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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000>James,</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000><BR>Apparently the q'n never got answered in the
article.<BR><BR>I do have this thought, though:<BR><BR>After today;s plunge,
AMZN is still worth $16 billion in the stock market + $1 billion in net
debt.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff face=Arial size=2><SPAN class=010275000-24062000>For
that, one can buy the entire SPX Airlines group.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff face=Arial size=2><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000></SPAN></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial><FONT color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000>Another aside... call it weekend
humor<BR>.<BR></SPAN></FONT>The Goldman Sachs Internet Index <SPAN
class=010275000-24062000><FONT color=#0000ff> </FONT></SPAN>GIN:<FONT
color=#0000ff><SPAN class=010275000-24062000> </SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT
face=Arial><FONT color=#0000ff><SPAN class=010275000-24062000> - seems
appropriate for AMZN holders tonight, who must be looking to get HHH (as in High
Higher Highest)...<BR><BR>Gitanshu</SPAN></FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT size=2><FONT face=Arial><FONT color=#0000ff><SPAN
class=010275000-24062000>No
position</SPAN></FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML></x-html>From ???@??? Fri Jun 23 20:10:12 2000
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From: "James Taylor" <jptaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Subject: [RT] Layoffs.com
Date: Fri, 23 Jun 2000 19:10:28 -0700
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The dark side of this sick market mania is starting
to show itself..... much more fun ahead.....</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>---------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><FONT size=3><STRONG>Layoffs.com </STRONG></FONT>
<P><FONT size=3><STRONG>High-tech employees shuffle for work </STRONG></FONT>
<P><BIG>By Matt Richtel </BIG>SAN FRANCISCO -- LAURA SCHMIDT took an Internet
job 10 months ago packed with promise: a big raise, stocks she figured could
someday be worth $5 million and the chance at early retirement. Unfortunately,
her leisure time came way too soon.
<P>Three weeks ago, Schmidt received a pink slip from ThirdAge Media, a Web site
for baby boomers, laid off in the Internet industry's first significant
shakeout. As quickly and aggressively as they filled their cubicles last year,
dozens of dot-coms across the country are unloading employees in an effort to
meet a seemingly obvious goal heretofore put on indefinite hold: Make a profit.
<P>The layoffs signal an end to the unbounded optimism of some dot-com employees
who flocked to start-ups in hopes of developing sudden wealth, but who now say
they are approaching new job offers with more caution. And the very stock market
that once held the keys to new wealth now may be equally responsible not just
for lowered expectations, but for lost jobs.
<P>Indeed, analysts say the reversal of fortune for many companies, and their
employees, can be traced in part to stock market turmoil on April 14. When the
Nasdaq plunged that day, investors signaled they no longer would finance
dot-coms that sought to grow at all costs, ignoring, at least temporarily, the
concept that successful businesses take in more than they spend.
<P>"Call it old-fashioned, but at some point, these companies had to start
making money," said Douglas Henton, president of Collaborative Economics, an
economic advisory group in Palo Alto, who called the phenomenon a healthy
shakeout in which some companies fail and others refine themselves. "At some
point, they run out of money and they have to start laying off."
<P>Companies that have had to lay off workers include lesser-known and big-name
Web sites, including the health care site drkoop.com Inc. (50 employees laid
off), carOrder.com Inc. (100 layoffs), Redwood City-based insurance site InsWeb
(100 planned), the home-furnishing site living.com (50 layoffs), Palo Alto-based
search engine Alta Vista (50 layoffs) and more than two dozens other sites for a
total of more than 2,000 employees.
<P>And that does not include a growing number of dot-coms that have been
subsumed in mergers or simply have gone broke, including Emeryville-based firms
reel.com (200 employees) and petstore.com (number of employees unavailable),
DEN.com, an entertainment site in Los Angeles that employed 200, APBnews.com, a
New York-based crime news site with 140 workers, and toysmart.com, a
Disney-backed toy retailer in Waltham, Mass., with 170 employees that folded in
May.
<P>Earlier this year even Amazon.com laid off 150 people, but that represents
just 2 percent of its work force and that move preceded the market downturn that
seems to be driving the latest layoff trend.
<P>Executives at many of the companies still in business say layoffs do not
suggest they are desperately low on cash, but that they must plan for a future
in which new infusions of capital are not as easily obtained as they have been
in the two previous years.
<P>The good news, economists say, is that the human toll appears limited to
individual dot-coms, that the number of employees laid off represents a small
fraction of the hundreds of thousands of members of the Internet work force, and
that nearly all of those who lost their jobs have skills that should help them
easily obtain jobs with other technology companies.
<P>"There aren't any signals the economy is in trouble," said Stephen Levy,
director for the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. "The
industry is doing well by any economic measure. This is a company phenomenon,
not an industry-wide or economy-wide phenomenon."
<P>Indeed, most dot-com employees seem surprisingly sanguine.
<P>"This is an auspicious time," said Schmidt, 33, who spent 10 months as
director of brand design for ThirdAge Media, which cut 35 of its 140 jobs. "I
live in San Francisco. I'm just glad it happened now rather than in two months
when a lot more people will be looking for jobs."
<P>She said she saw the layoff as an opportunity for an extended vacation before
she starts her next job. But she also said she was looking at prospective
employers with new scrutiny to make sure their business plans seem viable.
<P>"I would imagine that if I want a job by the end of next week, I'd have one,"
she said. But, she added. "I'm doing a lot more research than I did before."
<P>Many others who have been laid off say that no sooner did they receive the
news than they began interviewing again, sifting through offers, taking new
jobs.
<P>But not all of those receiving a pink slip are feeling rosy about the
experience. One 26-year-old woman hired in February by an entertainment dot-com
said she felt the company had misled her by suggesting she could "be retired by
age 30." Instead, she was out of a job three months later, having lost all her
stock options because she was not yet vested.
<P>In retrospect, she said the company had used her, then quickly dismissed her
when it came to its financial senses, and she said she was concerned that other
entrepreneurs would make similar mistakes.
<P>"People are very hopeful -- investors, employees -- and married with greed,
you've got a perfect formula for a lot of shady companies," she said, requesting
anonymity because she said she had signed an agreement not to discuss the
circumstances of her departure from the company.
<P>Jodi M. Milam, who owns Career Wave, a human resources consulting company in
Chandler, Ariz., that focuses on placing Internet employees around the country,
said the layoff phenomenon had become "epidemic" because so many companies were
started without sound business plans.
<P>Milam said the companies recruited new employees with the promise they would
soon attract a next round of private funding, or even go public. But, Milam
said, the entrepreneurs either were naive about their own prospects, or
misleading hires. They also seemed, she said, to lay off employees -- even those
who pulled up stakes or were lured from other good jobs -- with little
compunction.
<P>"Business ethics have gone down the toilet," she said, adding that she wakes
up with a stomachache every day because "I'm afraid of sending people to
companies" that will go under.
<P>But the companies say the layoffs represent a bona fide realization that they
must be mindful of the bottom line and of what it takes to succeed in a harsher
business climate. A number of the companies said the layoffs signaled an effort
to shift directions, typically away from Internet businesses that focus on
selling to consumers and into ventures that sell to other businesses.
<P>An example is Alta Vista, a search engine company in Palo Alto, that in early
May reduced its staff by 50 people, or about 6 percent. Though the site
processes a remarkable 50 million search queries a day, the company decided that
its long-term survivability rested not just on being a destination site but also
in licensing its technology to businesses.
<P>"We have done a slight shift in strategic positioning following the market
turmoil," said David Emanuel, a company spokesman.
<P>In other cases, businesses are shedding ambitious plans and renewing the
narrow focus with which they began operations. Redwood City-based InsWeb, in
announcing plans to lay off 40 percent of its 240 workers in the next six
months, said it would return to its roots, becoming a marketplace for consumers
seeking insurance, and scrap a number of other initiatives, according to Greg
Jones, company spokesman.
<P>The new focus means the end of the line at InsWeb for Steve Foster, 43, who
quit a job in Los Angeles and moved north to take a job in November as InsWeb's
vice president of marketing research. At the time, he said, it was "literally
the zenith of dot-com times," and he negotiated for a healthy raise and 19,000
shares of stock.
<P>In the short term, it looked as if his gamble would pay off in a big way. The
company's stock, $14 when he was recruited, jumped to $36 in January, giving him
a gain in personal value "worth a quarter of a million right off the bat."
<P>But Foster was laid off with 30 colleagues two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the
price of the company's stock has fallen to $3, making his options worthless.
<P>Still, he says he bears no ill will toward the company, which he said had
treated employees well and had never misled anyone about the prospects. And as
to his lost fortune -- the few brief shining moments when his stock options
ballooned in value -- he seems philosophical about that, too.
<P>"I've been thinking I'll keep a single share and frame it," he said. "Just to
keep the memory alive."
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In a message dated 06/23/2000 10:20:50 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jptaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes:
> The dark side of this sick market mania is starting to show itself
James,
Take a chill pill. From your prior post on AMZN it sounds to me that one
can be just as greedy on the short side of a trade as on the long side of
one. As you were dancing in the streets today, I was wondering if you bumped
tushes with anybody who had purchased RMBS a few weeks ago. If so I guess you
told him or her that their profits weren't as honorable as yours. You're
starting to sound a lot like Prechter. Like always, eventually you will be
right. Could be next Week, could be next Month, whatever the case I take it
day by day and try not to let my "predictions" get the best of me. I just
hate to see the dark side of those sick market shorters when they start to
show themselves. Don't you? Lenny
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