A bit of irony in the PHP world
Posted on May 19th, 2008 in Geek Stuff, PHP, Web Development | No Comments »
According to an article today by TechCrunch, Zend Technologies, The PHP company, is cutting 25% of their PHP developer staff, perhaps with an eye towards selling the company.
Israeli startup Zend Technologies has fired 25 percent of its R&D team (at least ten people), as well as others across the company, in an attempt to become cash flow positive, says a source close to the company. A spokesperson from the company’s PR firm says: “Yes, I can confirm that Zend made the layoffs, but we cannot comment on the numbers or reasons for the action.”
Read the complete TechCrunch article here.
As I read the brief article I began to think that this is not really anything that should be too newsworthy. Many companies in the USA, and around the world in general, are feeling the pinch of a down economy. Companies have to do what they can to reduce cost while maintaining competitive prices for goods and services. What Zend is doing is not really that out of the ordinary.
And I am not sure that Zend, as a company, is really worth a huge amount of money like the Sun Microsystems acquisition of MySQL was. It might be tasty to some of the players in the industry right now like Oracle, IBM or even a Sun. But really, other than the Zend engine and the Zend IDE what exactly does Zend have to offer?
Whatever happens to Zend from all of this one thing is very important to remember. Many a PHP developer now has the opportunity to seek gainful employment from other companies that are seeking, heavily, PHP talent. Many Silicon Valley companies, including many companies in the social networking space, are looking for top tier PHP talent right now. Companies like Ning, Digg, Facebook, Technorati, Yahoo and Google are constantly hiring PHP developers.
Times are good for being a PHP developer. Maybe not so much if you worked for Zend. Nonetheless, now is a great time to know a great deal about PHP.