Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide 506
nandemoari writes "It seems not even Microsoft is impervious to the effects of this increasingly painful recession. According to reports, the Redmond-based company is preparing to lay off about 17 per cent of its entire workforce in the coming months.
Despite its portfolio diversity — including operating systems, antivirus software, and video game consoles — Microsoft is clearly feeling the pressure applied by a tightening global economy. In fact, there seems to be a sense of emergency to the massive cuts (about 15,000 workers out of 90,000), which rumors suggest should be made official by January 15."
That's because (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft saw that 10% of their employees were hanging around on /. all day hoping for a first post.
Re:That's because (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That's because (Score:4, Funny)
I don't know what is sadder: this whole conversation or the fact that I'm actually replying to it
Re:That's because (Score:5, Funny)
And that is why MS sucks. Any industrious developer would have developed a first-post bot already.
I might even be one myself. Written in LISP of course (ironically, not a .NET language)
Re:That's because (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
And shilled it. Glad to see 2009 hasn't taken the utter inanity out of Twitter...
a shame (Score:5, Funny)
What's a shame? 15,000 Microsoft employees losing their jobs.
What's a crying shame? 75,000 continuing to work for Microsoft.
Re:a shame (Score:5, Funny)
Ridiculous MS Bashing: This is slashdot. No MS bashing shall be referred to as ridiculous.
During a depression: You folks are in a recession at the moment. The common consensus is that a depression only occurs when real GDP growth declines by 10% [about.com] or more in a year. America isn't near those numbers [wikipedia.org] yet.
grudge with MS: Again, here most people have one of those. Please find a better argument.
fact that you have some imaginary grudge: Look, either it's real and he has one, or it is imaginary and therefore he cannot have it. Your statement contradicts itself and confuses the reader.
that's 15000 people with families: Now, the real point of this whole post was to argue this point. These poor sods getting laid off, working for a software developer, these software developers, these NERDS. They don't have families, they are considered almost iconic if they have gotten to second base! Microsoft isn't laying off 15,000 family members, they are shit-canning 15,000 geeks who live in their parents basement, play Warhammer 40K on weekends while eating pizza and come home after work to play World of Warcraft!
Now back off Anonymous Coward! Back away with these dangerous ideals of yours!
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to ask...why? I thought Microsoft was massively profitable, even today. Surely they don't have to fire all these people to prevent losses?
If Microsoft is still profitable, despite the recession, then they are really using the economy as a 'cover' to do the layoffs they always wanted, anyways. A good chunk of Microsoft represents divisions that don't make money, and never have. They have all sorts of niche applications, research, online sites, game consoles, ect...none of which, as far as I know, have made them any money. All of Microsoft's dough comes from Windows and Office.
(before you say the Xbox division has made money, check your numbers : it never has made anywhere close to the money that was invested into it for each console. And, once a console is obsoleted, if you haven't made the money you spent to develop it back, you never will)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you look at the blogs of some of the microsoft employees, Microsoft isn't just using the recession to cut unprofitable product lines, they're also using it to cut people who maybe shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Specifically, layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.
You mean (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You mean (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really.
Most companies when faced with having to do layoffs offer buyouts. Those most likely to take a buyout package will be those who can easily find another job. Therefore most companies ending up culling the top 10-20%. From what I've heard (and I have no inside information on this) Microsoft is going to be doing targeted layoffs to counter the effect of the hiring binge they've been on for a few years now.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, Microsoft has never had a major layoff in the past. That's why it would be a big deal, if it's true.
Re:You mean (Score:5, Insightful)
Please, spell out "people". You're not text messaging.
Re:You mean (Score:4, Funny)
im psting frm my celly u nsnstve cld
Re:You mean (Score:5, Funny)
I'm pasting farm my celly up unison steve cloud.
Re:You mean (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You mean (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You mean (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt that's what he was getting at. Surely you've noticed, by now, that team dynamic is an extremely important aspect to how productive a group of employees is? You could be the most capable person on the planet, with nobody out there knowing more about your field than you do... if you're a complete asshole and nobody wants to work with you, then bringing you onto the team will hurt productivity. There's simply no way that you will be able to cover the loss in productivity for the other 20 people you work with. Even if you produce the best work there is, removing you might improve the whole.
Likewise, even if you're producing the best work on the team, if you show up when you feel like it, leave when you want, take breaks whenever, and have been known to disappear for 3-4 hours without telling anybody, then the perception that's going to spread is that you're a slacker and don't care, and that impression is going to hurt morale and productivity. I actually had to remove somebody from my team last month for exactly that situation. (well, almost. he wasn't actually producing the best quality work, but he was doing the most work units, but otherwise exactly the same.)
It isn't a question of ass kissing. It's a question of soft skills and diplomacy, which is a skill set that I've found sadly lacking in most technical disciplines.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
"layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers"
Ballmer should be nervous.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Rumor has it they are planning on doing this every month until everyone is in the top 50%.
I can't tell if 'low performer' there means they introduced too many bugs, or too few...
Interesting Logic (Score:5, Funny)
Rumor has it they are planning on doing this every month until everyone is in the top 50%.
I hope this guy doesn't write code.
just think though... (Score:3, Insightful)
He gets to vote.
Re:Interesting Logic (Score:5, Funny)
I hope this guy doesn't write code.
He's on the Zune team. Why do you ask?
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
You know what happens when they announce this kind of stuff? The top 20% start looking for new jobs and bail out or retire. They don't want or need to deal with the tasks from the bottom 20% who got canned.
My last company got in a crunch and started a round of layoffs.. They managed to drag the selection process on so long almost all the top level admins, DBAs and programmers bailed out before they could name people. In the end there were very few layoffs because all the top people left and didn't get replaced..
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with laying off people based on reviews is that it obscures the true value of these people. Is your bottom 20 percent really that bad? Laying off the bottom 20 of a team of elite hackers seems ill-advised, and laying off the bottom 20 of a team of slackers seems to not go far enough.
If you're going to "clean house", target people with an absolute bar, and get rid of those who fail to make the cut. Using a proportional layoff like "bottom 20 percent" doesn't do much good, and only serves to overw
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically, layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.
That'll be interesting, then. By and large, every performance measuring I've ever seen has been flawed, and unless it was for very simple jobs, greatly so.
Especially in a development environment, performance is hard to measure. There are anecdotes en masse about people who contributed very little measurable output to a project, but when they were fired the whole thing went down the drain.
Cutting "low performers" has, in my experience, always been a sign of a company in financial trouble. One that desperately needs to save money in order to please stockholders, and employees simply are one of those "cutting costs opportunities" that stockholders love.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
In theory, a company could be investing (Score:5, Interesting)
In theory, a company could be investing for a major project, esp. if it has lots of money in the bank.
But those days, when you have (still) have to compete with hedge fund managers who can (could) generate gobs of money doing nothing, a real company doing some real work doesn't look serious.
Hopefully this will change as a result of the current financial crisis, but I'm afraid the right lessons aren't being learned when you see the Big 3 CEOs being lampooned for not taking a bus when they were asking for 20 billions, while nobody asked the bank CEOs how many dozens of millions they spent on blow, hookers and cocaine in the past months, and the fuckers got several hundred billions, for doing nothing but fuck the whole economy up.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm still shocked that there weren't any stories about wall street traders getting assassinated.
Yeah, that's how we know we've done our jobs right.
-- The Assassins
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
"the best thing for them to do is put them all on projects with a 3-7 year horizon"
Do you have any idea how big you're asking them to make the IE standards compliance team?
MSFT is a public company (Score:3, Interesting)
They definitely don't need to fire anyone to get past an economic slump.
They don't HAVE to but they probably NEED to. Management NEEDS to meet the demands of the board of directors, and ultimately shareholders. That is the trade-off of being a public company--you get liquidity, access to capital and so forth but you have that little obligation there to those who have invested. MSFT has promised in its quarterly reports etc. to meet a certain level of fiscal performance, and though it could certainly survive without layoffs it probably would fall far short of that performance
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
Specifically, layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.
That'll be interesting, then. By and large, every performance measuring I've ever seen has been flawed, and unless it was for very simple jobs, greatly so.
Especially in a development environment, performance is hard to measure. There are anecdotes en masse about people who contributed very little measurable output to a project, but when they were fired the whole thing went down the drain.
Cutting "low performers" has, in my experience, always been a sign of a company in financial trouble. One that desperately needs to save money in order to please stockholders, and employees simply are one of those "cutting costs opportunities" that stockholders love.
So Microsoft hired the "Bobs" to weed folks out?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
here here.
Man I just wish I could explain to business people the failure of performance measurement. I almost feel having no metrics is better than having bad metrics.
I worked for the largest telecom manufacturer and they had this really stupid policy where you had a target 'bug count'. Fix 1.5 bugs per week was the target. The problem is this resulted in people doing short hacky fixes instead of actually fixing problems. Heck you were rewarded for this. Just fix the immediate bug, then get another bug
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
At my work, if a ticket comes in at a certain severity, it's my task to close the ticket, and reopen it at a lower severity. THEN start working on fixing the problem. This doesn't help me serve the clients, but it does help improve our metrics. In fact I don't think I've once heard anything about improving customer service where I work in the past year, it's all about doing more work remotely.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Jack Welch was the one of the first guys to propose the idea of firing the weak performers and at GE popularized it company wide, firing employees and selling weak businesses. I have not worked at GE, but from reading his book it seems that it is important to measure the right outcome before firing people. When he said that he would sell off companies which were not number one in their industry, the companies started redefining the industry very narrowly so as to be number one. eg: We are the number one company that makes 40W bulbs and toothpastes. He also explains how you can end up firing wrong employees.
So Firing bad employees has been done atleast by one company in times when they were not in financial trouble.
I worked for Neutron Jack Welch (Score:5, Interesting)
I worked for GE during the days of Neutron Jack Welch. The company culture was fear and intimidation. My immediate manager cried in the office at least one a week. I attended meetings where the secret agenda was that the meeting would continue until somebody cried. In management training, I was directed to march in the hallways chanting slogans to the effect that "no one is irreplaceable." I was yelled at by people who didn't even know my name. I saw people spit on each other. Two people were killed in separate suspicious fork lift accidents.
Welch told his general managers that if they did not produce returns that exceeded the market average, the first thing to happen would be the dismissal of the manager and then the business unit would be sold. The business units then ended all R&D and cut overhead to the bone by eliminating every conceivable soft benefit including the water fountains, toilet paper, and bathroom cleaning. The businesses cannibalized themselves for short term profit while the managers waited out the clock for early retirement or a new job. The successors would just have to deal with the low moral, lack of investment, and empty husk of a business left behind.
Welch was great for share holder, but he was very bad for employees. It's debatable, but he may have been very bad for GE in the long term.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, so don't blindly rely on imperfect models. Their managers should know who the slackers are, what they do and what the consequences are of firing their ass. That's their *job*. Otherwise, fire the oblivious boss and promote Wally. Then fire Wally and repeat until sanity is visible.
Psst. Don't tell my boss I'm here.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Cutting "low performers" has, in my experience, always been a sign of a company in financial trouble. One that desperately needs to save money in order to please stockholders, and employees simply are one of those "cutting costs opportunities" that stockholders love.
As Stephen J Gould pointed out, the only things that are "lean and mean" in nature are animals that can no longer hunt effectively and are dying.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That'll be interesting, then. By and large, every performance measuring I've ever seen has been flawed, and unless it was for very simple jobs, greatly so.
For programmers it's really easy. Just find the programmer that people go to when there's a problem they can't figure out and ask him who should be fired and why. These people know exactly who isn't pulling their weight and can explain why in detail.
If you need to fire more people, find the person who fixes everybody else's broken code and ask them.
This has the double benefit of firing the worst performers and reducing the workload on the better ones.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall a situation where we wondered why certain people had been laid off. Our layoffs generally tended to consist of volunteers to take the package, then low performers, and then finally people they simply had to cut to make the numbers. Unfortunately, every category had someone in it, but we tended to find that most people were in the first two categories, and very few were in the last.
When that layoff rolled around, however, we noticed that some very good people were getting cut, when at the the same time, some complete idiots were being kept on. As much as layoffs make any sense, we assumed that even if the reasoning was irrational for layoffs, that there was a rational system by which decisions were made.
In this case, our CTO admitted in a small meeting with some of us that they had been forced to make a major mistake. This was fairly candid, as I work for a major company and you don't usually hear a C-level say anything that gives away information to minions like us. For that matter, you usually don't ever see a C-level.
What he said was that their financial reporting, of all things, had forced them to not only take care of the layoff, but do it in a completely boneheaded manner. The parent company had stated in their reporting that they were taking a chargeback for a layoff in Q3, but a number of delays had forced them right to the deadline without them being able to implement it.
This was bad news, because if the layoff did not happen they would either have to do some sort of earnings restatement, or they would be in actual trouble.
Of course, the parent company decided that instead of the restatement, which would inconvenience them, they would pressure our subsidiary's executives to do a crash layoff. Since the delays ensured that there was not the needed time to do the necessary meetings with lower management and ensure that those folks were on message, they restricted input to VP level and all decisions were made on layoffs by SVP level.
So you may ask: How do VPs and SVP's make decisions about people whose names that they can barely remember, let alone know what they do?
The answer is that you hand them the performance reviews for every employee.
Sounds like a reasonable idea, right?
Wrong. It turns out that managers, even the ones we assume to be inhuman, prefer not to rock the boat, or they're just plain lazy. It also didn't help that we had major re-orgs recently, so those same managers would have have difficulty even if they had been completely diligent about reviews.
Therefore, unless the people under them were incredibly distinguished... or complete morons, there was a tendency to rate everyone under them as average and grant them all the same scores and similar, content-free comments.
Faced with a massive pile of employees who seemed to be no different than any other employee, they did their best to glean any actual idea of their relative performance out of the review. As you would expect, in some cases, they might as well have thrown darts at a list of names.
Our CTO went through the process and admitted afterwards that they had made a mistake. Performance reviews had ended up being useless forms that had to be filed so everyone got their pay and bonuses. Unless there were things that they could not avoid stating on them, a manager made all of his reviews would the same.
At the same time, he then said two more truths. There is technically no reason required to lay someone off, so this layoff was technically a success. And he also stated that we were far from done laying people off.
He did promise, however, that he would do his best to try and push back if something like this happened again. Considering the person, I think he might actually even try to keep his word. He'll probably fail, of course, but its comforting to know that someone much closer to the Board might actually say something.
So in the end, performance reviews are only as good as the process and the people conducting them. G
Why layoff? (Score:5, Insightful)
culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.
If someone isn't doing a satisfactory job, they can be fired.
But no matter how many people you lay off, you'll always have someone in the lower 10 to 20 percentile. That's just the way statistics works.
There are a variety of reasons why culling the bottom performers seldom improves the performance of the company as a whole:
I've seen management buy into the "layoff the lowest performers" myth far too often to let it go. It is almost always the harbinger of deeper, structural problems within the company, which if left unaddressed, result in the financial collapse of the company. Laying off people - even the worst performers - almost never results in a more efficient company. If you can't fire them for cause, they're more than likely adding value, even if that value isn't being measured by a performance metric. Take that away, and you take away your ability to do business.
Re:Why layoff? (Score:4, Insightful)
You think all 90,000 Microsoft employees are programmers?
I doubt if even ten percent of them are. Most will be middlemen and general hangers-on.
Re:Why layoff? (Score:4, Interesting)
I once heard a lecture by a researcher in the field of computer supported cooperative work. He mentioned that one of his largest consulting clients was an insurance company where new management noticed a layer of bureaucracy with no identifiable output. So rather than figure out that output might be, they simply fired them all.
It turned out that what the people in that layer did was to coordinate the flow of information through the company. They didn't approve a policy or claim, or study some aspect of those things. Their job was to know the state of these things, and what needed to be done next under various special circumstances.
Re:Why layoff? (Score:5, Funny)
I couldn't agree more. Three of the companies I have worked at for more than a year closed their doors shortly after I decided to leave. That's the way I remember it anyway.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I am amazed that your ill-supported rant got rated so highly. Do you have any supporting evidence for your wild accusations? "Engineers with the lowest rated performance usually get that rating because they are thorough, methodical and diligent." ... "The best performers typically sacrifice aspects of the job which aren't rated in order to achieve that rating."
Where did you come up with this nonsense?
In my working experience (both as programmer, administrator [dba/sys], manager), the worst performers are
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So, all your points are good, but a good manager should recognize all of those things and incorporate them as positives in your performance review.
If you have bad management, well... you should have already been looking for a new job.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Specifically, layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers in order to improve the overall performance of the company.
Haha. If only that were true.
First to go is the bottom 10-20% wage-earners. What's left are a few people who work, and the vast unwashed masses of people who pass their work onto others, look busy, blame others for failures and take credit for the slightest whiff of success of something nearby.
Bottom line: way more aggressive workplace politics, less produc
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather, if MS is like any place I've ever worked, he was probably referring to the people who shouldn't be in the position that they are in.
unfortunately those are the people who will be deciding who goes.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If HR was not consulted, then the company needs to educate management or dump the incompetant bastards who did not consult HR in such a critical action.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, that's a really douchebag move on Microsoft's part. If they are going to fire a ton of people to increase their profits, why didn't they do this when the economy was ok? Or wait until the recession ends? Essentially they are kicking out thousands of people during the WORST possible time to be fired, and doing this now in order to not look as bad and to prevent lawsuits. (since the best way to do a questionable firing is to lump it together with a bunch of other firings and call it a 'layoff')
I know, I know, Corporations are not your friend, even if they employ you. They are out for themselves, and noone else. But why would an employee of Microsoft be motivated to 'go the extra mile' for a company that does things like this? If a company I was working for did stuff like this, I would quickly lose any loyalty I had and try to find ways to manipulate the system in order to do the least work for the most pay.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
or, just go to work for the government where layoffs never happen (even though half my coworkers don't do a damn thing all day). Governments don't do layouffs because it would look bad for the politicians. It's welfare for the middle class.
Hi diddle dee dee; a bureaucrat's life for me;
We rob from the taxpayer and pay ourselves
We don't do no work because we'll get your money anyway.
Yes I pay taxes, but I use your money, not mine!
Yes it's a bureaucrat's life for me.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Err...isn't that what everyone does now?
Not so much the least work part...but, really, the days of loyalty to a job/company....and having a job for life are LONG gone my friend. There is no such thing anymore, aside from very, very small operations maybe.
That's why I like...and advocate more people try to get into contracting. If you are going to, as an employee, get treated with no loyalty...are easily replaceable, they why not get paid contractor rates? And hell...it isn't like you have any more job security as a direct employee..just talking with a friend of mine that is an engineer in the oil rig building business. He mentioned that some work had slowed...and they fired a direct employee..to keep him around as a contractor.
So really, don't get too caught up on this loyalty thing. In most cases, you are dispensible to the company, don't take a job as something personal. It is merely something to earn money from. If you like doing the stuff, even the better, but, don't try to think you will be appreciated personally in the long run. And don't take it personally, it is just business. Yes, try to make the max. buck you can. They are only after the max work they can get out of you.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not doing it to "prevent losses". They're doing it to "maximise shareholder value". From the perspective of a corporation, any employee that doesn't add more value to the company's bottom line that it costs to employ them is not worth keeping around. Clearly, someone at Microsoft feels this is the case with a significant fraction of the workforce there. (Whether they are right or not is something that only time will tell.)
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how many employees are also shareholders? I thought that historically (at least) they gave out lots of stock options as bonuses..
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Having a stock option is not the same thing as having actual stock. An option is just the right to buy stock at a predetermined price at some point in the future. As a rule, you only exercise that option when you actually want to sell the stock and take your money, since there is little to no upside to exercising the option and then holding on to the stock. Furthermore, all options that haven't been exercised already are likely worthless, since the stock price has come down so much, and will probably never
Re: (Score:2)
Wow - you never plan for farther than the next quarter, do you? XBox represents MS last great hope for ruling the living room. It doesn't matter how much money the previous iterations lost, as long as the next ones have a chance at creating the next monopoly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsfot has hardly lost this round. Have you seen the software attache rate for the Wii? It is attrocious. Meanwhile the Xbox 360 has the largest software attach rate in console history.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
You still live in the illusionary world, where companies care for anything other than more money? Why do you think, they call them "human resources"? Because you don't work with resources. You use them. And when you used them up, you throw away the empty shells.
They don't even need to attempt to cover anything. It's just you, thinking they had some kind of conscience.
If Microsoft does anything at all, it is, to make more money. There are no second objectives.
And this is not a MS-specific thing. It's the foundation of all capitalism and all companies.
This is why some people hate capitalism. I don't hate. I just think that there is no better alternative yet.
Profitability Has Nothing to Do With It (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the Dirty Secret: Around the nation there are profitable companies who have been operating "fat" for years, with bloated rosters of do-nothing personnel. You know this -- We all know this, we've bitched and moaned about it on this board and down at the local pub for years. The trouble was, it was just too difficult to fire anybody. In the litigation-happy workplace that was late 20th century America, a guy had to practically set fire to his cubicle with two secretaries tied to chairs inside it before he could be let go.
No More.
Now, all any large company has to do is mumble something about "recession" or "difficult times" and nobody -- employee, manager, or labor lawyer -- will blink twice.
overhiring intentional when lot of turnover (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Profitability Has Nothing to Do With It (Score:5, Funny)
a guy had to practically set fire to his cubicle with two secretaries tied to chairs inside it before he could be let go.
Sheesh. Why do people keep bringing this up? I'd like to put it behind me.
Read the report. It was all just a big misunderstanding. I did the counseling and volunteered in the burn unit, and as a result I was cleared of all charges and got to keep my job.
And it's "Administrative Assistant" (admin for short), not "Secretary". I learned that in the counseling.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Panic Mode. Everyone is going into Panic Mode. Our company has had record profits for numerous quarters straight. We weren't even close to posting a loss in Q3 but given the economic forecast the powers that be went into a massive lock down on budgets:
Executives are taking a 5-35% paycut, No merit based pay raises across the board, bonuses reduced, Hiring freeze, releasing of contract workers and buyouts err... "Voluntary Separations".
All in preparation of what's to come. If you're firing people when you're
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to ask...why? I thought Microsoft was massively profitable, even today. Surely they don't have to fire all these people to prevent losses?
You have a lot to learn about how Wall Street works. Being profitable is not enough to keep stock prices high. Brokers and analysts come up with figures [investopedia.com] (sorry for the ads) that corporations have to meet or exceed for fear of a massive sell-off. As a result, corporate executives often order massive layoffs in order to meet these expectations made by Wall Street to keep the value of their stocks high.
In my opinion, this is a major flaw in the way our economy operates as these layoffs ultimately do more harm than good. Corporations that do these types of layoffs often hire many new employees as soon as it looks like they will beat The Street's expectations and will spend massive resources to train them, only to get rid of them down the line. Employee's are all unique and should be treated as an investment, not a commodity. [wikipedia.org]
It's about time. (Score:5, Interesting)
Lisa Brummel is a Microsoft Senior VP. She's in charge of human resources, and given some of her other decisions internally, I think she'll do the right thing and cut some weight from Microsoft.
Re:It's about time. (Score:5, Funny)
There are lots of smart people who deserve jobs at Microsoft.
Why, what did they do wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
Critical fail on the 'chair duck'
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, an innocent victim, have we? (Score:5, Insightful)
Following your logic far enough reveals that we're all guilty of murder.
If you were half as clever as you think you are, you'd be able to rationally sort reality from your own hatred of Microsoft. BTW, this is coming from the president of a Linux User Group.
Take a step back, get some perspective, and stop allowing yourself to be so emotionally involved with technology. It's fine to be passionate about a technology... up until the point where it replaces rational thought. After you cross that point, you lose respect, geek cred., and any chance to be taken seriously. There are plenty of brilliant people who will never impact the world because they lost all creditability. Don't be one of them.
Last Week's "News" and Most Probably Inaccurate (Score:5, Informative)
A CNBC report out today appears to put to rest continued rumors of significant Microsoft layoffs coming this month.
In recent weeks, two blogs -- Mini-Microsoft and Fudzilla -- have both reported that Microsoft is preparing to lay off large numbers of employees before the company announces its second quarter earnings on Jan. 22.
Neither blogger quoted inside sources and both later backtracked on their reports.
Re:Last Week's "News" and Most Probably Inaccurate (Score:5, Funny)
Neither blogger quoted inside sources and both later backtracked on their reports.
Couldn't you have prefaced that with a "Spoiler Alert" warning? Or waited for a few hundred more posts?
You've ruined all the fun. If Slashdot is ever forced to lay people off, it'll be because of people like you interfering with everyone's God-given right to enjoy or otherwise take part in idle speculation, rumour-mongering, Microsoft-bashing, car analogies, or invoking the meme of the day.
Re:Last Week's "News" and Most Probably Inaccurate (Score:4, Informative)
This is happening, people just don't want to go on record.
In the town I live, with a MS campus, this has been the fact for a while. Many people were given 60 days to find new jobs, with massive amounts of people taking other unfilled jobs internally. Since there has been a hiring freeze for a long time, there are lots of open jobs.
They'll probably eliminate a lot of 'positions' but not a lot of 'people.'
Re: (Score:2)
I hate to break this to you, but generally stock prices go UP after an announcement like this. Investors see it as a company working hard to cut costs. Since Microsoft is nowhere near close to losing money... its profits are going through the roof... investors would react very favorably.
Layoffs (Score:3, Interesting)
I know a few people in the NYC office who have been worried this week by the layoff rumor. Hopefully, Microsoft will streamline the company responsibly. It is unfortunate that so many companies are considering large layoffs, but it is hardly surprising. Many corporations are bogged down by redundancy or mediocrity in the workforce, and would benefit from a careful re-analysis. I know it's easy to jump to the "microsoft sucks" conclusion, but I'm afraid we will be hearing more of these stories from around the country in the next few months. I'm sure even the "evil" microsoft top executives are heartsick over the human cost (and bad press).
Cuts are to Trim the Fat (Score:5, Funny)
Don't worry! the cuts are just "trimming the fat" on Microsoft, to make it a more "lean" company.
Cuts are expected to be in the following "unncecessary" departments:
- VISTA Marketing
- Quality Assurance
- Software Testing
- Maintenance Programming
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You forgot hardware testing. Those guys have not seen any action for years.
More stock drops? (Score:4, Interesting)
These are the kind of crappy rumors (like Steve Jobs is sick, OH NOEZ!) that cause stock to drop, and then Microsoft really will have to cut some jobs.
H1B issue will be key (Score:4, Interesting)
In theory they can't lay off a ton of people in the US without pushing the H1B's out the door first - but it's unlikely they'll want to lose a bunch of their most cost effective workers. Be interesting to see what happens, they could have layoffs without layoffs (say it's all performance based), or the US could escape most of the cuts while the rest of the world gets layoffs. Suspect we'll see soon.
Re:H1B issue will be key (Score:4, Informative)
"or the US could escape most of the cuts while the rest of the world gets layoffs"
If you read TFA, it implies that the cuts are expected to be heaviest overseas.
Bailout (Score:5, Funny)
Companies do this kind of thing all the time... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But, but, this is happening in a recession. Don't you know that?!? Aren't you filled with dread for the economy? This can only mean the economy is in a depression, the company is going to fail, and the world will end. Never mind that this company lays off people every year or two. This is obviously a serious issue!!! Panic, damn you, PANIC!!!! /sarcasm
Re:Companies do this kind of thing all the time... (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably because, for Microsoft, this doesn't happen all the time. I can't remember the last time Microsoft laid off 15, 10, or even 5 percent of their workforce.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get why this is news?
Probably because this is the first time as far as anyone can remember that Microsoft has had to do anything like this, indicating that they're not doing so hot in the financial department.
percentage who are contract workers these days? (Score:2)
More FOSS developers (Score:3, Insightful)
So what are these people going to do? And how are they going to get jobs. Right away the market will be saturated and they will be sitting around.
Short term, work on free and open source software (FOSS) from home for free. This keeps their hands warm and gets their skills up to the new market.
Long term get employed to implement FOSS solutions for companies looking to avoid Microsoft costs.
Well that is what I see the better ones doing.
Re:More FOSS developers (Score:4, Interesting)
If i had a guess, I'd think a lot of the people getting laid off will not be the core software engineers... Part of tech support, part in their offshore offices (since they had stated it had caused them more than a little bit of problem in the past), and the people that everyone wants fired but never were (there's always a lot of those, in any team).
With a sub 20% number of layoffs, very, very few people with the actual talent and drive to work on FOSS would be part of the job cut...unless they do things such as close an office and fire everyone in, regardless of importance.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Vista Adoption (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft makes money on their OS and Office, everything else is break-even or a loss. Vista adoption rates by businesses have been dismal before the recession hit. They'll be a lot worse now. Microsoft is clearly expecting a bit earnings hit.
A portfolio full of billions in losses annually (Score:3, Interesting)
I am surprised that Microsoft is needing to reduce its workforce by so much but if WinPC shipments are down then they have to cut or it'll really show up on the books.
As far the statement of surprise at this move goes( "Despite its portfolio diversity" ), that portfolio is weighted heavily with financial losses and has been for over a decade. Something in the range of 80-90% of their profits come from 2 or 3 products( Microsoft Windows desktop and server, Microsoft Office ).
Now if the WinPC shipments numbers don't show a large decline, we can figure that a whole lot of businesses are not signing up for expensive bundled contracts and either are stagnating their IT infrastructure or are going elsewhere.
Then again, when was the last big financial shuffle at Microsoft? They used to do this every three years or so and it was a nice way to hide loss patterns and move some of those billions in profits around. I remember one shuffle left the Windows CE/Mobile division and MSN division with enough to show a onetime profit and was around the time they cut the R&D budget from $6.3 billion to around $3.1 billion. The press was all over the R&D cuts but totally missed how a lot of money got shuffled around.
This would be a good way to kill two birds with one stone. Re-org and reduce head counts in a slowing economy and pressure from open source around the world. IMO.
LoB
Re:Predicted a while ago (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is still massively profitable. This downsizing will only make them more profitable. Microsoft may not be the #1 player in 20 or even 10 years, but this event has little to do with that.