No Layoffs at O'Reilly Books
- 7
- Add a Comment
I received an anonymous IM rumor from someone a few minutes ago claiming that “Everybody has been laid off” at O'Reilly Books, except for the… well, here's the email I was given as a follow-up:
I don't think I mentioned to you that the sh*t has been hitting the proverbial fan at O'Reilly - today is xxx's last day there, and her boss has also quit, leaving exactly ONE person in the HR department, and he does benefits only…should be interesting.
Can anybody confirm or deny this rumor? I can only assume that most of the HR team has been eliminated, rather than the entire division.
UPDATE: Ignore everything that was written above (which I won't delete, so that you might understand the following). Direct from Tim O'Reilly's mouth:
I would have thought you'd ping me before putting something on your blog about massive layoffs at O'Reilly. The way things spread on the net, it could do a lot of damage before it gets corrected.
Where did you hear that? Would love to know how these rumors start.
Things are actually going pretty darn well at O'Reilly. We had a tough time back in 2001/2002 with the tech downturn, but we've been solidly profitable in 2003 and 2004, have been gaining significant market share in book publishing, as well as growing both our online and conference businesses. Layoffs are the furthest thing from our minds. We've got at least a dozen open reqs for hiring. We've just added about a dozen people, and are looking for more.
You did mention turnover in our HR department, and that's true, but that was two voluntary departures.
First, major apologies to Tim. He's absolutely correct - I should've dropped him a line about it first. For some reason, I didn't think about going directly to him about it. Second, I love O'Reilly Books, have a semi-complete set of Hacks, and only wanted to confirm / deny the rumor - not start one. Third, the message was originally sent to me through an unlogged ICQ connection - yes, I still use ICQ (through Trillian). Fourth, I'm VERY glad to hear that they're still doing well.
7 Comments
Andrew Phelps
January 16th, 2005
at 3:15pm
That's what happens when you're hit with a sexual haassment lawsuit — they're very costly.
Anonymous
January 16th, 2005
at 9:34pm
This is Tim O'Reilly. There is absolutely no truth to this rumor. I have no idea where and why it started.
Our HR director just resigned to move back to North Carolina — that's the only thing I can make out here that has any germ of truth.
I've been away on vacation for three weeks, but I think I'd know if something bad were happening :-)
Anonymous
January 17th, 2005
at 7:02am
Very irresponsible to post a rumor based on anonymous instant messages. What do you have against Tim and O'Reilly Books!
Anonymous
January 17th, 2005
at 1:03pm
Sort of shocking of you to hastily spread stuff like that. You must have slipped as you have always been more ethical.
Anonymous
January 17th, 2005
at 2:34pm
Things going great at O'Reilly? Great to hear. Sales up? Revenue up? Hiring? Great.
Looks like unrestrained p2p didn't really destroy O'Reilly.
Care to rexamine your position on the DMCA/p2p? Only after reading books you publish in their pdf format have I purchased O'Reilly books. Had I not seen the pdf, I wouldn't have purchased the book. Same with tech books from other publishers.
Your position on p2p/DMCA has however, influenced my decision on which title to buy on more than one occasion.
Anonymous
January 17th, 2005
at 10:07pm
I would suggest you remove the post BEFORE it gets captured by Google and lives forever since it is so blatently wrong…jusy my 2cents.
Anonymous
January 18th, 2005
at 8:19am
What an astoundingly stupid thing to do - spread a rumor like that without checking the source. Geez, I think I'll send you some anonymous IMs - how about, Bill Gates is retiring; or George W. is thinking about nationalizing Apple; or, hey, maybe that Pirillo is going bankrupt. Lets get that into his credit report…