Seattle-based RealNetworks is cutting 4 percent of its worldwide staff today, about 70 out of 1,700 jobs, according to All Things Digital. The report cites the economic downturn and cost-cutting as reasons for the move. Last week, RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) reported a small profit for the third quarter, the company’s first profitable quarter since the first three months of 2008.

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Don Dodge, admired by many technology entrepreneurs as Microsoft’s enthusiastic ambassador to the startup world, is one of those swept up in today’s big round of layoffs at the software giant. Dodge was director of business development for the Emerging Business Team, working from Microsoft’s offices in Cambridge, MA.

Dodge revealed the news in a post on his own blog today. He said the termination came as “a total surprise” and that his managers, who include corporate vice president for strategic and emerging business development Dan’l Lewin, “offered no explanation.”

As Greg reported earlier, the layoffs announced today affect some 800 people across the company, including employees based in Washington and Massachusetts. The company hasn’t revealed specifics about which locations were affected most severely, so it isn’t known whether Dodge is part of a larger contingent of Cambridge-based Microsoft employees being let go.

Dodge is a veteran of Web and software companies Forte, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove, who joined Microsoft as a result of its acquisition of Groove in 2005. He is extremely well known in the technology community in Boston and around the country as a booster of startup-based entrepreneurship.

Dodge was philosophical in his blog post about getting a pink slip. “Today I start thinking about the next chapter in my life,” he writes. “Being totally consumed with my job and traveling every week has left no time to think about other opportunities. That changes today. I couldn’t be more excited about the future….I will be blogging more often now, and that excites me. There are lots of topics that I have wanted to dive into but just haven’t had the time. I will be seeing more friends too. Again, I have been so busy traveling that I haven’t had time to connect with friends all over the world. It’s all good.”

Reaction to Dodge’s dismissal from the blogosphere has been swift, incredulous, and angry. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, is calling the decision “a huge mistake for Microsoft,” since Dodge was “the face of Microsoft” to many in the startup community. “He travels constantly, speaking at events whenever he’s asked, and makes a big effort to give young startups the attention they deserve. This is a guy who gives a heck of a lot more to the community than he ever takes back…Don invested years of his time making Microsoft seem more human. He wasted all that time, apparently.”

Dodge said in a Twitter post today that his “phone has been ringing off the hook” since he posted the news.

Dodge has been a guest blogger for Xconomy, contributing a piece on the Web 2.0 investing bubble in June 2008 and a piece on venture capital fundraising in September 2008.

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Microsoft has confirmed it is cutting 800 positions across the company today, in its third round of layoffs this year. About a quarter of the jobs are in the Seattle area, and an unspecified number of employees in Massachusetts are impacted, among other regions. It is not yet clear which product groups and divisions will be most affected. The news was first reported by TechFlash, and confirmed by PaidContent.

Back in January, Microsoft announced 1,400 layoffs and a plan to eliminate up to 5,000 jobs over the course of 18 months. That was followed by a second round of cuts (an unspecified number) in May. But today’s cuts seem to push the total number of job losses beyond the originally stated 5,000—though with the company continuing to hire in some areas as it cuts in others, it is hard to track the exact number. The latest round of layoffs comes on the heels of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) announcing an 18 percent quarterly decline in profits as compared with the third quarter of last year.

Microsoft is also leaving the door open for additional cuts—a move that seems honest, but could be demoralizing to employees and prospective hires. In a statement given to Xconomy (and to PaidContent first), a Microsoft spokesperson wrote: “Earlier this year, we announced that in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and prioritize our focus areas, we would eliminate approximately 5,000 positions by June 2010. Today, we are eliminating around 800 positions spread across multiple businesses and locations and have completed our reduction plan sooner than we had anticipated 11 months ago. At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas, but also understand that continuing to manage our businesses closely, as we always do, can mean additional headcount adjustments.”

The spokesperson added, “We are not breaking out figures by location, but I can confirm that Massachusetts was impacted by today’s job eliminations. We are working with the individual employees to assist them through this transition.”

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GamerDNA, the Cambridge, MA-based startup building an online community where avid gamers can find recommendations for new games, has cut its staff nearly in half, shrinking from 13 employees to seven, according to a story today in Mass High Tech. Jon Radoff, the company’s founder and CEO, confirmed the layoffs in an e-mail to Xconomy, but declined to discuss them further, saying he was “trying to focus more on the future than the tough decision we just had to make.” GamerDNA, formerly called GuildCafe, raised $3 million in Series A funding from Boston’s Flybridge Capital Partners in April 2008.

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Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), the Westford, MA-based maker of voice-over-IP software and equipment for wireless, cable, and telephone companies, announced today that it has cut 93 workers, or approximately 10 percent of its global workforce. Richard Nottenburg, Sonus’s CEO and president, called the layoffs “the final phase of the restructuring initiative we began at the end of last year with the goal of re-aligning our business to market needs and opportunities.” Sonus laid off 50 workers last December, 40 in January, and 60 in March.

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Don’t let this summer heat wave fool you. It’s still bitterly cold in job land. Despite Wade’s optimistic report this morning on local companies with open positions, a lot of Seattle-area tech and life sciences firms are still heading in the opposite direction. In the past month, we’ve seen layoffs, big and small, across the software and biotech industries.

Here are a few that we’ve heard about (you can view our updated list of layoffs since June 2008 here):

—Internet search giant Google has laid off a “large number” of contractors and full-time employees at its offices in Seattle and Kirkland, according to reports in Examiner.com and WebGuild Silicon Valley. Google did not reply to e-mails requesting comment.

—Seattle-based social publishing startup Wetpaint laid off 15 employees, or 27 percent of its staff, leaving the company with about 40 people. A Wetpaint spokesperson confirmed the news, saying, “The ad market continues to be tough and the long tail seems to be taking the brunt of it.” The layoff was first reported by TechFlash.

—Redmond, WA-based Sampa, a small Internet startup focused on helping families create websites, announced it is closing down as of Aug. 17. Founder Marcelo Calbucci said the company ran out of money and its business models didn’t work out.

—Targeted Genetics (NASDAQ: TGEN), a Seattle-based developer of gene therapies, said it is cutting more than half of its workforce by the end of this month in an effort to survive into August. The biotech firm said it would be down to 10 to 15 employees, as compared with 35 on May 1. On Friday, Targeted Genetics said it has amended its lease to get a reduced rate through August.

—Two Seattle institutions, RealNetworks and Vulcan, laid off a small percentage of workers in June. RealNetworks cut fewer than 10 positions in its media software group, while Paul Allen’s Vulcan cut 17 employees in its technical department. The news was reported by TechFlash here and here. Both firms are coming off of larger layoffs last winter; Real cut 130 positions (39 in Seattle) in December, while Vulcan laid off 50 in January.

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A new draft bill that would limit but not outlaw noncompete agreements in employment contracts in Massachusetts is being floated by two members of the state’s House of Representatives.

The bill combines elements of separate bills introduced earlier this year by Representatives William Brownsberger of the 24th Middlesex district and Lori Ehrlich of the 8th Essex district. Brownsberger told Xconomy this morning that the new bill is intended in part to head off objections among business leaders to his earlier bill, which would have outlawed noncompete agreements altogether.

Many employers in the state believe that noncompete agreements are needed to keep employees from leaving with company secrets and starting directly competitive businesses. Some venture capitalists and technology executives, on the other hand, argue that the agreements punish budding entrepreneurs and harm the local economy, by forcing employees either to stay with their current companies and forego starting new ventures, or to abandon Massachusetts for places like California, where noncompete agreements are unenforceable.

The compromise bill, which adopts much of the language in Ehrlich’s first bill, will likely be heard by the House Committee on Labor and Workforce Development this fall. Unlike Brownsberger’s original proposal, it allows companies to require workers to sign noncompete agreements as a condition of employment. But it creates incentives for employers to limit the terms of these agreements to 6 months, down from the 12 months in typical employment contracts today. It also cuts out restrictions that judges in contract dispute cases might see as overreaching—and it automatically awards attorneys’ fees to employees in such cases.

For employees who make less than $100,000 a year but more than $50,000, the bill limits the acceptable rationale for enforcing noncompete agreements to just two: protecting trade secrets or confidential information. And for employees who make under $50,000 a year, the bill makes noncompete agreements unenforceable for any reason.

At this point, Brownsberger’s earlier blanket proposal to outlaw noncompete agreements—a proposal endorsed by a coalition of venture capital partners, company executives, and industry associations—would seem to be dead in the water. But the new proposal would still bring significant changes to Massachusetts employment law, and probably has a much greater chance of surviving the coming legislative debate.

“We got a very positive response [to the earlier bill] from the VC community and from employees who had had bad experiences, but we got a very negative response, particularly from smaller businesses and many of the smaller high-tech companies,” Brownsberger says. “Companies are very emotional about this issue and feel very strongly that we were taking away from them protections that are vital to their survivability. So we listened carefully to those concerns and attempted to craft a bill that would improve the venture climate, provide employees with some real relief from overreaching noncompete agreements, yet at the same time allow businesses—particularly small businesses—to protect what they feel is vital to their survival.”

The Brownsberger-Ehrlich bill appeases employers by preserving most of the existing legal levers available to them when enforcing noncompete agreements in court. A noncompete agreement should be seen as valid, the bill says, whenever it’s needed to protect an employer’s trade secrets, confidential information such as product development plans and marketing strategies, or “goodwill,” meaning customer relationships.

But there are exceptions in the bill: the goodwill argument can’t be applied to employees making under $100,000, and employees making under $50,000 are exempted altogether. To keep employers from imposing draconian terms, the bill would award attorney’s fees to employees in any cases where a judge finds that the employer has overreached. And the bill explicitly scraps a legal argument sometimes used to keep ex-employees from going to work for competing companies, even in the absence of a signed noncompete agreement: the “inevitable disclosure doctrine,” under which courts presumed that any departing employee would betray trade secrets.

“What we’ve done in the final legislation is give employers very strong incentives to draft only the most reasonable noncompete agreements,” says Brownsberger, who represents a district including Belmont, north Cambridge, and east Arlington. What’s considered reasonable? The bill spells that out, too: “Number one, they can be no more than 6 months in duration,” Brownsberger says. “Number two, …Next Page »

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Maynard, MA-based Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW), which maintains the world’s largest job listings site, said today that it will eliminate 160 positions globally as part of a restructuring. Fifty of the layoffs will occur at the Maynard headquarters. (We’ve updated our Boston Tech Layoff Tracker accordingly.) At the same time, Monster announced that it will open a new “Technology Center of Excellence & Innovation” in Kendall Square in Cambridge, MA, where it will hire at least 80 new technical employees to develop next-generation products and search technologies.

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Times are still tough out there—and maybe getting tougher—despite faint rumblings of an economic recovery on the horizon. In the past two weeks, young startups and big public companies alike have shed workers in layoffs big and small. Here’s a quick recap of the bloodletting in the Northwest.

—Vidoop, a Portland, OR-based maker of online security and authentication software, laid off an unspecified number of staff members this week, according to its blog. The company cited “the current economic climate and its impact on our target market” and a longer sales cycle as reasons for the cuts. In November, Vidoop reportedly laid off nine of its 37 workers. The company moved to Portland from Oklahoma last September.

—Seattle-based TeachStreet, an online community site that connects students and teachers in six metro areas around the U.S., laid off four staff members on Monday. The move, which was first reported by TechFlash, was made to give the startup a longer runway. Dave Schappell, TeachStreet’s founder and CEO, confirmed the news but declined to say how many staff are left in Seattle. (Last August, the startup had about 10 people in its headquarters.)

“These were not performance-related layoffs,” Schappell said. “The world changed since we raised the first round.” Speaking of which, TeachStreet is expected to announce the close of a new funding round in the next week or so.

—Finnish mobile-phone giant Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is closing its office in Kirkland, WA, as part of a strategic shift to streamline investments in its services business. The number of local employees affected has not been disclosed, but Nokia said about 450 staff will be affected globally. The Kirkland office was built around former startup Twango’s mobile-media technology for sharing photos and videos online. Nokia bought Twango for an undisclosed sum in 2007.

—Kirkland, WA-based Pathway Medical Technologies slashed 39 positions (19 percent of its workforce) early last week, as Luke first reported. The move was made because the company didn’t raise as much as it hoped in its most recent venture financing round in March—Pathway brought in just $42.3 million out of the $55 million it was shooting for. Pathway makes a medical device that clears out blockages in leg arteries, but sales in the U.S. have fallen short of projections so far.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), the Redmond, WA-based anchor of the tech community, implemented last week the second round of job cuts it originally announced back in January. About 1,200 workers in Washington state are losing their jobs, and there has been speculation that further staff cuts could be made if the company’s sales figures don’t improve in the coming months.

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Cognex, a Natick, MA-based company that makes machine-vision sensors and systems for industrial automation, announced cost-cutting measures today that will include executive pay cuts and the elimination of 85 employees and contractors. “Unfortunately, conditions have deteriorated beyond what we had anticipated last fall, and because we currently see no sign of improvement in the near term, we are taking the additional steps announced today to more closely align our costs with the decreased level of demand for our products,” CEO Robert Shillman said in an announcement. We’ve updated the Boston Tech Layoff Tracker accordingly.

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The carnage continues at tech and life sciences companies in the Northwest. You can follow Xconomy Seattle’s updated layoff litany here—we’ve kept a running tally of job cuts since November. (If you’ve heard of other layoffs in the innovation community, please drop us a line at tips@xconomy.com or gthuang@xconomy.com.)

—Luke broke the news that Amgen (NASDAQ: AMGN), the world’s largest biotech company, is cutting 100 jobs at its drug manufacturing facility in Bothell, WA. The layoff will be effective in July, and will leave about 70 Amgen workers still employed in Bothell, and just under 900 in Washington state. Amgen said it is merging the work being done in Bothell into a larger facility at company headquarters in Thousand Oaks, CA.

—Seattle-based Isilon Systems (NASDAQ: ISLN), a data storage and virtualization company, is laying off 10 percent of its global workforce (about 40 workers) in an effort to save about $4 million a year. Isilon didn’t specify how many positions were cut in Seattle, but the company had 394 employees at the end of 2008.

—Theraclone Sciences (formerly Spaltudaq), a Seattle biotech startup working on an antibody drug for HIV, had a small layoff in the past few months. To our knowledge, this wasn’t reported elsewhere. Theraclone now has about 22 employees and enough cash to last through 2010, as Luke reported this week.

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In the past couple of weeks, we’ve seen further bloodletting in terms of area tech-company layoffs and closures. It really is brutal out there. Here is a quick recap:

—Exide Technologies (NASDAQ: XIDE), a maker of batteries and energy storage devices in Alpharetta, GA, closed its facility in Sumner, WA, and laid off 43 workers earlier this week. The staff cuts were effective immediately.

—Bellevue, WA-based travel site Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE) laid off an undisclosed number of workers about two weeks ago. The latest staff cuts came on the heels of another layoff (numbers also not disclosed) at the company in February.

—Seattle-based Impinj, the maker of novel radio frequency identification technologies, laid off 23 workers (or about 18 percent of its staff of 130) two weeks ago. Xconomy profiled the company’s strategy in February.

—Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA), the software and networking giant, laid off 24 employees in Bellevue, WA, earlier this week. The staff cuts are effective May 30.

—Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) is laying off two employees at its Seattle facility near the International District, effective June 30, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department.

—Microsoft is also shutting down MSN Encarta, its online encyclopedia site, as of October 31, 2009. The move is viewed as a response to the changing nature of reference materials and information access, thanks to competing sites like Wikipedia.

—Seattle-based Trusera, the online community healthcare startup founded by ex-Amazon exec Keith Schorsch, said it may close at the end of April unless it can raise more funding in a hurry. Trusera began in early 2007, raised $2 million in angel funding that summer, and rolled out its public site in June 2008.

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Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) has laid off 24 workers in Bellevue, WA, effective May 30, 2009, according to a notice from the Washington State Employment Security Department. Meanwhile, Exide Technologies (NASDAQ: XIDE), a maker of batteries and other energy-storage devices, has closed its facility in Sumner, WA, and has laid off 43 workers, effective immediately.

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Bellevue, WA-based Expedia and Seattle-based Impinj have had layoffs in the past week, according to reports in TechFlash here and here. Expedia isn’t saying how many positions were cut, but the news comes on the heels of another layoff last month. Impinj laid off 23 employees last week, or about 18 percent of its staff of 130 (the headcount Xconomy reported a month ago).

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The carnage continues. At least two area technology companies that we follow at Xconomy have had significant layoffs this week—both at least in part because of the worsening economic climate. Here’s a quick summary of the news:

—Kirkland, WA-based Amaze Entertainment, the console-game developer studio owned by Foundation 9 Entertainment (F9E), has laid off about one-third of its staff, according to multiple sources close to the situation. Amaze had roughly 100 employees before the cuts, one source said. A phone call and e-mails sent to the company were not returned. F9E says it is the largest independent game developer in the world, and has shipped more than 500 titles for every major publisher in the industry.

—Seattle-based Evri, the Paul Allen-backed startup that’s trying to reinvent how people browse the Web, has laid off about one-quarter of its staff, as first reported by TechFlash and VentureBeat. As of last July, Evri had about 35 employees and was hiring. Earlier this week, the company announced a partnership with The Times of London to put its article recommendation widget on selected stories online. At that time, Evri founder and CEO Neil Roseman said the company had recently added one position, bringing the number of applied scientists on its staff to four.

This afternoon, Roseman said in an e-mail, “In this economy we need to make sure we can take advantage of the success we are starting to have. Any company, large or small, that isn’t seriously examining things would be strange. We just want to be in a position to build a great product and company, and return value to all of our investors and owners—which includes the current and former employees.”

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One of the corollaries of hiring a new CEO is that sometimes the corporate mountain moves instead of the guy at the top, which may be a factor in an announcement today by Utah’s Sorenson Media.

The Salt Lake City-based developer of video compression and encoding software said today Sorenson has opened a new San Diego office that will now “serve as the central hub for the company’s business operations.”

The company founded in 1995 by James Lee Sorenson recently hired a new CEO, Peter Csathy, who has led several high-growth digital media ventures, including SightSpeed, (acquired by Logitech in late 2008) MusicMatch, (aqcuired by Yahoo! in 2004) and eNow, (acquired by AOL-TimeWarner in 2006.)

Sorenson Media’s Squeeze video compressor and optimizer software is one of the industry’s leading video encoding tools. Squeeze is one of the basic video software tools used by hundreds of millions of online surfers when they make or watch videos.

In Sorenson’s press release, Csathy says that the San Diego staff is expected to triple in number within a year. Sorenson Media currently has approximately 10 people in its San Diego office. The company has about 25 employees in Salt Lake City, and a spokesman says that staff also is expected to grow.

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General Dynamics Itronix, a manufacturer of laptops and mobile devices for field use, is closing its facility in Spokane Valley, WA, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department. The closure, which is effective April 24, 2009, affects 353 people. General Dynamics Itronix is based in Spokane and has offices in Canada and Europe.

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Sensata Technologies, a maker sensors and switches based in The Netherlands, has cut 150 jobs though layoffs and buyouts, with most of the reductions coming at the firm’s Attleboro, MA, operation, the Attleboro Sun Chronicle newspaper reports. The company revealed this week that its fourth-quarter revenue of $267.6 million was down 28.2 percent from the same period in 2007. Sensata, owned by Bain Capital, is a former unit of Texas Instruments and became an independent firm in 2006, according to its website.

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Forrester Research (NASDAQ: FORR), the Cambridge, MA-based technology market research firm, said yesterday it will deal with the economic crunch by cutting 50 positions, or about 5 percent of its global workforce. But the move comes after a big hiring surge in 2008; even after the cuts, the company will still have 14 percent more employees than it did in February 2008, the company said. We’ve updated the Boston Tech Layoff Tracker with the latest numbers.

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When a good idea is ready to be born, it can surface in several minds at once. That appears to be what’s happening right now around Boston, as four local Web-based startups launch online marketplaces that match people willing to do small jobs with people who need jobs done. In each case, the founders point to the free-falling economy and ballooning unemployment rates as part of the inspiration and fuel for their experiments.

We’ve told you recently about Assured Labor, a site that lists reviews of service providers such as dog walkers and helps potential clients connect with them. We also took a close look at fixR, a site where clients post information about paving or roofing jobs and the like and contractors submit competing bids. Both companies have global ambitions, but chose Boston to launch beta version of their sites. And now there are two more job-matchmaking players in town: Labortopia, where service providers can create profiles and clients can leave reviews, and RunMyErrand, where “senders” post tasks as simple as “pick up 30 pounds of dog food at Stop & Shop” and “runners” can sign up to do the jobs.

All four companies say they’re reacting in part to the opportunities created by the economic crisis, which has put a stop to much construction, renovation, and consulting work—meaning contractors are looking for better ways to advertise their services to potential clients—while also throwing many average people out of work, meaning they’re available to do odd jobs.

But the same time, entrepreneurs seem to be waking up to the limitations of existing online marketplaces like Craigslist and social-networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook, which weren’t designed to handle quick negotiations between people who likely live in the same physical community. The new sites they’re creating mix elements of the old-fashioned text-based “Help Wanted” ad, such as a basic description of the job, with added features like mobile messaging, competitive bidding, and online payments, as well as Web 2.0-style profiles and customer reviews.

RunMyErrand founder and CEO Leah Busque has an apt term for the new phenomenon: “service networking.” While RunMyErrand is a place to outsource small jobs, “what we are actually doing is harnessing the power of a community,” Busque writes on her blog. “Social networking has obviously become quite popular in recent years, and capturing this essence and leveraging it to get real things done in people’s every day life is some pretty exciting stuff.”

Busque, a former software engineer in IBM’s Lotus division, says the idea for RunMyErrand occurred to her and her husband Kevin one cold day in February 2008, when they were about to leave their Charlestown apartment to meet friends for dinner and realized they were out of dog food for their 100-pound yellow Labrador retriever, Kobe. “Kevin is also in computers, so we have many of these really geeky moments in our house,” Busque says. “This was one of those times, where we said ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a place online where we could post that we needed dog food, and if somebody in the neighborhood had time to drop by with it, that would be great.’ Craigslist is great, but it doesn’t really have that sense of urgency that was part of this situation.”

By the end of the evening, the couple had decided that there was a business opportunity in the concept. “Even five years ago the technology wasn’t really available to build what we wanted, but with social networking being so popular now, and mobile applications, and all these different ways to facilitate connections, we felt we were on to something—this new standard that we began calling service networking,” says Busque. (Kobe never got his dinner, by the way.)

At RunMyErrand, senders first sign up for an account, use a credit card to load up on credits, then post errands. Runners can scan pending errands on a Google map, which shows which jobs are available nearby. The first runner to respond to the posting gets the job. After an errand is completed, …Next Page »

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