Skype hires 400 staff in Europe expansion plans
London geeks, update your CV's. Microsoft-owned Skype has plans to hire people in London and Stockholm as part of a wider European expansion, according to the BBC.
But it comes as Yahoo reportedly plans to shed 2,000 jobs in the near future. Some are pegging the pink slips to drop at New York's market opening today.
The Internet-calling giant was bought by Microsoft for $8.5 billion last October following U.S. and EU approval, and was formally rolled into the bosom of the Redmond technology giant as its own division.
Skype's expansion to the British capital could not come soon enough for the UK government, which is keen on stressing how London will be the "powerhouse" for European tech, as it continues to invest in the East London Tech City, known colloquially as "Silicon Roundabout".
Skype's London office is expected to rise by 40 percent to 330 employees, with the first stage of the hiring process to go ahead by June.
Software engineers, designers, and product managers will all be taken on, which may be sour news for graduates struggling in the poor economic climate and jobs market. That said, "we also a number of initiatives we are working on in the web area, and we are hiring some positions for our newly formed Xbox division," said Rick Osterloh, Skype's vice-president of product and design.
Skype has between 600--700 million users around the world, which comes close to Facebook's 850 million. Skype and Facebook partnered up to provide in-chat video calling using Skype technology over the social network's platform last year.
But UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg specifically identified Skype as one of the services that the government wants to monitor, as part of plans to roll out new laws that record and log Web, email, and call data by the intelligence services.
Good news for Skype-using evil masterminds. It's still one of the most secure way of sharing your dastardly plans. Osterloh said the plans will not affect Skype's hiring spree, but noted that it would "not be able to hand over user data" because of the peer-to-peer infrastructure of the network.
Image source: Skype. Article source: BBC.
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