Last week's layoffs were across all staff levels, from associates to directors, and included employees at all of the companies' three offices in Boston, New York and San Francisco, according to company spokesperson Lynn Ellen Smith. More than a dozen employees who had just been hired weeks earlier also lost their jobs, according to three former employees who asked to remain anonymous. Despite some signs of trouble, those employees said the pink slips took them by surprise. One employee had been taken to lunch by his supervisor just a day earlier and was told the company wanted to make sure he was happy. The company gave the laid-off employees three weeks of pay as a severance package.
Partners helps existing companies launch new online divisions or create new Net businesses.
But because of the market downturn of late, Smith said, existing companies are feeling less threatened by dot-coms and are consequently feeling less pressure to rush onto the Internet. Indeed, Internet professional-services firms such as Gen3 Partners have been beleaguered by low revenue and sinking stock prices. At the same time, their numbers have grown, making the market more competitive. But Katsaros cautions that an online exchange needs 24 to 36 months to reach critical mass - more than twice as long as the nine months Gen3 Partners' worked at developing Fleetscape. Check out The Standard's Dot-Com Layoff Tracker for a look at which sites have cut workers or closed up shop.