Gawker: valleywag, serena software

Serena Software lays off 90 of 900 Facebook-using employees

Owen Thomas — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

I imagine most of you won't blink an eye if I tell you that Serena Software just laid off 10 percent of its 900-employee workforce. Layoffs have become a predictable, opportunistic excuse for poorly managed companies to conduct house-cleaning, a reflexive overreaction to turbulent markets which may well end up lengthening the recession. Serena Software is a software company whose software other software companies use to make software — right, exactly, the kind of boring company people do their best to ignore. Last year, CEO Jeremy Burton forced employees to spend an hour every Friday using Facebook. As late as June, the policy managed to garner press for the company from credulous hacks. But we think some of those employees now wish they'd ignored the Facebook diktat and spent Fridays working.

Software maker's ad cusses at Salesforce.com

Owen Thomas — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:00:00 EDT

"@#$% Salesforce.com — it's easy!" reads a new ad from Serena Software. What does that mean, exactly? Serena isn't exactly a competitor to Salesforce.com; it makes enterprise software tools that help companies manage their enterprise software. Boring upon boring — until you realize who signed off on the ad. That would be René Bonvanie, left. He's now Serena's head of marketing, formerly a top executive at Salesforce.com. Is Bonvanie funding a dig at ex-boss Marc Benioff through his advertising budget? Bad marketing, excellent theater.

Friday is Facebook Day

Megan McCarthy — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:04:42 EDT

Remember when the asinine office policy was to wear a Hawaiian shirt on Fridays? Serena Software, some boring company in San Mateo, has begun a policy of "Facebook Fridays," where the entire 900-person company is forced to spend an hour on Facebook, updating their profiles, throwing virtual sheep at each other, and, hopefully finding potential Serena employees while they're trolling for hotties. God, what is this economy coming to? Companies that force their employees to share information on a social network? Doomed to fail.