Published in the Charleston Regional Business Journal

Alltel snaps up eBay auctionees

By Shelia Watson

It pays to advertise. Having gained notoriety by posting themselves for auction on eBay, a group of workers laid off from Home Account Network recently were hired en masse by the Charleston division of Alltel Information Systems.

Billing themselves as an instant software development unit (“Just add water … and money,” noted one of the workers), the group continued to meet informally after the layoff and plotted strategy to find work as a team. The group agreed on one condition: to stay in Charleston.

“We didn’t have to relocate,” emphasizes Russ Neimy, former vice president of quality assurance. “We were bound to Charleston as a unit. We like Charleston and we weren’t leaving. And I was not orchestrating cherry-picking events.”

“We wanted to attract a new company to town, and the IT market is hot enough that I thought we could do it,” says development manager Vincent Laganella. “We had a number of channels and most of us were working our own business contacts. But we marketed as a group.”

Their group marketing efforts began in May, when Home Account Network, an online banking software development company, handed notices to 25 people — just under half of its development team.

“Everyone knew the chief technology officer had been shown the door, which basically made it impossible for anyone to do any work,” recalls Laganella. “Then they fired two other key people and shut down the servers. People were milling around for hours, wondering what was going on. Finally we were ushered into a conference room, handed our notices and told to leave. The whole company was just reeling.”

With a police officer posted at the door — not an unusual occurrence for a company whose product involves intellectual property — the laid-off workers were given minutes to clean out their desks.

“In my opinion, they handled the layoffs poorly,” claims Neimy. “We had no warning at all. The American Banker Web site story was out before we were.”

The cause of the layoffs is not certain. Originally based in Charleston, Home Account moved its corporate offices to Emeryville, Calif., last year. They also maintain an office in Omaha, Neb. Neimy notes that several months before the layoffs, the Charleston office began doing training and knowledge transfers for the Omaha and Emeryville offices.

“I think they wanted to transfer their knowledge base out of Charleston,” Neimy adds. “The logistics of maintaining two offices doing the same thing is costly.” Most of those laid off were high-level engineers who worked with the company’s knowledge base.

However, Home Account’s corporate office denies a shift of knowledge base and points rather to a corporate paradigm shift. “We had invested a significant amount in development,” says Chuck White, Home Account’s chief executive officer, “but we began shifting our focus, eliminating positions in development and creating positions in sales and marketing.”

For the IT industry, which moves at warp speed in terms of development, White’s statement raises more questions than it answers. Cutting development places a company in maintenance mode, which leads to speculation about whether Home Account is cleaning house to position itself for an initial public offering in the fall.

“If you don’t develop, you don’t invest in your current product line,” notes Laganella. “It looks more like they’re formatting themselves for a fire sale.”

The group didn't wait around for the fire sale. Neither did they waste time bemoaning the fire. Two days after the layoffs, Andrew Hansen, former marketing director, placed an ad on eBay to auction themselves as a software development team.

“We weren’t expecting a bid,” says Hansen. “We really just wanted attention.”

Attention they got. Along with the American Banker Web story and a writeup in The Wall Street Journal, they received several serious inquiries. One such inquiry, e-mailed to Hansen, read, “I saw the deal that you are offering on ebay. I am interested in exploring ways that we might do business together. Opening an office in Charleston is very interesting. Who can I talk to that can help me better understand the opportunity?”

One of the assets the group offered was its teamwork. “We’re a good team and we work well together,” says Worth Ketchem, former account manager in client services. “The real story here is that we’re bringing the mountain to us.”

“Together, we have years of product development experience,” Neimy points out. “That synergy is worth something.”

It was worth one company’s investment in Charleston. Following several closed-door meetings with several software companies around the country, the group finally accepted an offer from Alltel Information Systems. Based in Little Rock, Ark., AIS is a division of Alltel Communications. While Alltel Communications employs approximately 26,000 worldwide, AIS has roughly 8,000 employees — 20 of them in Charleston’s new satellite office working on Internet development initiatives.

“Their promotional efforts guided us to them, and we very quickly acted on it,” says Rob Roedel, manager of corporate communications. “We consider this team a great addition to our employee base. Employees with the skill sets this team possesses are very valuable in today’s marketplace.”