back to article RIM workforce decimated: 2,000 jobs slashed

RIM is to cut more than 2,000 jobs around the world as part of the cost-reduction strategy it announced last month. The layoffs will leave around 17,000 employed by the company. RIM explains the process is about "eliminating redundancies and reallocating resources" which requires "workforce reduction" to the tune of 2,000 …

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  1. dotdavid
    Facepalm

    Redundant redundancies

    Well it's obvious what happened to RIM. The inmates must have taken over the asylum years ago.

  2. Gordon 10

    Poor bastards

    I'll bet a squillion dollars that the actual management dorks responsible for rims current mess don't get touched.

    Perhaps its not just shoddy products - Is it because some of their legal advisors fees are due from the lawsuits-in-motion days?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    These redundancies will eliminate redundancies

    Ahahah. Why don't they ever get honest and to the point like that?

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      "We had to destroy the village in order to save it"

      Seems to be the current management style in the mobile phone manufacturing sector.

  4. Nick Rutland

    Grammar and stuff

    Nice to see a correct usage of the word 'decimated' . 17,000 left after 2,000 P45 s (or local equivalent) = current workforce of 19,000. 2,000 of this is not too far adrift of the 1 in 10 that decimation implies.

    1. Charlie Clark Silver badge
      Headmaster

      The things peope worry about...

      "I've lost my job. They're dodecimating the workforce..."

      "Surely, you mean octomating?"

      "Put down the adverts for new jobs and pass me a calculator"

      Literally lots of words change their meaning over time.

      FYI http://www.economist.com/research/styleGuide/index.cfm?page=673903

    2. ThomH

      Not correct (or incorrect), just historical

      Per OED, in modern usage decimate may just mean "remove a large proportion of". The meaning has shifted since antiquity, as it has for many other words.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Redundant

    2 CEOs. One should be made redundant and the other replaced.

  6. Johnny Bluejeans
    Holmes

    "eliminating redundancies..."

    Important that. Now, which of the two CEOs came up with that idea?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "eliminating redundancies..."

      Answer to your question: "The Redundant one".

  7. trstooge
    FAIL

    "Decimated" doesn't mean what you think...

    At first I read the headline and was like "zomg, RIM is dead".

    Decimated means killing the biggest part. In military it means killing all but 10%.

    Removing 10% of a workforce is far from "decimating".

    1. Anonymous Coward
      FAIL

      No, it doesn't mean what *you* think it means

      decimate (v) - to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.

      The earliest English sense of decimate is “to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit).” The extended sense “destroy a great number or proportion of” developed in the 19th century: Cholera decimated the urban population. Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated ) nearly 80 percent of the cattle.

      (from dictionary.com)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wrong !

      —Usage note

      The earliest English sense of decimate is “to select by lot and execute every tenth soldier of (a unit).” The extended sense “destroy a great number or proportion of” developed in the 19th century: Cholera decimated the urban population. Because the etymological sense of one-tenth remains to some extent, decimate is not ordinarily used with exact fractions or percentages: Drought has destroyed (not decimated) nearly 80 percent of the cattle.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Not quite right...

      Decimated does mean killing a large percentage, but in the military it means killing 10%, not all but 10%.

      Originally a roman thing, but lots of examples since.

    4. phen
      Thumb Down

      Wrong!

      "Decimated means killing the biggest part. In military it means killing all but 10%."

      Decimate means to kill (or remove) 1 in 10, or um 10%.

      El Reg:1

      trstooge: 0

  8. Dave 15

    All they have to do...

    Is beg borrow or steal Elop form Nokia, sure he can save the day (by turning RIM into another Microsoft manufactury.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    A sign of the times

    I'm at the IETF in Quebec City this week (http://www.ietf.org). It's being hosted by RIM. There's a trendy new "IETF Meeting Agenda" smartphone app. It is available for Android and iPhone, but not for BlackBerry. Game over...

  10. kain preacher

    @Decimated

    A unit selected for punishment by decimation was divided into groups of ten; each group drew lots (Sortition), and the soldier on whom the lot fell was executed by his nine comrades, often by stoning or clubbing.[citation needed] The remaining soldiers were given rations of barley instead of wheat and forced to sleep outside the Roman encampment.

    Because the punishment fell by lot, all soldiers in the group were eligible for execution, regardless of the individual degree of fault, or rank and distinction.

    so Nick Rutland is right

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Coat

      "often by stoning or clubbing..."

      Death by clubbing, eh? Ibiza, here we come!

  11. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    What is Canada going to do now?

    In the book for the becoming a Canadian test - it lists the country's scientific endevours (on half a page) as; the canadarm (now retired), Alexendar Graham Bell (briefly lived in Canada before inventing the telephone), the snowmobile and RIM.

    Looks like it's going to get cut back a bit now.

  12. Guido Esperanto
    Mushroom

    hmmm

    wonder how many are from the Playbook division?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @trstooge

    "Decimated means killing the biggest part. In military it means killing all but 10%."

    No it doesn't. Whilst it is sometimes used that way, incorrectly, the correct definition is to kill/remove 10% of the total. The term originated in the Roman army way back when, where the punishment for mutiny or similar large scale crimes was for each 10 man squad to be force to kill 1 of their own squad-mates, selected by lot (as an alternative to executing the entire squad).

  14. Jon182

    RIM are in big trouble

    Blackberries are good at e-mail but not much else.

    1. John Sanders
      Thumb Down

      Trust me...

      Not anymore I have a 9780... an expensive mistake.

  15. Ian Ferguson
    Thumb Down

    Headline writing fail

    Shurely that should be 'RIM jobs cut'

  16. LPF

    @Nick Rutland

    In the grand scheme of things do you think those people losing their jobs, give a fuck?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Unhappy

      I quite agree

      I'm not one of those unfortunate people losing their job, nor am I a Roman soldier, and even I don't give a fuck about the exact technical details of the word "decimate".

      I suggest El Reg has a moratorium on the use of such pedant magnet terms.

      Cue the arguments about what "moratorium" means...

    2. Nick Rutland
      Headmaster

      Grammar and stuff

      Perhaps I'm a bit too deadpan for my own good...

      My sympathies are indeed with the 2000. That was sort of my point.

      1. hplasm
        Happy

        Thank fuck it wasn't 300 job losses.

        We'd be awash with Spartan refernces...

  17. James 100
    Pint

    Decimation

    The original meaning was indeed the killing of one out of every ten soldiers as a punishment, which is almost precisely what RIM have just announced; the change to refer to a reduction *to* 10% rather than *by* 10% is a later extension of the meaning.

    Having had the misfortune to support one or two of their turkey handsets, I can't say I'm sorry or surprised to see them shrinking. Mis-steps, arrogant complacency and proprietary hacks instead of following standards - they echo the worst of Microsoft's reputation from the darkest days of IE v Netscape, except that Microsoft had huge entrenched cash cows from Windows and Office to sustain them through years of court battles while they forced IE on everyone - RIM haven't.

    Fizzy stuff, as a dress rehearsal for the champagne when they finally get Darwinned out of the gene pool entirely.

  18. Raz
    Unhappy

    Title is missing in non action

    So how firing 2K people is going to improve RIM's prospect? Here's how I see it: RIM is going down because they don't have product, now they fire a lot of people, those people cannot work on new product, the chances of getting good product is even lower, more people will be fired, and so on, in a spiral of death.

    I am saying "good bye RIM", I used to like Blackberries.

  19. NoneSuch Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Google

    Buy RIM.

    Install Android on that Playbook thing

    Get your Exchange Integration package working.

    Make a packet.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    RIM following the law with regards to laying of staff - THATS A FIRST

    I can recall one chap who was realy jerked about in that they sent him the other side of the World to do some work for them, failed to sort out a green card for him and then messed up his salary and expenses so his rent and council tax back home bounced causing him to have a nice financial mess upon his return home. They then announced that he was no longer working for RIM before he had even set foot back in the country and had a chance to say his said of why he comlained about his manager messing up his life.

    So Andrew Osbourne - I hope your on your ass, coz your useless manager, even kostis does better than you and he's not that popular either amongst those that do the work.

  21. Gil Grissum
    Pint

    The Co-CEO's need to go

    Those two clowns at the top aren't going anywhere. It's usually the hard working lot at the bottom who goes. If they bounced those two jug heads and replaced them with one who has a clue, they'd save themselves more money. For these idiots to think that producing a RIM Tablet that doesn't even come with the application that made the Blackberry popular (e-mail) is a demonstration of cluelessness on a grand scale.

  22. Levente Szileszky
    FAIL

    Just how long this clueless management will stay on?

    Until the bitter and, until they drive RIM to the ground?

    Seriously: after so spectacularly missing all the market shifts a kid was able to predict and then failing at EVERY ATTEMPT to catch up with it, how long these bunglers are allowed to stay at the helm? Will the board finally bring in someone with a clue?

    Look at this fool: http://www.businessinsider.com/rim-ceo-walks-out-2010-7

    Once again, I pity the engineers...

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