2005 January 16

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.

Podcasting is all the rage. It's been said that we're podcasting, but… I still hate that label. Since we do both live and pre-recorded shows, it's difficult to say that we're doing one thing (podcasting) over another (broadcasting). I don't own an iPod. I'm just a gnome - so does that make me a gnomecaster? Well, here's another gnomecast for you - quick, easy, and fun.
Our show is definitely in full swing now.

Podcasting is all the rage, with our without an iPod. It’s been said that we’re podcasting, but… I still hate that label. Since we do both live and pre-recorded shows, it’s difficult to say that we’re doing one thing (podcasting) over another (broadcasting). I don’t own an iPod. I’m just a gnome - so does that make me a gnomecaster? Well, here’s another gnomecast for you - quick, easy, and fun.

Look at how many podcasting geeks we had last night! It’s a veritable podcast cast.

Eric Rice, Jake Ludington, Emile Bourquin, Tim Bourquin, Alex Williams, Michael Geoghegan, Doug Kaye, Phillip Torrone, Rob Greenlee, and Peter Yorke. I suppose it could be said that these are podcasters, one and all.
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