Big technology firms all quiet on jobs front

Northern Colorado’s large technology employers have been largely silent on the jobs front during the past year, and that has meant different things for different companies.

Agilent Technologies completed a company-wide restructuring late in 2009. The company originally announced in March 2009 its plans to cut 2,700 positions worldwide, a majority from the Electronic Measurement and Semiconductor Board Test segments. Combined with an earlier restructuring, the total cuts amounted to 3,800 trimmed largely by the end of its fiscal year 2009.

At the time, few details were available about the impact on the company’s Loveland site. Historically, the site has been heavily involved in the segments slated for slashing. When the cuts were made public, the Loveland facility employed about 500 of the 1,500 Agilent employees around the state.

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Today, there are only 275 employees left in Loveland following both the restructuring and the sale of the Network Services Division to JDS Uniphase Corp., which included 55 Loveland employees. Statewide, employment dropped to just over 350, according to a company spokeswoman.

Agilent wasn’t alone in letting workers go. There have been a number of tech layoffs in the past year, according to NoCoNet President Lauren Kuczka.

NoCoNet was founded almost 10 years ago to provide a forum for tech workers displaced by the mass layoffs in the industry. Today, the group still counts about half of its membership as software and hardware engineers and other information technology-related experts. The other 50 percent is made up of other unemployed or underemployed professionals.

“We’ve had a couple of silent layoffs,” Kuczka said, adding that the group sees an influx of attendees at its once-weekly meetings following such an event.

Positive signs

Despite surges of the unemployed from the likes of Agilent and Kodak, which shut down two product lines and let 300 employees go, there have been some positive signs. NoCoNet held a members job fair on June 21 that Kuczka feels was high energy.

“I think our job fair was fun,” Kuczka said.

The 45 exhibitor tables included nonprofit groups soliciting potential volunteers. More than half, though, were potential employers and recruiters looking to fill positions. Employers included Abound Solar, Advanced Energy Industries, Integware, ITX, JBS and State Farm Insurance.

“Most of the people were hiring now,” Kuczka said, which is good news for the 165 or so attendees of the fair.

In general, NoCoNet has seen weekly attendance numbers dropping – a positive indicator for a group of its kind. It has had one to seven “alumni” – people being hired – every week.

“It’s unusual for us, at least for the last few years,” Kuczka explained.

She added that while any job is good, many of the positions are temporary, such as 2010 U.S. Census workers, or as contract workers for technology firms. The term 1099 – which refers to the tax form for a contract worker – has become a verb, as in “he/she has been 1099’d.”

“The future is not full-time, permanent employment,” Kuczka said. “It’s contract work. You’re a freelancer now.”

Tech employment looking up

Contract or not, most displaced tech workers are happy to get back to flexing their intellectual muscles in the fields they know best. Many are still displaced as some employers continue to trim overall workforce counts. LSI Corp., for example, shed about 15 positions since last year, leaving 185 employees at its Fort Collins site.

But not all of the tech employers, or even most of them, are in margin-tightening mode. Advanced Micro Devices Inc. reported employment is currently at 167, up from about 150 last year. According to an AMD spokeswoman, steady hiring is under way for processor designers and is likely to continue throughout the year. In all, the company could add about 10 percent to its local workforce.

AMD competitor and neighbor on the corner of Harmony and Zeigler Roads Intel Corp. has also been creeping its employment numbers. Employment in Fort Collins grew from 400 in 2008 to 420 in 2009, and to around 425 now.

Despite announcing a company-wide cut of 9,000 positions, Hewlett-Packard Co. recently committed to ramping up its Fort Collins workforce. The company has long maintained a policy of absolute silence regarding its local employment numbers. However, as part of an agreement with the city of Fort Collins, HP has agreed to fill at least 100 positions in exchange for tax breaks on equipment upgrades needed for a facility retrofit.

A co-owner of HP’s Fort Collins campus has seen employment hold steady and could even see some hiring in the next year. Avago, a spinoff from Agilent, employs approximatley 350 in Fort Collins in manufacturing and research and development.

“Globally, we are in hiring mode at the moment,´ said Jacob Sayer, Avago’s vice president of investor relations.

The hiring, though not in any large numbers, is mostly in research and development. The company is working hard to keep at the leading edge of several rapidly advancing markets, particularly handheld communications and networking. In Fort Collins, researchers are working on highly specialized ASIC – application-specific integrated circuit – chips used to reduce power and increase performance in mobile devices. The site manufactures filters and amplifiers that make smart phones smaller, faster and more powerful.