America Online employees laid off seems not to be ending soon, the company recently fired over 40 employees last week and now the Executives at AOL have reportedly told The NYT that a total of over 100 people will be eliminated over the coming weeks. AOL is pruning employees for several of its web services, including the AOL Instant Messenger.
AOL has also confirmed that the head of AIM, Jason Shellen is no longer with the company and also other top executive AOL SVP of business operations Eric van Miltenburg laid off. One former employee told the Times that the AIM department was “eviscerated and now only consists of support staff.”
The Times’ sources say that the AIM cuts are an attempt in order to increase profit margins on the $50 million a year that the service brings in. AOL said in a statement that it remained “committed” to its Silicon Valley presence, but that “we are making some strategic but very difficult changes to better align our resources with key areas of growth for us as a company.” Before the layoffs, running AIM cost about $25 million a year; two AOL employees now say the company is looking to cut that to $2 or $3 million.
