I don’t know how I missed it, but last week, Jones Day laid off 65 IT workers. Most of them were from my home town of Columbus, Ohio. [UPDATE: It appears the bulk of cuts were in Cleveland, not C-bus. Still Buckeyes though. 🙁 ] As I began reading the article, my first thought was, “I told you.” But as I continued and I read the quotes from Jones Partner, Joe Sims, I started to regret the things I had written. Had he or anyone at Jones read any of my posts? Was I in any way influential in this decision?
“…we concluded we could do it better, faster and more effectively with a reorganized approach, and that reorganization didn’t require so many people.”
“It’s basically a change from a local, personal touch to a remote-access basis for fixing little problems, and instead of having people literally on the ground…”
“We have determined that a reorganized technology function will improve both the effectiveness and the cost of our services to clients.”
Shorter Jones Day: We don’t need so many expensive people to run things anymore.
Ouch.
Keep an eye on Jones to see if they quietly start picking up more IT people in the near future. If they don’t, and they appear to be otherwise successful, then hold on tight, these cuts are coming to a firm near you soon.
But wait, it gets worse for IT people!
Edward Snowden (Hero or Traitor, love him or hate him) has not only drawn attention to nefarious government activities, he’s also drawn a lot of attention to Systems Administrators everywhere. SysAdmins rule the world. We have access to everything. We can get into your emails, your private files, your super secret extra hidden browser history. And despite the occasional disgruntled outburst from an overworked and underpaid master of the universe, people generally trust us to keep our mouths shut and keep the company’s private information private. Snowden ripped the poorly tied blindfold off and danced naked atop the NSA’s servers, shouting wildly about all of the confidential and private information stored there (mostly yours and mine).
In response, the New York Times ran an article in yesterday’s paper, asking the question that very few people have asked before now: “Can the I.T. staff be trusted?“
Now, knowing what we all know about law firms’ aversion to risk and their lemming-like “follow the guy in front off the cliff” behavior, how do you think this is all adds up?