According to The May Report, WHITTMANHART has laid off their Web developers.
WhittmanHart Interactive Chicago has just laid off all of their development staff in Chicago Interactive.
Nothing remains of their SGS purchase they made 18 months ago.
No new business & clients leaving every week left no work for the developers.
Bob Bernard's death touch strikes again…
All that's left is a Project Manager, and Office Manager and an Information Architect. I assume that when they are done with the project they are on, they will be gone too.
My source is me. I work still work there… Hopefully not for long..
It's a shame, too. During my last trip to Chicago, I got the impression from my colleagues there that the job market isn't rebounding as quickly as it has in other areas of the country. In fact, WLS's Eileen Byrne was interviewing an economist who had some damning evidence against Illinois Governor Blagojevich's economic policies. I saw first hand some of this. I had a contract with the University of Illinois for a large scale software project in early 2003. My project was supposed to go on for a year. However, Blagojevich raided already approved state funds to pay for some of his campaign promises and my project was cancelled. This a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul because the university would eventually continue the project by acquiring more state funds.
Now that election season is upon us, some of these issues are coming out as campaign talking points.
Since January 2003, all of Illinois' neighboring states except Wisconsin have seen more new jobs than Illinois, even though most of the states have considerably smaller populations. The nation's unemployment rate dropped more than Illinois' during that time, and all the surrounding states have lower unemployment rates than Illinois.
Critics in politics and business blame those results on increased business taxes and fees and a higher minimum wage pushed by Blagojevich, along with administration policies that have driven up health care costs.
"You can't continue to ignore the losses our state has struggled with," said state Sen. Bill Brady of Bloomington. "The recipe that this administration has doctored up has been a disastrous one."
Naturally, the other side uses the same data to prove that there is growth. The reality is that Blagojevich is better than his Republican criminal predecessor, but his overall performance is weak. I was turned off by the governor's election tactics and now his economic policies have hindered business growth.
Back to WHITTMANHART; I don't think the state's economic problems are totally contributing to the demise of the company. However, I'm hearing a lot of similar stories from other companies. A friend of mine was just laid off from another company downtown and it surprised me because I'm not hearing a lot of layoff news in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. It's one of the reasons I relocated.
Local politics affect businesses more than people seem to admit. National media wants badly to link job availability and company successes to the federal government, specifically the White House. But in the end, businesses located in states that are not business-friendly will not stay there for long. Either they will move or continue to dump more workers on the streets as they figure out how to cover their overhead. To reduce unemployment, the best thing any state can do is give as many tax breaks as they can to businesses. The hemorrhaging from the 2000 recession is still going on. I hate to say it, but I'm glad I moved.
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