[1]     In what has become a holiday tradition, and right before bonus time, Corbis has laid off another round of staffers. After all, it is not the fault of management that they are not profitable, it was those 285 slackers that they finally found sleeping at their desks. 160 where found just before the summer break and 125 where recently found after they have be caught shopping for turkeys instead of selling image.

Who hired them in the first place ?

In a contradicting announcement, “[2] A Corbis spokesperson says the company will close eight of its 24 offices by June 2008. Offices are closing in Amsterdam, Brussels, Hamburg, Madrid, Chicago, Montreal, Melbourne and Singapore.” while Gary Shenk says “[3] To intensify its focus on the commercial and editorial imagery markets, the company will also deploy highly-connected in-the-field business development teams in most major advertising and media centers in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, expanding its current market-reach.”

Isn’t Amsterdam, Hamburg, Madrid in Europe ? and Melbourne in Australia ? what about Singapore, isn’t that in Asia? And finally Montreal and Chicago in North America ? So they are closing 8 offices in areas where the will deploy “highly-connected in-the-field business development teams”. What are those, homeless workers with bazookas ? I can just picture a team of guys in suits walking in a wheat field with funny hats and an old rifle that shoots Cat5 cables.

Furthermore, Corbis re-institutes the American corporation dream of the 1990’s, “The new multi-lingual contact centers”. Why bother having presence in these countries when everything can be done from New York and London ? After all, a British guy, with a Dutch flag on his pin board, can sell images in Holland . He just needs to speak Dutch. After all, Europe is just one big country with different languages, like Asia. And they all need the same images.

In the tradition of “if it works for me, it has to work for you”, Corbis has decided it would be cheaper to have as few sales centers as possible while dispatching an army of office-less workers to convince clients to work their way. You need a picture, call someone somewhere that speaks your language. That should work. The question then becomes, why London and New York ? After all, the workforce is much cheaper in India or China ? or Ireland ?

“Corbis will maintain salespeople who work from home in these markets, as well as several others including San Francisco, Atlanta and Dallas “. Oh right, it is those office rents that are bringing the company down. Let the employee pay their own rent and you don’t even have to call security when you fire them. That will be a cost saving item. But lets keep having lavish parties every time we bury a collection, l[4] ike we recently did with Sygma.

Poor employees. One could expect Getty Images not to be too far, as well as JupiterImage . We won’t even mention the ever shrinking A21 group. For some reason, it is always the fault of the employees that things go wrong, never the management. After all, if Getty’s stock has fallen to such a low, it must be because the staff just doesn’t get it. It is certainly not the fault of J. Klein, Mark Getty ( is he still alive or is he pulling one of those Howard Hugues “I am hiding in the penthouse of some Seattle hotel” thing ?) or even Nick Evans Lombs.

And the holiday season is such a great time to let people go so they have more time to worry about their future with their families, while they stare at a terribly empty Christmas tree or Hanukkah bush. And they can think about, if only they had worked so much harder, the company would have done so much better and they wouldn’t be jobless.

You have yourself a nice and cozy Christmas, Mr. Shenk, while you and your family finally have time to visit the Corbis photo gallery on Second Life. and don’t you bother [5] coloforful stickerman, who seem to use Corbis as a platform to promote his book and see how many people can stand up in one room.