Comments on: Scoop: Job Cuts at PHP Startup Zend Could Be Aimed With An Eye Towards a Sale

By: » Blog Archive » Scoop: Une réduction de jobs chez Zend Technologies; est-ce le prélude à un rachat ?

Mon, 26 May 2008 10:25:15 +0000

[...] Scoop paru dans Techcrunch. [...]

By: One man’s voice » Blog Archive » A bit of irony in the PHP world

One man’s voice » Blog Archive » A bit of irony in the PHP world — Wed, 21 May 2008 20:47:17 +0000

[...] 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), [...]

By: Robert Gonzalez

Robert Gonzalez — Wed, 21 May 2008 19:05:56 +0000

The economy is down. People and businesses everywhere are feeling the pinch and it is becoming ever more important for folks to pare things down to manageable levels.

Besides, those PHP programmers are probably better off. The Silicon Valley PHP developer market is huge and growing like gangbusters right now. Just look at the openings: Ning, Digg, Facebook, Yahoo, Google… top notch PHP developers will not have a problem finding great companies to work for that will have the money needed to pay them well AND put them on great projects.

It is a great time to be a PHP developer. Maybe not if you work for Zend, but still…

By: Ivo's Blog - jansch.nl » Blog Archive » Andi Gutmans’ phptek response to the layoffs

Wed, 21 May 2008 14:21:21 +0000

[...] to the layoffs As expected, Andi Gutmans started his phptek opening keynote with a response to the recent news on the layoffs in the Zend R&D [...]

By: Style Ramblings

Style Ramblings — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:27:02 +0000

Rolle rückwärts…

Wie auf TechCrunch.com zu lesen war, entläßt Zend 25% (Zahl unbestätigt) seiner Mitarbeiter im Bereich R&D. Man mutmaßt, um den Jahresabschluß für eine potentielle Übernahme zu schönen. Offiziell bestätigt wurde bisher nur die Tatsache, daß e…

By: RickM

RickM — Tue, 20 May 2008 20:58:16 +0000

Been telling everyone for the better part of a year that PHP has ‘jumped the shark’ and this proves it.

What bitter irony if PHP became just another member of the .NET family.

By: VolkerW

VolkerW — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:16:44 +0000

Not sure what their core product currently is. But perhaps the layoff is the result of developing there IDE “Zend Studio” as part of Eclipse and not as standalone java app anymore. What is the most used product of their portfolio? Might be the free Zend Optimizer.

By: Rick

Rick — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:23:51 +0000

My guess would be Zend focussing more on services (training, consultancy) and less on the development of it’s own (closed source) software.

By: techfounder » Zend Lay-offs, Prepare for acquisition

techfounder » Zend Lay-offs, Prepare for acquisition — Tue, 20 May 2008 08:09:51 +0000

[...] breaking news are that Zend has fired 25% of its employees, possibly in preparation for acquisition my a major player. Zend employees are major contributers [...]

By: Manuel Lemos

Manuel Lemos — Tue, 20 May 2008 07:21:12 +0000

I am sure soon all be clarified by Andi Gutmans in PHP-Tek 2008 State of the Union keynote speech.

Anyway, I don’t think a company would fire their R&D developers if they were sure they would be bought soon. The buying company would be able to afford those developers and many more if necessary.

It seems to me that Zend will try to avoid being sold to any company because they want to remain neutral so they can embrace as much partners as possible. Being bought by IBM, Microsoft, Oracle would mean dropping prior partnerships that they have already in place. That is why I think they already refused offers in the past and continue to refuse offers for as long as they can.

I think at best Sun could be a buyer too, as it would be a logical follow-up to the recent purchase of MySQL AB. Still I am not sure that Zend would continue to be neutral under Sun wings.

Given this, I suspect that Zend is not able or not interested to capture more funding from investors. In that case it makes sense to layoff part of their staff to become cash-flow positive and eventually survive the ongoing/upcoming “nuclear winter” which is the name that Marc Andreessen uses to refer to the recession. Marc Andreessen is a member of the Zend board.

By: JoeUser

JoeUser — Tue, 20 May 2008 06:20:25 +0000

I don’t think Yahoo would be interested since I think they have more PHP talent in-house already than what Zend could provide, and Yahoo isn’t in the desktop developer IDE business, so I doubt the product side is of any interest either.

By: Shafiq Rehman

Shafiq Rehman — Tue, 20 May 2008 04:53:54 +0000

I have been using php for last 6 years and become Zend Certified Engineer in 2006 but I never use the Zend products. I feel myself more comfortable with just php.

By: Gil

Gil — Tue, 20 May 2008 04:07:04 +0000

If anyone buys Zend, it’s going to be Sun. With their Platform product’s Java Bridge integration and the new Studio IDE built on top of Eclipse, they sure are snuggling up.

By: Ivo's Blog - jansch.nl » Blog Archive » php|tek 2008: day -1

Ivo's Blog - jansch.nl » Blog Archive » php|tek 2008: day -1 — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:35:14 +0000

[...] isn’t much PHP news worth mentioning yet, but it’s still only day -1. (Except maybe for the Zend news from today; I think Andi can expect some questions about that during his opening keynote on [...]

By: JerkCrunch

JerkCrunch — Tue, 20 May 2008 03:34:27 +0000

Oh no, nothing good can come out of M$ putting their hands on PHP.
Everything they touch turns into shit.

By: Michael Kimsal

Michael Kimsal — Tue, 20 May 2008 02:55:04 +0000

“In a dream-world Microsoft buys Zend, implements PHP as the de-facto standard for Windows servers scripting language and relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET”

There’s not much stopping MS from doing this already, I don’t think. PHP is open source, and doesn’t have a terribly infectious license, if memory serves correctly.

By: Pman

Pman — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:03:12 +0000

@4 > “In a dream-world Microsoft … relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET”

Couldn’t agree with this more. Sometimes I wish that was true. I guess it will stay as a daydream, but glad to know that I’m not alone.

By: Frank

Frank — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:01:37 +0000

Yahoo!, anyone?

By: Eran Galperin

Eran Galperin — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:42:35 +0000

PHP is not a product, its an open-source project. Many Zend employees including its founders are contributers, but it has no formal ties to Zend.

In a dream-world Microsoft buys Zend, implements PHP as the de-facto standard for Windows servers scripting language and relieves the world from the pain that is ASP.NET.

By: edison chan

edison chan — Mon, 19 May 2008 23:05:48 +0000

for 6 years develop php over 40 projects, it just hard to let me use zend. People understand why php is the most acceptable language for web programming. For zend, it just too hard to develop and maintain. For the record of the performance, bah… I really don’t understan y ppl want to spend more CPU to encrypt and decrypt script!

By: Don Wilson

Don Wilson — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:52:09 +0000

Zend has nothing to do with the core PHP product.

By: RYK

RYK — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:43:41 +0000

Interesting. Do you know which products are affected? I can’t imagine the core PHP product is affected

By: Don Jones - VentureDeal

Don Jones - VentureDeal — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:42:11 +0000

Zend getting rid of its R&D team seems to be ridding itself of half the reason why software companies are acquired - the talent.