Job Spectrum

Talk about bad timing : inside weeks of being named the number one place to work last year, NetApp Inc voiced plans to chop about 6% of its workforce. It was Feb 2009, in the worst days of the recession. Clients had slashed their spending budgets, leaving the company with no choice except to eliminate roles, NetApp asserted at the time.

A new report blasting piracy's industrial effects has been released this week, and it includes some shockingly obvious falsehoods.The study, penned by Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Robbery ( BASCAP ), claims that robbery will cost ECU companies over 240 Bn. EU$ by the year 2015 and result in 1.2 million roles being lost in the same period.These job losses are not restricted to content makers, but oddly includes losses from device makers, retail workers, load handling and water transport.

Northwards Eire has won a major new investment by an American software firm that will create fifty roles in Belfast, the North's Minister for Corporation Arlene Foster has confirmed in Washington.Mrs Foster, who is on a two-city trade mission to the US this week, said First-quarter Labs, which is headquartered in Massachusetts, intends to build a new Western european HQ in Belfast.