This news caught my attention because I have been thinking lately that more US based technology companies will be acquired by Chinese companies.

As Chinese companies grow, they must figure out a way to enter the U.S. market – they need to acquire existing customers, sales force, channels, and technologies to expand to the US market.

I’m looking forward to see more acquisitions by Chinese companies in North America. Is Alibaba the next one to make an acquisition? I’ve always felt that Alibaba should acquire a company in the SMB segment to promote Alibaba’s among SMB owners in the United States.

By the way, it was pretty interesting to read the nasty fight between Mochi Media founders and VC when Mochi Media was close to be acquired a while ago.

Related posts

• Continue or drop sponsorship with Tiger Wood?
• Is Amazon Fresh the future of grocery shopping and more?
• The master strikes again — Quick thoughts on Oracle’s Acquisition of Sun Microsystems
• Glassdoor is a great career tool, but raising $6.5 million could be a bad thing for the company
• Why I don’t like Sequoia Capital’s "R.I.P Good Time" presentation

Recommended reading:

• The PayPal Wars: Battles With Ebay, the Media, the Mafia, And the Rest of Planet Earth
• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
• alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World’s Biggest Online Marketplace
• The Strategic Guide to Selling Your Software Company: Essential Advice from a Veteran Deal Warrior

“About 1 month after 100 were laid off in the Membership and Billing IT area, 90 were given their pink slips in the Claims IT area.   Blue Cross has decided to outsource the work to Cognizant and IBM who will offshore the work to India. The layoffs took place in the Twin City area.”

Hallmark Cards of Kansas City:

“There has been about 1,000 + layoffs in the past year at Hallmark cards.

They have always been very quiet about layoffs. Their business has been drastically affected by the economy and sales are plummeting.

To protect what little profits they have (for the big guys), they consistently go after the senior workers with bigger benefits/vacation time/bigger salaries.

But they do it so other workers don’t notice so much. About 4-5 yrs. ago, they radically changed all their HR policy: No more seniority, except in manufacturing type jobs. Now they will hire and fire based on ‘performance’, and qualities determined by whatever the current management deems desirable.

Also, you can’t sue them if you accept a severance agreement, or so they claim. Then, they did a bunch of layoffs about 2-3  years ago, mostly older people too.

They got a LOT of bad press locally, in the paper called the ‘Pitch’. So they have changed tactics now. Like, offering 2 weeks of pay per year of service, but eliminating your position.

Since the beginning of the year, they’ve moved slowly around the co. laying off small groups of individuals, 10-20-30 at a time.

What gets me is, they also changed their benefits to phase out their old "retirement" plan called "cash balance", which they matched & added a certain amount each year based on your salary. These were very modest accts., because, they said, your profit-sharing was really your main ‘retirement"

(even though profit sharing has been very puny the whole time I was there). And to me, it seems, the older folks, who had ‘cash balance" retirement accts., are the ones they are going after! Also, anyone who has had a lot of medical claims or time off.”

Related posts:

• Ten things you should do before layoff

• Seven things you should do immediately after layoff

• Are you laid off? — A 5-day Personal Boot camp

• An inspiring story of starting a business during financial crisis and finding a way to beat layoffs

• Cover letter for laid off worker

• A book I always turn to when I look for a job

• Beat recession advice #1: Form a network of headhunter friends

• Beat recession advice #2: Cut expense, save money, and converse cash

• Control your own destiny when losing your job

But, I really did. For one year. Probably the most important year in my life.

It was almost twenty years ago. My family just immigrated to the United States. We were living in East Oakland, CA.

I attended high school there for one year. I spoke very little English.

For the entire year, I saw one white student in the school. My classmates were African Americans and refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, etc.

I had a major cultural shocks when I saw teenager mothers holding their babies in the school hallway.

I was saddened when my physics teacher was attacked by a student. She was one of the most dedicated teachers I’ve ever known.

I was inspired when I heard the story about the class valedictorian. Coming from a refugee family, bullet once broke into window in her house and barely missed her head. She was accepted by several prestigious institutions.

I was touched by many of my hard-working classmates. Many of them held two or three jobs. They were playing a major role in their household to support their families while completing their school work.

Despite all of these, many of my classmates still ended up attending 4-year colleges, mostly in the University of California system or the California State system.

I learned to appreciate the value of public education. I know public schools are under a lot of criticism these days. But, without public school, our society will be much worse off.

I attended University of California at Berkeley, one of the most intellectually stimulating, and open-minded places on earth. I would not be who I’m today without the education I received from Cal.

This weekend, I learned that "it now appears likely the UC system, in this current fiscal crisis, will be ordered by Sacramento to absorb yet another $800-plus million in additional cuts. Its 2009–10 core budget will be reduced by an estimated 20 percent. This will bring the amount of state investment in the University down to $2.4 billion—exactly where it was in real dollars a decade ago."

If you care about public education, please take actions. Below are a couple of links:

• Cal Advocacy at UC Berkeley
• California State Legislature

Attached is an open letter to UC alumni and friends from University of California leadership.

An open letter to UC alumni and friends
At the corner of 13th and Franklin Streets in downtown Oakland, a worn bronze plaque hangs on the wall of a two-story parking garage. Easy to miss, state Historical Marker No. 45 identifies the spot where, 140 years ago, a California miracle began. Here the University of California spent its infancy, occupying a two-story Victorian that had housed one of the state’s first colleges. In 1873 the university—after graduating an original class of 12—migrated to Berkeley and began its rise as a land-grant college dedicated to teaching agriculture, mining and the mechanical arts.

The enterprise, of course, has endured, and then some. Under the stewardship of some great leaders, and with the support of alumni like you and, for that matter, all of California, the University has grown from its humble origins to the point where it now stretches all across the state, from Merced to Santa Barbara, Riverside to San Francisco, Irvine to Santa Cruz, San Diego to Davis, Los Angeles to Berkeley—10 campuses, five medical centers, three national laboratories, 225,000 students, 55 Nobel Prizes and 1.6 million alumni.

It is to that great army of alumni, along with other friends and beneficiaries of the University of California, that we write today, and we do so with a sense of great urgency—to ask you to become engaged as never before in building legislative and financial support for this great institution.

This is a time of peril for the University we all love.

The UC model—providing universal access to a top-notch, low-cost education and research of the highest caliber—continues to be studied around the globe among those who would emulate its success. And yet, this model has been increasingly abandoned at home by the state government responsible for its core funding.

In the past 20 years, the amount of money allotted to the University through the state budget has fallen dramatically: General Fund support for a UC student stood at $15,860 in 1990. If current budget projections hold, it will drop this year to $7,680.

Moreover, it now appears likely the UC system, in this current fiscal crisis, will be ordered by Sacramento to absorb yet another $800-plus million in additional cuts. Its 2009–10 core budget will be reduced by an estimated 20 percent. This will bring the amount of state investment in the University down to $2.4 billion—exactly where it was in real dollars a decade ago.

In the same time frame, by the way, funding for state prisons has more than doubled, from $5 to $11 billion. It’s been reported that, based on current spending trends, California’s prison budget soon will overtake that of the state’s universities and community colleges.

And so, our work is cut out for us. As one Chairman of the Board of Regents steps down and another takes over, we are asking you, as stewards of UC, to step up and help arrest this slide of support, as quickly as possible. It’s often said that it takes 40 years to build up a great university, but only a few to tear one down.

Elected officials in Sacramento who control our core budget must be asked to re-examine their priorities when it comes to future higher education funding. They also need to understand that a fiscal crisis is precisely the wrong time to be putting the pinch on education. Consider what Thomas Friedman of the New York Times wrote in a recent column:

"… The country that uses this crisis to make its population smarter and more innovative—and endows its people with more tools and basic research to invent new goods and services—is the one that will not just survive but thrive down the road. We might be able to stimulate our way back to stability, but we can only invent our way back to prosperity. We need everyone at every level to get smarter."

The core money UC receives from taxpayers, via Sacramento, goes to the nuts and bolts of higher education, everything from paying professors to lighting laboratories. But it also establishes the institutional foundation needed to attract the research grants and endowments that enhance the mission and burnish the University’s international status.

Over time it’s been money well-spent. Of the more than 4,000 higher education institutions in the nation, only 60 research universities, public and private, have been judged worthy of membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities. The UC has six members. No other state system has more than one.

In turn, the University has given back to California, not only by educating generations of high-achieving Californians, but also through its triumphs of research. From better ways to grow tomatoes to the birth of biotech, from viticulture to cancer treatments, UC campuses have been incubators of countless scientific and product breakthroughs that add quality to California life and invigorate its economy. For 15 years in a row, UC has developed more patents than any other university in the country.

This is what’s put at risk as state support shrinks. In the end, there are two choices: excellence or mediocrity. While a mediocre UC might cost less in the short term, over time it will enforce on society its own ledger of taxes. Top professors and researchers will begin to drift away, taking with them the best students. Pools of grant money will recede. The engines of invention will sputter.

To those who complain the university has been bloated, wasteful, we say this is a new day. In the last few years, we have seen the institution reform itself. Under a new administration, it is setting new standards for transparency and leadership. We’ve worked hard to maintain strong bond ratings, cut spending in the Office of the President by $60 million, and taken additional cost-cutting measures at the campus level. But there is only so much that can be cut. We are no longer chopping at fat and muscle. With the new cuts, as proposed, we soon will be slicing into bone.

And so, there is much at stake and the threat is real. Now is the time for alumni and other supporters and beneficiaries of the University to spread the word that UC excellence must be preserved and nurtured. Please, do whatever you can. Take time to write a letter or an email to your political representatives. Or lend whatever support possible to the UC system or to your preferred campus.
The message—not in just this current crisis, but into the future as well—must be clear: A just-good-enough University of California would not be good enough at all. Mediocrity is not an option. It’s time to start fighting back for the UC.

Richard C. Blum, Immediate Past Chair, UC Board of Regents
Russell S. Gould, Chair, UC Board of Regents
Sherry Lansing, Vice Chair, UC Board of Regents
Mark G. Yudof, President, University of California

Here are some links that might be useful:
Cal Advocacy at UC Berkeley
California State Legislature

If you’re a fellow autotrader.com employee who is visiting this site for the first time, below are some helpful articles:

Fareed Zakari of the CNN GPS program interviewed Michael Lewis yesterday. Here is a few quotes of Michael Lewis on our economy:

“I think that we are in for another day of reckoning down the road. I just don’t know when it is.”

“I think that they haven’t even properly evaluated the institutions. They haven’t been honest about what these institutions have on their books. They’ve had phony stress tests.”

“So, we’re in a kind of, I think, right now, in a period where there’s a false sense that it’s over, that the crisis is passed. I don’t think the crisis is passed.”

PLEASE watch this interview.

• Juniper Networks quietly started laying people off in January.  Most of the layoffs the reader knew about were in Engineering and IT, and a large number of them were in management roles.
• Amazon.com had also laid off employees in their Seattle headquarter although they call it “re-org”. After I posted “Is Amazon.com laying off people secretly”, one reader commented “Yes I was one of the "re-org" victims. Worked on product management at Amazon Services.” I have also heard from people who worked in software development in Seattle who got laid off.

One reader also shared his insights about why some companies are secretive about their layoffs: “Companies might be able to avoid officially announcing layoffs if they quietly spread them across several months.  Sometimes keeping layoffs quiet is very important to some companies, especially if the company is going to pay bonuses or do an acquisition, or continue to do "key" hiring.  None of those things will get you good press after you just laid off a lot of employees.

Excellent resources:

• Career Comeback: Eight steps to getting back on your feet when you’re fired, laid off, or your business ventures has failed–and finding more job satisfaction than ever before
• The Job Search Solution: The Ultimate System for Finding a Great Job Now!
• Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters: 400 Unconventional Tips, Tricks, and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job
• The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction (Crown Business Briefings)

I’d like to offer a few quick thoughts:

1. This is a brilliant strategic move by Larry Ellison, a master of acquiring enterprise technology companies.
2. Oracle’s bread-and-butter is database. Its single biggest threat is the open source MySql database. With the acquisition, Oracle essentially removed its single biggest competitive threat to its database business.
3. Now Oracle will have control over the entire technology stack from hardware server, to storage technology (e.g. via Sun’s acquisition of StorageTek a while ago), to database, to middle ware technology such as JAVA, to business applications (e.g. via  acquisition of PeopleSoft and Siebel.) They’ll be a very formidable competitor to Microsoft, IBM, and HP.
4. There will be massive layoffs – take a look at Oracle’s acquisition records (e.g. PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc.) – they’re not shy to consolidate redundant operations and lay people off. Silicon Valley’s unemployment rate has jumped to 11%, and this acquisition will further worsen the unemployment rate in the bay area.
5. Oracle’s enterprise sale machine will do a much better job to sell Sun’s software products. For years, Sun has been trying to get into the software business, and had limited success. Oracle is known for its aggressive sales force. I think Oracle will do a much better job to sell Sun’s software products.
6. I’m not sure how Sun’s hardware business will do in the future – Oracle’s core competency is in software. It’d be interesting to see how they manage hardware business.
7. What’s the future of MySql? Should Oracle spins it off and take it public? It seems strange to me that Oracle will keep MySql under the wrap and manage it as part of their database businesses. It might make sense to keep it separate, and grow it as a low-end alternative to Oracle databases.

Books on Larry Ellison and Oracle:

• Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
• Difference Between God And Larry Ellison*, The *god Doesn’t Think He’s Larry E: *god Doesn’t Think He’s Larry Ellison / Inside Oracle Corporation
• Everyone Else Must Fail: The Unvarnished Truth About Oracle and Larry Ellison
• Larry Ellison, Sheer Nerve

GeekMBA360.com Depression 2.0 Layoff Tracker and Layoff Satisfaction Survey have been two of the most popular features on this site.

In the past few days, I’ve been hearing from folks who were “re-org” out of Amazon.com. This is not warehouse jobs. Those are folks who work in software development, product management, etc. at Amazon.com headquarter in Seattle, WA.

Is Amazon.com laying off people secretly? If you have any tips, please add a comment or email me.

You might be interested in:

• Microsoft Laid-off Employees spoke up! — Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results – Microsoft
• Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results — Sun Microsystems
• Layoff Satisfaction Survey Results — AT&T
• Ten things you should do before layoff
• Seven things you should do immediately after layoff
• Are you laid off? — A 5-day Personal Boot camp

In a statement, FedEx Office CEO Brian Philips said, "We understand that the economy has affected many people in a very profound way, and we want to help. Printing resumes is one small way we can use our resources to help those who need it."

A smart, socially responsible marketing move – good for job seekers, good for FedEx. A win-win situation.

Take advantage of this opportunity if you’re in the job market. Happy printing.

Excellent resume and cover letter resources

• Resume Magic: Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer (Resume Magic Trade Secrets of a Professional Resume Writer)
• Federal Resume Guidebook: Strategies for Writing a Winning Federal Electronic Resume, KSAs, and Essays, 4th Edition
• Don’t Send a Resume: And Other Contrarian Rules to Help Land a Great Job
• Cover Letter Magic: Trade Secrets of Professional Resume Writers