The news stories are reporting the traditional pre-holiday layoffs at Dulles-based AOL focused on call center employees, but Valleywag reports that four of the company’s most senior executives–Joe Redling, John McKinley, Kevin Conroy and Jim Bankoff, were let go.
Assuming this is true, new boss Randy Falco’s removed some of the best senior talent AOL had to offer–people nimble enough to survive countless rounds of layoffs, endless shifts in positioning and strategy, and more senior management rallies around the cry “We’ve hit bottom and it’s gonna get better!” than any human should be forced to endure (yeah, those hearty salaries are some consolation.)
Of course, this just means anyone in this highly driven crew who doesn’t choose to take early retirement in Middleburg, VA will get recycled into the post-portal bigco and hot startup universe, resurfacing somewhere relevant within the year, so it’s all one great chain of being in the end, anyway, isn’t it?
Except for Falco, of course, who gets to reinvent a fading company for an angry parent in an effort to save shareholder value.
Update: Rafat Ali, who has ties to many AOL execs, reports that Valleywag is incorrect and these four horsemen are galloping on–at least for now.
Bitter but funny: AOL layoff T-shirts on flickr