It's not only the dot-coms that are laying off thousands of professionals. Established technology companies such as Lucent, Nortel, and General Electric have also announced layoffs that total in the tens of thousands. Telecom companies have suffered greatly in the current economic conditions, but the pain has also spread to consumer electronics, manufacturing, software, and electronic components industries.
Engineers aren't immune from this round of layoffs. To conserve cash, technology companies have cancelled new projects and eliminated positions associated with those projects. Often, this means getting rid of the technical talent behind these projects.
For an engineer who may be satisfied with a comfortable and predictable career and lifestyle, the current economic uncertainty is causing concern. To be better informed, many of us seek out information from internal sources, the trade press, investment message boards, and other places to attempt to assess how our companies are doing.
Yet the quality of information from many of these sources is highly uneven, or even misleading. If you're attempting to assess the health of your company in de-termining your own future employment and advancement prospects, you have to know where to look, and how to evaluate the information you find.
It's easier to get such information on publicly held companies, whose finances tend to be more transparent because of financial disclosure laws. But even if you work for a privately held company, it's often possible to assess how well your company is doing. You can seek information from all of the following places.
Internal sources: There are a number of places within the company you can go to get information on how the business is progressing. However, you usually have to cultivate these internal sources over time. Declining business prospects are often reflected in sales, accounting, and manufacturing operations, so acquaintances in those areas are valuable information sources.
Changes in your benefits or working conditions could also be the result of slowing business. Longer purchase cycles for equipment, crowded office space, or a new health care provider could all mean that the company is tightening its belt. Even small things, such as the loss of free soda and snacks, or a change in the travel reimbursement policy, could be evidence of austerity. Seemingly small things, added up across a large company, can save millions of dollars.
Typically, it is possible to get a good impression of your company's financial health by simply walking the halls of the building and getting a feel for the level of activity in various departments. If there is bustling activity and a high level of energy, then people are confident of the future and are willing to help work to achieve it. If hallways and offices are quiet and people are subdued, then the majority of people have a cautious or even negative belief in the company's future prospects.
The press and industry analysts: Most technology companies periodically publish press releases, and company officials, senior executives, and product managers may talk to reporters in the trade press about the company's prospects, existing products, and product plans. Sometimes technology companies will also announce particularly large business deals or partnerships, and offer some level of financial gain in the deal.
For the most part, these releases represent the spin your management puts on the company's news. You can look for two different types of information in press releases—exaggeration and omission. If your company exaggerates a deal's size, or its impact on your business or position in the industry, your management could be trying to make a small event look much better than it really is. It also may omit negative information to convince outside interests that business is going well when in fact it's not.
Of course, this presumes that you have information on the actual events behind the press release. If you don't, seek out people in other departments who might have been working on the relevant projects, and get their opinion.
If you're a significant player in your industry, analysts from technology research firms such as the Gartner Group or Forrester Research may have information on your company, or on the industry in general. Most of these services cost money, but your company may already subscribe to them. And, analysts may be quoted in the trade press, which may also have other sources of information about your company.
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