Blending families always comes with a few casualties. Sometimes a step-child or two gets the boot, and no sooner did AOL employees find that they’d be bunking with Huffington Post employees than they were told to find somewhere else to go. AOL has reportedly cut some 20% of its employees, most of them from the company’s India unit. In all, the cuts amount to some 900 employees, according to TechCrunch, which was recently bought by AOL and is now under the umbrella of the Huffington Post Media Group, overseen by Arianna Huffington.
In the U.S., some 200 AOL employees–mostly from the editorial/media branch–are getting the boot to trim out some of the overlaps with the Huffington group. Roughly 120 of those receiving pink slips today are from the editorial department, as the merger with HuffPo brings in about 250 new media employees, 150 of which are editorial employees. In the end, AOL is actually gaining 17 new editorial staffers. Either way, the cuts really wouldn’t have made much of a dent when you consider the fact that AOL’s hyperlocal news service, Patch, employs 800 editors and countless writers. Combined with AOL’s other news sites and blogs–including Engadget, TechCrunch, PopEater, Moviefone, and more–the company’s editorial staff is still well over 1,000-strong.
The real brunt of the layoffs is targeted at the India unit, where 400 employees have been terminated and another 300 have been transitioned to contractors.
In addition to the editorial and media cuts, Jonathan Dube, SVP of News, is also reportedly leaving the company. Dube joined the company only four months ago, leaving his previous VP job at ABCNews.com.
The layoffs of 950 people, though pretty substantial, don’t come close to AOL’s last big round of layoffs in 2007, when more than 2,000 people were let go.
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