Goldman to Lay Off 230 Employees in New York

NEW YORK - Goldman Sachs Group Inc plans to lay off 230 employees in New York because of economic conditions, according to a state filing on Wednesday.
* Bank cites economic conditions in govt filing

* Cuts will come during fourth and first quarters

The layoffs will take place during the fourth quarter of 2011 and first quarter of 2012, the filing said.

Companies based in New York that have at least 50 employees are required to notify the state Department of Labor if they plan to reduce the local workforce by a significant number. They must file "WARN notices" 90 days ahead of the planned reductions.

Goldman and other large Wall Street banks have started reducing their workforces to cut costs amid the slowdown in economic and market activity. Several large Wall Street banks have begun laying off employees due to weak trading volumes and regulations that limit their ability to engage in certain activities, such as proprietary trading.

Goldman's New York layoffs represent less than 1 percent of its 35,700 employees as of Dec. 31. Goldman is still hiring employees in growth markets like China, India and Brazil, President Gary Cohn said at a conference earlier this month.

Chicago: Walgreen to add 600 city jobs

Chicago: Walgreen Co. and Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced plans Wednesday for dozens of new food outlets as the retailer upgrades stores and expands in Chicago, adding 600 jobs in the city over the next two years.
 
In a news conference at a South Side Walgreens store, Mr. Emanuel and company officials announced the huge drugstore chain will add food products to roughly 40 additional stores in so-called food deserts, up from 11 currently that sell a wider range of groceries.

The deal includes no city incentives, according to Mr. Emanuel's office

The Deerfield company also is ramping up its downtown e-commerce and information technology office.
 
Each step will add about 300 positions when combined with at least five new stores to be opened in the next two years.
 
“Walgreens is proud of our historic roots in Chicago and pleased to take our place in the city to a new level,” President and CEO Greg Wasson said.
 
Filling food deserts in inner-city neighborhoods has been a top priority for Mr. Emanuel.

In his first weeks in office, he also has been busily announcing a variety of job expansions here, some brand-new and some that already were in the works. On Tuesday, he announced that Allscripts Healthcare Solutions Inc. would add 300 people to its Chicago office.

BlackBerry Developers Head For Exit

Research In Motion has been accused of failing to connect with ordinary smartphone consumers, but there's another set of personal relationships that are a liability for the company. Turns out that app developers are abandoning BlackBerry to focus their energies on where the growth is: the iPhone and Android operating systems.

Developers say that the variety of BlackBerry models and specifications make creating apps a lot of work with little payoff. One app maker says that he gets 20 times more downloads from iPhone users than BlackBerry users. Still, it's BlackBerry's anemic growth that is driving developers away, not complicated requirements. The once-dominant handsets accounted for only 13% of global smartphone sales last year, compared to 20% last year. Meanwhile Google and Apple continue to gobble up more and more market share.

It's just another round of bad news for RIM, which last week warned that its quarterly revenue could see a drop for the first time in nearly a decade. The company is in the midst of making unspecified layoffs among its 17,500-member staff.

Halliburton Will Expand Its Workforce by 15,000 in 2011

Hiring at Halliburton Co. is in full swing. The Houston-based energy equipment and services company expects to add 15,000 employees by the end of the year, a jump of about 25% from its current staff, the company said.

In fact, the entire oil and gas industry is booming, and the hiring will include people with careers in technology, marketing and sales.

"2011 seems to be a return to the glory days with regards to oil and gas hiring," said Mark Guest, president of global job board OilCareers.com, in an email. "There is demand for increased technology, and in turn, sales and marketing."

Halliburton, which has a staff of more than 60,000 globally, has already hired about 5,000 people this year in a wide range of jobs, including manufacturing and engineering positions. The company anticipates hiring another 10,000 employees before the year is out, said company spokesperson Tara Mulee Agard. She didn't specify the exact nature of the positions.

Revenue is surging. Halliburton reached a record of $5.3 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2011, chief executive officer Dave Lesar said in a company statement regarding the company's earning release in April. Increased demand in the United States accounted for the more than 40% increase from a year ago.

Uncertainty over the economic recovery is driving up the price of crude oil and boosting needs for equipment and services, Guest said. More than half of the number of open job postings for the top oilfield service providers are located in the U.S.

Job hunters should focus on key companies if they are looking to get in on the expansion, according to data from OilCareers.com. Halliburton, Schlumberger Ltd., Baker Hughes Inc. and Weatherford International Ltd. are the driving forces behind the hiring.

Halliburton careers website:

Tech job growth

Ex-Googlers Hiring Engineers at TellApart

Burlingame, Calif.-based startup TellApart will hire up to 20 employees in the next year after raising $13 million in new financing.

Founded in 2009 by two ex-Googlers, the company helps online retailers target visitors to their sites who haven't purchased anything, but who might be persuaded to with the right advertising.

Of the planned 20 hires, about a third will be technologists, said Mark Ayzenshtat, co-founder and chief technology officer. Because TellApart's success relies on its ability to predict who will actually make a purchase, the company will be hiring people with expertise in operational machine learning. The company crunches a lot of data, so engineers with distributed systems and Hadoop experience are also in demand.

The company is also hiring business development and sales and marketing employees to help it acquire new clients.

Because of the company's Google roots, it hires engineers who are autonomous, take ownership of projects, and can succeed with little coaching or guidance, Ayzenshtat said.

TellApart offers competitive cash compensation and generous equity rewards, Ayzenshtat said.

Unlike the Google interview process that Ayzenshtat himself endured, TellApart doesn't ask abstract brainteasers to test engineering candidates' mettle. Instead, it asks questions meant to see how easily intimidated and adaptable candidates are.

For instance, an interviewer might ask how one would go about building Google's search engine. The best candidates will take a crack at it, Ayzenshtat said. Sub-par candidates will betray their lack of imagination by noting that they don't have experience in search. That's a warning sign, Ayzenshtat said, because startup engineers will have to tackle a lot of problems they're not experienced in.

"People know what they're good at and they expect to be asked about that, but if you throw so meting at them from left field, they often are put off," he said.

Candidates who make it through the interview process, though, can expect some nifty perks. Ayzenshtat and co-founder Josh McFarland -- who worked on Google's AdWords together -- took the entire 21-person company on a vacation to Hawaii after they met their quarterly goals last year.

Recent Wall Street Layoffs Likely Permanent

The recent round of dramatic cuts in staff at U.S. financial firms will likely increase this year, with many of the jobs never returning.


* Financial sector layoffs up 21% this year
* More cuts likely to come from Wall Street
* Layoffs come as profitability suffers

NEW YORK - U.S. financial firms have been cutting staff dramatically this year, with more layoffs expected to come from Wall Street, according to a report Tuesday.

Unlike the widespread layoffs stemming from the financial crisis of 2008 that was followed by hiring when markets recovered, the 2011 reductions appear to be more permanent.

Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an employment consulting firm, said the financial sector has outlined 21 percent more job cuts so far this year than it did in 2010. Banks, insurance firms and brokers have outlined plans to eliminate 11,413 positions through May, according to publicly available information cited by Challenger, compared with 9,431 during the same period a year ago.

Wall Street has long been characterized by fickle hiring patterns, but John Challenger, head of the consulting group, said new cuts reflect fundamental changes in the business structure and returns of financial firms.
"They will not be as profitable in the future as they were in the past," he said. "That means they're just not going to be able to afford the workforce levels that they had when they were more profitable."

Most cuts to date have occurred in retail banking operations, reflecting subdued economic activity and loan growth. Mergers have also led to headcount reductions as smaller regional banks combine forces.

However, Challenger expects layoffs at large investment and commercial banks to accelerate through the rest of 2011.

Regulatory restrictions and declines in trading volume have challenged the business models and profitability of large investment banks such as Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley.

Goldman reported an annualized return on shareholders equity of 15 percent during the first quarter, adjusted for special items, compared with more than 30 percent before the crisis erupted. Morgan Stanley, which now has a 20 percent return-on-equity target, delivered an annualized ROE of 6.2 percent in the first quarter.

Wall Street stocks have fallen along with profits in recent months. Goldman shares are down 19 percent so far this year, and Morgan Stanley's are off 17 percent. The KBW Bank Index of large-cap financials is down a more moderate 8.8 percent.

Chicago : Fermilab shedding workers

(Crain's) — Facing a budget crunch next year, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory plans to cut its workforce by 100 employees or about 5%, Crain’s has learned.

About 1,760 of the lab’s 1,900 employees are eligible for a new severance pay package aimed at getting 100 workers to leave their jobs willingly, but involuntary layoffs will be needed if that goal is not met, lab director Pier Oddone said at a meeting with employees on Thursday.

The national lab’s main facility — the Tevatron — is shutting down in September after nearly a 28-year run as the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, superseded recently by a new facility in Europe. But the lab, near Batavia, has embarked on a series of smaller experiments that should keep its research going for the foreseeable future.

With federal funding expected to be “more or less” flat for some time to come, “we are trying to make sure funding is there” for the new projects, Mr. Oddone said, as the lab shifts from operations to construction of new experiments. Cutting headcount frees up cash to finance those experiments.

The lab is asking for volunteers to take the severance package but will decide who gets to quit based on its workforce needs. “The lab has to be functioning when we’re all done with this,” he told employees.

Fermilab is owned by the Department of Energy and run by a consortium of universities including the University of Chicago.

Google Hiring 6,300 This Year, Including in Finance

The tech giant is in the midst of hiring 6,300 workers, a mandate that has forced the notoriously selective firm to streamline its interview process and recruit at less prestigious schools.

The roles span the gamut, from engineering to finance. For example, Google is looking for 65 finance professionals to work in its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters, including a director of equity programs to orchestrate the firm's storied stock options.

Of the 1,916 people Google hired in the first quarter of 2011, more than half are working on YouTube, the Chrome web browser, mobile and enterprise technologies, said Jeff Huber, Google's senior vice president of commerce and local, in a conference call this year with investors.

Chicago : United Airlines boosting workforce by 1,300

(Crain's) — Chicago is beginning to reap the rewards of the merger of United Airlines and Continental Airlines.  United said Friday it is adding another 1,300 jobs in Chicago, which is headquarters to the newly combined airline. The announcement brings downtown workers from elsewhere in the two carriers' operations.

It also adds to the number of those making the move from operations in Elk Grove Village, as the carrier has begun moving into Willis Tower. The downtown move was under way when United announced last year it planned to merge with Houston-based Continental Airlines.

The jobs are in a variety of roles, including operations, technology and human resources. The moves are expected to be completed by the end of next year.

Originally, United said it would bring 2,500 jobs downtown from Elk Grove Village.

Last fall, parent United Continental Holdings Inc. decided to increase its space at Willis to 12 floors from nine. United already is beginning to move workers into the building, which ultimately will house the airline's operations center.

The carrier is working toward federal approval to operate as a single airline, expected later this year.

“As Chicago’s hometown airline, United is pleased to announce that we are bringing an additional 1,300 jobs downtown from locations throughout our system by the end of 2012,” United Continental Holdings CEO Jeff Smisek said. “Mayor (Rahm) Emanuel recognizes the importance of keeping Chicago competitive with other cities and expanding job growth here, and we look forward to working together with him and his team.”

Said Mr. Emanuel: “I promised to foster a business climate that attracts and retains the greatest companies in the nation. I am happy to announce that United has substantially increased their commitment to the city of Chicago, by bringing these jobs to the hardest-working people in America.”

Skype and Amazon are hiring in Silicon Valley

Microsoft’s latest acquisition, Skype, is going to stick to its plans to hire hundreds of people in Palo Alto. The company’s going to maintain its own offices rather than move into Microsoft’s campus in Mountain View. Also, Skype says it will continue to invest in Silicon Valley.

 Amazon’s also looks to be hiring in California. Lab126, the subsidiary that works on Kindle and other tablets, is supposedly renting “lots” more office space in Cupertino. The company’s reportedly working on a full-blown tablet and maybe a smartphone.

A new kind of brute-force recruiting is emerging. Engineering talent is so in demand that large companies are acquiring small companies not for their products or ideas but for the warm bodies they employ. The buzzword is acqhiring. So says The New York Times. Big companies and small ones just keep saying they can’t find enough good tech people. So, they’ll give them everything from free iPads to entrepreneurship lessons to attract them. Start-ups in particular are looking for people. Total job openings at venture-backed startups in Silicon Valley have risen to 3,609 from 1,739 in April 2008. Elsewhere in the U.S., they rose 69 percent in the same period.