Just as the northern geoweb folk gather in Harrogate for AGI’s Where2.0Now, comes news/rumours of layoffs at Microsoft and Cloudmade’s London based engineering teams.
For Microsoft this is probably an inevitable part of the gradual absorption (aka disappearance) of the Multimap acquisition although it may not feel like that for any of the remaining long term mutimappers. For Cloudmade the layoffs follow the departure of a CEO and previous layoffs of community ambassadors – it looks like they are battening down the hatches to ensure that they manage costs until revenues start to pick up (or the next round of funding).
So there are going to be quite a few very clever geopeople looking for an opportunity in London. The germ of an idea is forming ….. multimappers and cloudmaders you KnowWhere to find me.
One thought on “Not a good week for Geowebbers in London”
CloudMade revenues have been non-existent up until now, but they're about to put new charging systems in place. As I said, I think they'll turn it around, but sadly it was too late for our team. Still, I didn't join a start-up company for the job security! It's been a crazy year, and lot of fun working on various ideas to encourage OpenStreetMap growth and promoting the project. I hope to continue doing some of that, but now it's time to hunt down some new geo-opportunities. This is going to be interesting.