Seattle Layoff Update: Amgen, Isilon Cut Staff

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 [email protected] or [email protected].)

—Luke broke the news that Amgen (NASDAQ: [[ticker: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: [[ticker: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.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.