M Linden’s Bloodbath! 30% of Lab Staff Axed!!!
by Pixeleen Mistral on 10/06/10 at 11:44 am
Rumors that 30% of the Lab staff were being terminated began circulating at about 8:30 PDT yesterday, along with word the Linden Lab office in Brighton was to close. By mid-afternoon the first official word appeared on the PRnewswire – "Linden Lab will also improve its geographic and cost efficiencies. The company’s product and engineering divisions will be combined. The software development teams will be consolidated in North America and customer support will be reconfigured to provide more scalable services. As a result, Linden Lab anticipates staff reductions of approximately 30 percent."
Mark Kingdon (M Linden) is quoted as saying, "We’ve emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we’ve spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability and the overall user experience. Today’s announcement about our reorganization will help us make Second Life® even simpler, more enjoyable, relevant and engaging for consumers starting with their first experience. It will also enable us to invest in bringing 3D to the web and will strengthen our profitability"
Korean players mourning the loss of a Linden staff member
A few hours later, M Linden posted an announcement to the Linden saying, "Though the company remains in a solid financial position, it has become clear that we need to make some hard decisions in order to bring current and future Residents the kind of product and experience we feel they deserve"
Meanwhile, players scrambled to catalog the dead and missing staff, as an anonymous source informed the Herald that drunk Linden staff were wandering the streets in San Francisco – some things never change. But with the sudden loss of around 100 positions, there is certain to be an impact on both the player experience and the long term direction of Second Life – for better or worse. For now, the Herald extends our sympathies to the fallen.
truth teller
Jun 10th, 2010
http://pastebin.com/LVqG00BY
linden layoff’s posted, source unknown
Pappy Enoch
Jun 10th, 2010
Well, my squat am safe now.
Them flyin’ monkeys left will be moppin’ the floors an cleanin’ the tawlets an’ shinin’ up King Mark’s shoes instead of stickin’ duck tape on Second Life to keep it from crashin’ again.
Won’t have no time left to hunt down a po’ boy like me.
argo nurmi
Jun 10th, 2010
Clearly, this move has been in the cards since the arrival of M. I’ve watched the targeted killings of both well known and obscure lindens wondering when the other shoe would drop. It just has. The goal behind the corporate speak is to turn SL into a social network. Perhaps commoditizing the social habits and relationships of residents is just too lucrative for M who is more at home in the world of marketing and speaks of potential new residents as consumers. The original vision of SL will be replaced by something “simple” with better affinities for the mass market. The experiment is over. Last one out please turn off the lights.
ɀ
Jun 10th, 2010
Good riddance. Linden Lab employees are some of the most pretentious and robotic individuals on the face of the planet.
SecondLie
Jun 10th, 2010
This just makes my job even more secure.
Little Lost Linden
Jun 10th, 2010
Pics of the Linden Memorial:
http://thebotzone.wordpress.com/
3 Lindens showed up at the same time.
Dave Bell
Jun 10th, 2010
This possibly includes people who have never been apparent to customers, but so many jobs are out-sourced to contractors. There may be more jobs vanishing which were never formally part of Linden Lab.
It’s a huge drop, and that isn’t good. It’s easy to imagine people delaying spending money with Linden Lab until they have a better idea of what is happening. How much is a Private Island? Can Linden Lab keep going long enough to earn back the investment? Will people want to buy land?
I’m about half-way through a year-long Premium Account, which is enough time to get an idea of whether SL is likely to collapse. Right now, all we have to go on is speculation on a few paragraphs of MBA-speak.
And how do people spend money? My hypothesis is that the “virtual goods” which are mentioned in the announcement are not things that people buy endlessly. I know my spend rate has dropped. And, without the 3D world, what value do the virtual goods have?
Linden Lab don’t have that good a record for buying-in technology. Without people like me, sure enough of the future to spend money, SL is finished. Right now, I could manage until December without paying LL anything. I don’t feel like an asset. Despite Mark Kingdon’s own writing on digital businesses and the value of customers, I’m feeling like a mushroom–kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.
ɀ
Jun 10th, 2010
Second Life is a community-oriented sandbox experience, not some Facebook flash game. M Linden is trying to force a square peg through a round hole by turning the grid into Farmville. It will fail, just like Nebraska failed.
All Seeing Eye
Jun 10th, 2010
watch yer port connections when on the LL blogrum. Some interesting connections are being forced to some german web relationship marketing website from time to time. Kingdon is already selling our identities to grab as much cash as he can. got to pay upkeep on the new yacht the sl2 money kickbacks bought. And that L$ is plummeting too.
MarkByron
Jun 10th, 2010
A 30% cut now and a 70% cut later when Langdon fails to ‘restructure’ SL into FarmVille.
Pappy Enoch
Jun 10th, 2010
@MarkBryon,
Don’t you go cornfusin’ King Mark with Michael Landon.
Them Cartwrights knowed how to run a farm.
Hell, if’n they’d run SL Hoss would a wallopped them griefrers fast after they done laid a beatin’ on Little Joe, Ben would have turned a profit, and Hop Sing would have made supper.
Ajax Manatiso
Jun 10th, 2010
Its clear that M Linden wants the “browser based experience” so he can sell popup advertising and residents will spend half their time closing ad banners.
Whenever I pop up the map now, in world, I see lots of yellow. People are putting up their land for sale before SL goes out of business and everyone gets zilch.
MarkByron
Jun 10th, 2010
@Pappy, I must have melded Linden and Kingdon together – my apologies for smearing the good Langdon name. But yeah, if they had the Cartwright’s running Linden Lab and Hoss as the G-Team, they could cut 50% of the existing staff.
MarkByron
Jun 10th, 2010
@Ajax, don’t give them any ideas. Next thing you know, you’ll have to click on an ad whenever you teleport.
pepper
Jun 10th, 2010
How sad yesterday to hear that some Lindens were reaching out to residents asking for support and help keeping their jobs. As if the company has some sort of record of listening to ordinary residents on matters of importance? It sounds like the axe list was not yet complete…and successive rounds are coming.
Yep
Jun 10th, 2010
Maybe this is the answer to the almost unusable grid. Get the people who have allowed second life to fall into the ruins that it has currently become out and hire new people who have not grown complacent with how things are currently working (or not working) and fix a lot of these problems. I would also hope the misbehaving Lindens who enjoy leaking information to the JLU and other groups are on the list of losing their jobs for betraying the trust given to them by giving out information about other residents real lives. Lets just hope that the JLU has ran out of friends. The bottom line is can things get any worse?
Gundel Gaukelei
Jun 10th, 2010
The bride is losing weight in order to fit in the corset. Who will be the groom?
Pappy Enoch
Jun 10th, 2010
“The bride is losing weight in order to fit in the corset. Who will be the groom?”
I got me $10 and a couple books filled with green stamps I licked and stuck in myself. I’ll pay King Mark and marry her!
We gots an extry barn that don’t leak too bad and a lot o’ exstension cords that am long enuf to reach the neighbor’s farm. I can run them server mersheens the Enoch Holler way, which are the only correct way, soon as I sneaks over and plugs ‘em in!
Doc
Jun 10th, 2010
What i would like to know, dont they have any notice period? (i hope i said it correctly).Or is that not usual in the US?
MarkByron
Jun 10th, 2010
I think what were missing here is what Linden didn’t say. In cutting a dramatic 30% of their staff, it’s quite likely that the unpublished plan is to do more outsourcing as replacements (e.g. Ontyne group). Why pay somebody a living wage when you can outsource to an Asian sweat shop and pay somebody 50 cents an hour to handle the ‘mundane’ tasks such as customer support.
Picard's Wonky Eye
Jun 10th, 2010
@Pappy
You know I always felt that Adam Cartwright was the true badass of the family, and that all those years when the show ignored him to focus on Lil Joe and Hoss he was off a-whompin and a-whoopin and letting the beast prowl.
That’s why he wore black, jus’ like Johnny Cash.
Meanwhile, the Lindens built a tollbooth in the desert.
Darien Caldwell
Jun 10th, 2010
@Doc,
It’s common when laying off people here, that they are given severance pay equal to the notice period, but asked to leave immediately. This is to prevent them doing any sabotage after finding out they will be leaving the company. The net effect is the same, they still get their 2 weeks of pay.
Pappy Enoch
Jun 10th, 2010
@Picard’s Wonky Eye:
You am damn rite about Adam. We were pure Billy Badass. I figgered he got laid a bunch, and that were why them other fellers made him ride off into the sunset.
Like the feller done said that time, no badass goes unpunished. Look at what done happened to me.
Well, sir, if SL goes under, I reckon the Herald could bekum the Bonanza Interwebs Blob or sum’fin. We’d keep talkin’ Bonanza till the sun burned out.
It's Unfixable
Jun 10th, 2010
@Gundel – “The bride is losing weight in order to fit in the corset. Who will be the groom?”
That’s not outside the realm of possibility.
It’s also possible that management has realized that they may have been doing a lot of things that nobody fully understood with respect to how it was supposed to fit the business model, and they were wasting a lot of energy and resources doing things nobody needed or wanted.
A 30% cut in staff is never good, and usually when you see that it’s a sign that the company doing it won’t last more than another year. I hope that’s not the case with Linden Lab. Despite the problems, SL really is unique.
II Singh
Jun 10th, 2010
Cross posting from another site, but regardless a good post and very interesting in sort of a “boring way” for us poor tech folks who have lived inside the belly of the beast and seen all this before. -ex Hewlett Packard employee
now for the recently ex Linden Labs employee…….
Originally Posted by Taco Rubio View Post
I am really sad about this. I sat for a couple years on an email address, and today SL officially died to me, so I used it. I wrote to the email address you use as a Linden when you leave LL. I talked a bit to Cristiano, and he encouraged me to post this, so I’m going to. here is what I wrote to that address. The subject line was “so long, and thanks for all the shit”.
Hello, and goodbye,
As you know, we’ve had a major restructuring this week. By that I mean
the new CFO has fired* a bunch of people so that the shareholders (I
will not capitalize that word) can make more money off our blood,
sweat, and tears; their ball of confusion is a higher priority than
ours.
for the tl;dnr crowd, save your time, I’m simply saying management has
been fucked, is fucked, and will always be fucked, because they don’t
understand the product and will never care about the people who make
it. For those who like to read, have fun!
Sadly, I am among those cut for the greater good – which I think makes
me not the greater good. I would like to thank you all for these
glorious 6 years, except I’m far too pissed off to do so. Instead, for
my departure letter, I’d like to single out some gentlemen who’s
particularly poor leadership caused this in the first place. Here come
some shoutouts!
*Philip – I was super-sad(tm) when you couldn’t get your head around
what you tried to create, much less take any responsibility for it.
.
*Mark – You are a penis. And not in a good way.
*Bob – The balls you have to do this cut after having a job in which
you have never actually interacted with your product are enormous, and
I admire that. There is a special room in hell for you, and if I’m
lucky, the devil will let me off my “mow this lawn, with your teeth”
job for a few hours every day to punch you in the face, while I get
lemonade. If I’m unlucky, I will get no lemonade.
As the wheels on the bus failed to go round and round, I can only
shake my head and think “told you so”. From the early days through the
lunch menu and on into the future**, we have constantly provided a
substandard product with no accountability for it, despite the best
efforts of many of the people that got shit-canned today. I’d be able
to make a strong argument that the people laid off today were the
people who kept the fucking waterlogged boat afloat, and that the
executives named above are the entire problem. Time will tell.
For those of you who still have a job, I have nothing but admiration
and a strong advisement that you GTFO. This isnt a huggy situation,
this is a corporate situation in which your work is judged by managers
who don’t understand wtf you’re even doing, and sadly, don’t care.
Nothing you ever paid me for was worth this, you jerkoffs. Since this
won’t go to the people you actually
liquidated/fired/terminated/torleyated/whatever I will be posting this
elsewhere so that everybody will have the opportunity to understand
what you just did.
I’d like to close with this wonderful quote, which I think sums up how
we all feel:
“I’ve labored long and hard for bread,
For honor, and for riches,
But on my corns too long you’ve tread,
You fine-haired sons of bitches.”
- Black Bart, 1877
Love, Peace, and Hair Grease,
Taco Fucking Rubio
AKA _Linden, AKA KGB Linden AKA Fink Linden, AKA Spy Linden AKA CIA Linden
*Firing people sucks. Make other people do it.
**There is no future. You blew it.
P.S. if you are reading this, you still have a job there. I understand
that you probably have survivor’s guilt – “why do i have my job when
so many good people don’t!?!” – please do not dwell on that and
understand that you have your job because some shitty manager who is
trying to save his/her job made some decisions on how to best do that,
so that a director trying to save his/her job could say “look i’m
shaking things up”. Don’t dwell, just let today be a wake up call to
you as a reminder that this is a company, not a family, and the rich
eat themselves. You aren’t rich, start looking for a new job now, you
will be next. Love you guys!
Curious
Jun 10th, 2010
Linden Labs is cleaning house being under new management. The previous people staffing Linden Labs was filled with corruption as the Wrong Hands group revealed to all of us.
Second Life has become nothing but a laggy cess pool of pornography and scandals. It is time for the people who allowed Second Life to slide into this mess to leave and time to bring in a new team to clean it up.
janeforyou Barbara
Jun 11th, 2010
Shure,, any to cut costs, i think there was to many “Lindens” that dident realy do any and to many that did a lot.
Btw…. are the list correckt? I was shure i se a few on it that had quit the lab loong ago…
We,the users and investors in SL with SIMs are the crators,Linden Lab only provide the software and we all want better platform, so we just hope that the “new” team dont screw up but make it all better.
I love SL and my friends there
Gaara Sandalwood
Jun 11th, 2010
“We’ve emerged from a two-year investment period during which, among other things, we’ve spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability and the overall user experience.”
I stopped holding in my laughter right about here.
Ψ
Jun 11th, 2010
Expect more heads to roll. The lost 30% is only phase one.
At0m0 Beerbaum
Jun 11th, 2010
@ curious
except none of the corrupt lindens got fired.
The non-corrupt ones did.
IntLibber Brautigan
Jun 11th, 2010
At0m0,
Well not all the corrupt Lindens evaded firing. JP got the axe, and I know he’s the one who leaked my company’s proprietary info to the Sheep. It’s about time.
Plexus was already gone, but I imagine he was let go for lack of intelligence than for corruption. Getting caught being stupid is it’s own sort of crime.
Frontier was also long gone, and he’s well known as the favor-man for the furry community.
But you are generally correct. Harry, Jack, and Cyn are continuing to fail upwards. I’m sure Jumpman will give a shout out to Torley and his wife.
See the reason for the mass firing is that the Lindens ran out of things to ban from SL. They got rid of the gamblers, but those who weren’t gamblers said nothing. Then they got rid of the bankers, but those who weren’t bankers still said nothing. Then they got rid of the advertisers, and those who didn’t sell advertising still said nothing. Then they banned the protestors, for getting pissed off about sim tier hikes. Then they got rid of the IntLibbers, cause he was one of the few with the balls to call the Lindens on their shit and stand up for those already banned. Then they got rid of the Woodburys, who also had the balls to call the JLU, the jkools, the ph0x’s, and their corrupt linden pals on their shit.
So then they ran out of people to hate and ban, so they started banning the Lindens with ethics: Mia, Harmony, people like that. All the better to minimize the stock options liabilities when IPO vestment time or merger/buyout time comes around.
Little Lost Linden
Jun 11th, 2010
I can only imagine what this reduction is going to do for inventory loss, broken TP’s, unscheduled outages, etc. Not too mention traffic bot and camper control. I predict a huge resurgence of all these bad things. 30% is a huge slice and I predict we will start seeing some major service failures very soon.
The working environment there has to be horrible for the remainder of the year, that is for certain.
-Little Lost Linden
http://thebotzone.wordpress.com/
Random Doomsayer
Jun 11th, 2010
May it rest in pieces. Many many many little bitty pieces…
Sigmund Leominster
Jun 11th, 2010
I suppose if you’re going to swing an ax, make sure you don’t only do half a job! The spin of “restructuring” and “refocus” simply glosses over the underlying fact that LL is not making enough money – or is spending too much. You don’t need a degree in economics to know that a business has to do do two things well – sell stuff (revenue) and make the stuff cheaper than you sell it (expenses). The difference between the cost of making stuff and the selling price for your stuff is called “profit,” and that’s what you want.
So, cutting 30% of your people certainy does one thing well – it cuts your expenses. Provided the price of your stuff stays the same, your profits improve. As I said, no complex economic theory needed here.
The real question now is what LL will do to maintain, or better stilll increase, their revenues. The income from premium account holders (me included) is hardly enough to run the fridge where they keep the Red Bull – about 1% of registered users actually pay. Or put another way, the majority of folks who whine about Second Life are freeloading.
So beefing up the revenue stream from premium subscribers is likely on the table but where they might be able to make more money is by increasing the cost of Linden dollar transactions – which is what most people call “taxation.” For example, it costs me $1 to convert Linden dollars earning in-world to real dollars in PayPal. Charging me $1.50 per transaction may – or may not – result in extra revenue. And don’t forget, sellers using Xstreet pay for the service, so that could increase.
Whatever the next steps are, as the poster who used a symbol rather than a name pointed out, this is only phase one.
Karen Palen
Jun 12th, 2010
What do you call 100 Lindens buried up to their necks in sand waiting for the tide to come in?
A GOOD START!
100 down – 200 to go!
NEXT!!!!
Ted
Jun 12th, 2010
“Though the company remains in a solid financial position, it has become clear that we need to make some hard decisions in order to bring current and future Residents the kind of product and experience we feel they deserve”
In English:
Though the company is losing more users per day than the barrels of oil being spewed in the gulf, it has become clear that we need to make hard decisions as to how to rightfully produce profit after years of allowing unharnessed fraud and bad practices to exist that produced what we have today. We’ve simply ran out of web suckers since we quit lying to the residents that created our world with their imagination. We now wish to give our residents a real company, but are not quite sure how to achieve it. Without fraud, lying, false advertisement, and poor practices in general, we are at loss as to how to proceed. We have ran off our serious user base and fans and the only ideal solution is to down size to the point of non existence being we are now understanding that no company in their right mind would buyout our putrid reputation. And just like BP, we are not at fault either.
Little Lost Linden
Jun 12th, 2010
As a result of these massive layoffs at Linden Lab, I am already starting to detect more bots and campers inworld. I knew a resurgence was inevitable, but I did not expect it to happen so soon…
Little Lost Linden
http://www.thebotzone.net
Will Lab’s Over Half-Off Sale For Large Landowners Continue? | The Alphaville Herald
Jun 12th, 2010
[...] interest and investment in the Second Life platform is a problem made worse after this week’s 30% Linden staff cut. A pervasive pessimism among all but the most ardent Linden loyalists is settling over the [...]
IntLibber Brautigan
Jun 14th, 2010
Little Lost Linden,
Imagine that, if there are enough bots loose in SL, in order to compete with each other, their programmers will need to give them more and more AI capabilities. Eventually the bots will gain sentience and evolve on their own…
Alex Ponebshek
Jun 14th, 2010
“we’ve spent a considerable amount of time improving reliability”
Have you now. When will we be seeing these changes?
Jocelyn Pawpad
Jun 14th, 2010
This is not good for business, not by a long shot. I was approached earlier today about organising a few people to purchase a region and my take on it was that it was beeter to wait and see where this leads. I’m no desire to spend a bucketload of real world dollars to maintain a level of comfort which could be yanked on a whim tomorrow.
Little Lost Linden
Jun 15th, 2010
I think in order for Linden Lab to really put this behind them, they should start working on a new product and call it Second Life 3.0.
I would focus on improving the graphics because what they have going now does not look pretty for the year 2010. I would also focus on fixing the CPU utilization, lag, sim crossings, and IM limits. And also, yeah, bots, campers, and model avatars. Make them all AR.
I want my SL to look and feel like Neuromancer, damn it.
Also, they need to learn from past mistakes…like laying off a third of the company a week or 2 before a birthday celebration. Talk about timing that could not possibly be any worse.
We just got rid of 30% of our employees. Now, let’s celebrate!!
http://sl7b.wordpress.com/
Craziness I say!
-Little Lost Linden
http://www.thebotzone.net
Toby1
Jun 15th, 2010
Can somebody please tell me how SL can possibly be fitted into a web browser???
What the hell do they mean? It is a 3D world – openGL and all that.
How would it work? Will it still be scripted? With transactions? WTF ?
What the hell are they talking about?
Somebody please enlighten me!
Leigh Garnet
Jun 15th, 2010
Hey im from Teen Grid And its not fair bring bk all my linden freinds specially Blue linden ITS NOT FAIR!!!
Theres supposed to help us now we only have 15 lindens left on teen grid and there never on they removed the ones were always online! This is obsene Linden labs shouldnt do this to us and now all them innocent people have lost there jobs espiccaly Blue, Baggaged and ect. Thanks to Linden Labs we have no good lindens left to help us!
Sorry but thats just my say!
From Leigh Garnet 13 yrs old Teen second life
L$ Exchange Panic – Spacebux Value Slides!!! | The Alphaville Herald
Jun 17th, 2010
[...] choice but to sell L$s, but as the market digests the implications of last week’s sudden 30% cut in Lab staffing levels, it may be difficult to find enough buyers to maintain the L$ spacebux value [...]
SO ANGRY
Jun 21st, 2010
too bad, TOO BAD they didn’t get Qarl Linden. I work for the game industry and I am going to be out for blood if I see his mesh import having people ripping meshes from games in the game industry, porting them into SL and THEN selling them. It’s bad enough a lot of sims use textures from games without permission. It’s bad enough there’s Star Wars, Avatar, L4D, Halo etc the list goes on, on Xstreet. If the meshes on games I worked on appears in SL. I will sue so hard and much worse!
Danziel Lane
Jun 21st, 2010
@Leigh:
“Hey im from Teen Grid And its not fair bring bk all my linden freinds specially Blue linden ITS NOT FAIR!!!”
Thank you Leigh for answering one of my questions before I even put it.
When I read the list of fired Lindens, I saw a lot who were assigned to the Teen Grid. I had planned to ask, if there were any left.
Now you tell there are some, but never online.
So, what does that mean for the future of SL? Sooner or later all teens will become 18 and have to change to the “real” SL to become customers. Teen Grid is a gread opportunity for a business to talk to their customers of tomorrow.
Also, many services offered to teens in the internet got a lot more customers than SL, so I was always wondering why M, who obviously likes numbers, seems to ignore the teens.
My questions are not answered, but thanks to Leigh I know, that Lindens are badly missed on Teen Grid.
Gundel Gaukelei
Jun 21st, 2010
@Danziel Lane: Teen Grid is a gread opportunity for a business to talk to their customers of tomorrow.
It’s a shame they miss the opportunity to get that easy prey hooked early. Now the poor leeches will have to turn them into brainwashed zombies by other means.
Pappy Enoch
Jun 21st, 2010
@Gundel,
Don’t be so dang hard on Danziel. Ol’ King Philip’s Hillbilly Grid didn’t last a month after LL opened ‘er up in ’06.
I ain’t never got over what that smooth-talkin’ city-boy done to folks like me. I ain’t been rite since and I blames him fo’ my life o’ crime and misery.
Chainsaw M Linden Gets The Chop – Philip Linden Steps In | The Alphaville Herald
Jun 25th, 2010
[...] Lab CEO M Linden is stepping down, after axing 30% of the Lab’s staff in recent weeks and pulling a surprise no-show for his speech at the [...]