Apple Tablet, Microsoft Courier and Amazon Kindle, among other e-readers, will miraculously allow Condé Nast's old business model to seamlessly transition to the digital age, with no real internal changes necessary.

That might all sound preposterous. But it's the best rationale we've come up with for why Condé Nast would starve key websites — the best hope for its future, really — of resources. Granted, it's much easier to remain in a state of denial than to confront real and looming problems. But we thought Condé might have already hit rock bottom and changed its thinking. Apparently not.

(Pics: Josh Russell, Mat Honan and Roo Reynolds on Flickr.)

Sixty jobs is less than one half of one percent of eBay's 15,000 worldwide employees, in line with the company's earlier statement that internal rumors of a five percent reduction were "not even close" to what was planned. Without commenting on chatter that the axe will fall Thursday, eBay said it plans to provide details to employees within a week, meeting a commitment it made to them on Sept. 21 to outline restructuring plans within 30 days.

Spokesman John Pluhowski wouldn't get into whether the layoffs would be focused on the executive suite vs. rank and file, but did say they would fall "principally" within the product and technology areas. The restructuring, he added, is intended to "help improve our customer experience, build a global product team and speed up innovation." In other words, further details are still to come.

(Pic: by Chong Fong Liew)

The online auction company told us earlier this month it planned a "small" round of layoffs as part of an ongoing restructuring. Inside the company, staff whispered that eBay might shave the bottom five percent of performers, GE style, but a spokesman told us the number of lost positions would be "not even close" to five percent. A rumor also spread that laid off workers would get no severance.

An eBay tipster who helped bring the layoffs to our attention writes that they are now set to happen on Thursday. We've asked eBay for comment and will update this post if they provide any. As always, if you have any additional information, we'd love to hear from you.

UPDATE: eBay says a layoff impacting fewer than 60 positions should be announced by Oct. 21. See post here.)

(Pic: eBay CEO John Donahoe at the eBay Developers Conference in June. Getty.)

Current is mulling layoffs at its San Francisco home base, a source tells former Valleywag contributor Jackson West at NBC Bay Area. The cuts would, in part, eliminate San Francisco-based video production jobs and either outsource them or relocate them to Los Angeles, where some San Francisco jobs also ended up following November layoffs of 60 Current staffers. Current hasn't aired as much cheap user-generated content as it first planned; instead that content, such as it is, has tended to flow to sites like YouTube. No one, Clinton included, has figured out how to save the network from that expensive conundrum.

(Pic: Steve Rhodes)

Some Forbesers darkly note that, barring a summer recess, company layoffs have come near the end of this year's financial quarters, with 19 let go from the magazine and website in early January followed by a reported 50 or so at the very end of March. Another round now, just after the close of the Sept. 30 quarter, would fit the pattern. CEO Steve Forbes assured staff in May that layoffs were done for the moment and "Forbes continues to outperform its competitors." But in such a severe an ad recession that's not much reassurance.

We've put in an inquiry with Forbes PR and will update with what we hear back.

The online auction giant does plan layoffs, a spokesman confirmed to us, as part of a restructuring that fuses product and technology leadership at the company and unifies internal organizations devoted to buyers and to sellers. CEO John Donahoe, a former Bain consultant, has been trying to finely tune eBay's core auction and retail sales businesses while positioning the company as a sort of online Costco.

But inside eBay, staff are worried for their own hides. The eBay spokesman said layoffs should be "small" in scale. But one eBay-er we spoke with believed the MBA-led company is planning to cut the lowest-performing five percent of staff, emulating an old General Electric tactic. eBay said five percent is "not even close" to the limited layoffs planned — way too high.

So staff should cast a skeptical eye on the other rumor going around, that eBay plans no severance for laid off workers. Still, given Donahoe's apparent readiness to break with past company culture — or, as he calls it, "religion" — it's no wonder some employees worry they'll be lost in the shuffle.

(Pic: Donahoe at Allen & Co. Sun Valley schmoozefest in July.)