Layoffs at Internet companies continue to be announced, with the latest coming from Internet radio site Pandora. Pandora’s fate itself was in question not too long ago, but has recently found new hope and expects to survive after all.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t go for the entire staff, as the economy has taken its toll, the company had to let go of 20 employees. It doesn’t seem like a lot when you consider a possible 3,500 job cuts at Yahoo, but Pandora was a company with only 140 employees, that has now been reduced to one with 120. 20 people is a decent chunk for a company that size.
The announcement comes from CEO Tim Westergren himself, and seems a little more heartfelt that some other announcements from other establishments. Westergren writes on the Pandora Blog:
We cherish our employees. We have painstakingly built a team that I am tremendously proud of – there’s not a person in our company who hasn’t contributed substantially to what we do, and who we are. The twenty folks we let go today were no exception.
I started this company nine years ago. I lived through some very tough times back in 2001-2002. But letting go of an employee will, for me at least, always be the most gut-wrenching thing there is. We tried our best today to treat these friends and colleagues with great understanding, and with as much financial support for their transition as we can afford.
Westergren continued by noting that Pandora’s ad sales are growing very well (so well in fact that they will actually have to hire more bodies in that department), and Pandora’s future seems stable. “It’s just hard to be excited about all that today,” he said. It is however, another testimony that online advertising like we talked about before, is perhaps not in the pickle that some make it out to be. MySpace, Google, and Technorati seem to agree.
