(hat tip to TechCrunchIT for the story)
Recently Sun Microsystems announced the layoff of 1,000 employees (with the potential layoff of 2500) at their main headquarters, Menlo Park Campus, and employees in Colorado. According to TechCrunchIT’s post, Sun will be laying off 60-70% of Sun’s sales and marketing departments.
60-70% cut from their marketing departments? As a professional in the marketing arena it is hard for me to believe that a company would actually cut a department that drives revenue into the company. Cut marketing and sales for the betterment of the company? Does it make any sense? According to Sun CEO Johnathan Swartz, it makes a lot of sense.
I have always related the Sun name to their open source offerings (MySql and ZFS). The company boasts a 70,000 a day download rate from the technology they have leverage in the open source community.
From TechCruchIT:
Schwartz pointed out that even though there were users of Sun products in those areas, it was accomplished without requiring Sun sales or Sun marketing in those countries or cities.
Are we seeing a paradigm shift in the world of traditional marketing and sales for technology and Internet companies? Will companies like Sun Microsystems continue to cut departments that have always been known as the revenue drivers of the bottom line? Will budgets be focused more toward technology development and customer service rather than marketing and sales?
Is this concept suicidal for Sun Microsystems and their other product offerings? OR Is a paradigm shift about to happen?
Douglas Karr
I don’t think it’s the death of marketing nor sales. Marketing and Sales will continue but it just may not require full-time employees. Old-world marketing and sales thinking is ‘we generate demand’.
New-world marketing and sales isn’t about generating demand, it’s about creating a culture of demand through the development of great solutions that meet business needs.
It should be the goal of every business to cut personnel. That doesn’t mean higher unemployment, other opportunities are awaiting these highly skilled folks. It’s simply progress.
Kyle Lacy
I find it extremely entertaining that we are now talking about creating a culture of demand rather than generating demand.
Carnegie is rolling in his grave.
Less Overhead-the better the bottom line.
Brady Wood
Truly Depressing, it is not suicide to cut employees from the company payroll.
Yes opportunities are on the horizon for the cut employees. How far is that horizon from us, who knows. For those of us in the new media sales and marketing field already we are the horizon.
But for those of us who are losing our jobs, it is bad news. The economy is losing and the confidence of the US work force is declining.
In the bogger picture we are contributing to a bigger problem. The rich, CEO’s such as Jonathon Schwartz, are getting richer, and the middle and lower class are getting poorer.
From the executives perspective the change in work force tactics is neccesary. From the managers, accountants, sales and marketing staff perspective it is death.
In the 50’s and 60’s the public didn’t trust the government because of war policy. Now the work force doesn’t trust the business district executives.
I have a huge problem with cutting employees, for the sake that we as executives have created the problem.
However, it is Jonathon Schwartz’s decision. He can do whatever he wants. But we must know that to whom much is given much is required.
The bottom line is the people that are losing jobs, are future clients, constituents and vital to the success of our companies, and relationships.
It doesn’t matter the dollar you take home if no one likes you and no one can afford your product because you won’t pay them.
-To whom much is given much is required.
Because we have supplied false job security, we must find a way to help supply to the jobs we cut.
It doesn’t fall on the lone shoulders of Schwartz, it will be the collective effort of the once dominant creative minds of corporate America.