An ongoing special report
and adjunct to the NUblog Weblog on online content
Previous – Next
(Back to MogulWatch)
2000.08.18
As we and many others foresaw, on Tuesday Quebecor Übergruppenführer Pierre Karl Péladeau "deleted" 65 employees at Canoe and a few other Quebecor Internet "properties."
And – surprise! – another executive walked the plank: "Executive vice-president and general manager Jim O'Leary," allegedly part of the layoffs, though we assume this is a question of "Did he fall or was he pushed?"
Janet McFarland in the Globe and Mail:
Canoe is a tiny portion of Quebecor, a speck in its earnings and revenue picture. But it is a key to the company's future. Quebecor doesn't want Vidéotron to simply deliver cable service in Quebec; it wants to build a whole new business delivering media content on the Internet, relying on delivery sites like canoe.ca. That means Canoe's success matters far more than its relative size would indicate.
Uh-huh. And being the number-two-ranked Canadian Web site – a statistic that came to light the same day as the layoffs – qualifies as a success.
Quebecor is a newspaper company (when it isn't a company that prints supermarket flyers or grovels before the CRTC for new broadcasting licenses, as its nabobs are doing even as we write this). Newspapers take time to turn a profit. Why the rush with the newfangled online version, which, in any event, costs orders of magnitude less money to operate than a print newspaper?
McFarland almost gets this point:
Quebecor, after all, bills canoe.ca as Canada's most popular Web site. If it can't attract enough ad revenue to make a profit, who can? [...] Analysts believe canoe.ca won't be profitable for years. Clearly a company the size of Quebecor could support some losses, so long as it knows how and when things will turn around. But when it's a big experiment, the only thing Quebecor can do is trim costs and play with more models.
We're being a bit impatient here. And we don't see how firing staff amounts to "play[ing] with more models."
Making a bit of sense
You may be surprised to hear that we can readily imagine how Canoe et al. might have too many employees. We've learned this from reading FuckedCompany, where news of large-scale layoffs is often greeted with "Why did they need 275 employees anyway?"
Knowing as we do the infuriatingly inept human-resources practices of the Canadian high-tech industry, and the general dimness of the new-media crowd (particularly the twentysomething liberal-arts-grad grrrls who run content portals and the gormless losers who consider Spadina Bus parties kewl and so cutting-edge as to slice the flesh), of course there was deadwood to cull from Canoe.
But they're doing it for the wrong reason. They're cutting off noses to stoke Péladeau's spite. The hallmark of the bad manager is "Fire employees to save money." In this case, Canoe's executives – if any are left standing – should be firing people for incompetence. Not that we think Canoeists are all that bad compared, say, to Sympatico.
Further, we continue to be vindicated in our position that what's hurting Quebecor is Pierre Karl Péladeau himself, what with his megalomania and his apparent belief that management by shouting actually works in the real world.
"[Canoe] started with a pretty seasoned, experienced management team, but then [Pierre Karl Péladeau] decided he wanted to be actively involved in a day-to-day basis," said a former Canoe executive, explaining the rash of departures. "His style is erratic, shoot from the hip, cowboy style – it's not one that I would say that really considers the expertise of the senior management team."
Such a style is qualitatively different from the other species of incompetence we find in Internet managers – passive-aggressiveness, neglect, technical inability, pie-in-the-sky delusionalism, solid-gold salary packages – but far more toxic to "creative" people, the ones who actually handle the content. Quite frankly, if you yell at us, we plot revenge. And in an Internet economy, we can take you down.
Of course, with the CEO doing such a good job at that already, why go to all the trouble?
← Previous: Oil and water in mergers and acquisitions
→ Next: The convergence myth, Part II
Back to the NUblog
contenu.nu home | Contact (quickie E-mail)
| 