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Microsoft Lays Off 34 Japanese Xbox Employees
Thanks to GameSpot for their article discussing the layoff of 34 Microsoft employees from its Japanese Xbox division. This accounts for just 17 percent of their Xbox workforce in Japan, but apparently the March 20th layoffs, documented in Nikkei BizTech, "..caused a commotion among the workers because of differences in business practices between Japan and the United States." The harsh 'escorted from premises' style of layoffs is not so common in Japan, according to the article, and so "..according to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals." Needless to say, the layoffs, according to division head Par Singh, were because "sales of the Xbox in Japan had been extremely disappointing."
why is Xbox so unpopular in Japan? Is it cultural superiority?
I'm not sure how layoffs should be done but I know the way most American companies do it today isn't the solution. It does treat the ex-employees as if they were criminals. In my experience the ex-employees are escorted, in front of coworkers, to a small office. Given the news and any severence then given a swift kick out the door. I've even been in companies where they didn't let the employee pack their cube. Rather someone boxed it for them and shipped it...
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
The reason employers do this "kick them out quick" approach is not out of spite but, rather, to protect themselves from employees who might try to exact some revenge on their way out. A just-fired employee might try to sabotage the computer system (particulary if file permissions are not set correctly). There's a whole bunch of things that a disgruntled employee can do to hurt his former employer. Giving them access to any work equipment or materials just after they got laid off or fired is very unwise.
GMD
watch this
The employees were then told to check their e-mail inboxes
What a shitty and gutless way to fire someone. I think firing someone any other way than face to face whould be illegal.
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Microsoft forces layoffs on Xbox division in Japan
Microsoft cuts 17 percent of the workforce at the Japan branch.
According to a new report in Nikkei BizTech, Microsoft has laid off 34 employees in the Xbox division of its Japanese offices. The layoffs apparently caused a commotion among the workers because of differences in business practices between Japan and the United States.
According to the article, the Xbox division staff in Japan, which consists of approximately 200 employees, was called to a meeting at the company's Tokyo office on March 20. The staff was then told by its new division head, Par Singh, that the sales of the Xbox in Japan had been extremely disappointing, and that the company will be forcing early retirement on a number of its workers.
The employees were then told to check their e-mail inboxes, in which 34 of the workers received a notice to pack their belongings and go to the conference room. The passageway to the conference room had security guards protecting all the elevators and emergency exits. The terminated employees could use the restroom only if they were accompanied by one of the retained employees. According to one of the employees who was cut, if felt as though they were treated like criminals.
Upon reaching the conference room, the terminated employees were told to wait for their turn to meet with their supervisor and the human resources manager. When their turn came, the terminated employees were told that they were being laid off because their positions had been eliminated.
While Japanese companies no longer hire employees for life, it is still customary to retain employees as long as they are working hard and the company has the financial resources to support them. The employees naturally reacted badly to the abrupt layoff by Microsoft. But due to the forceful nature of the company's security measures, all 34 terminated employees had no choice but to accept their premium severance pay and leave the company.
The Xbox division in Japan has undergone a number of management changes since January, when division head Hirohisa Oura was transferred to Microsoft's headquarters in the US. R&D division head Toshiyuki Miyata--recruited from Sony Computer Entertainment--was also dismissed from his position. The movement toward layoffs and stricter controls of the Xbox division by the US headquarters seems to be connected to the recent declines in Microsoft Japan's business performance. Microsoft Japan will be operating under former vice president Michael Rawding starting in July, which will be the first time since the division was founded in 1986 that a non-Japanese president will be taking the seat.
I'm really happy that the XBox fails the japanese market. This makes a video game console monopoly for M$ most unlikely. --- And that is good news in the meaning of quality, only a healthy competition could give.
Thank you!
What's the Japanese way of laying off someone?
I know this feeling. When I was much younger, I had a lot of company loyalty and was convinced that if I worked hard, I would be treated right. I watched layoff after layoff at two companies before i finally got caught up in one, and it was like a punch in the gut.
That was a giant wake-up call to look out for #1, because if you don't, all you'll get is #2.
I was escorted from the premises after having performed what I thought a rather amicable resignation. Quite simply I was moving from the area and the company unfortunately had no offices where I was moving to.
The way the company handled it though came across as if they trusted me about as much as they trusted a potential disgruntled employee. It comes across as a lack of respect for the person leaving and their level of responsibility. The best part of it was the companies core values and beliefs touted the fact that they believed firmly in giving individuals respect and that individuals treated with respect acted accordingly. But their treatment of those is another story.
To strive, to seek, but not to yield
The way the company handled it though came across as if they trusted me about as much as they trusted a potential disgruntled employee. It comes across as a lack of respect for the person leaving and their level of responsibility.
Yes, I understand that it's not "nice" or "fair" but companies don't really care about those things. They are playing it safe by assuming you're as bad as everyone else. Besides, would it really be any "nicer" for the company to escort certain employees out and let others take their time?
The best part of it was the companies core values and beliefs touted the fact that they believed firmly in giving individuals respect and that individuals treated with respect acted accordingly. But their treatment of those is another story.
You seem to already understand that their stated core values were really just words on a page to them. Also, you should double check that their stated core values really say "treating individuals with respect" and not "treating employees with respect". Since you just severed your relationship with them -- amicable or not -- I'm not sure why I see that they should still be held to those core values with regards to a now-former employee.
I'm not trolling or flaming you. I do understand the points you're making. I'm just saying that you have to look at this whole situation from the company's point of view. You remember how the LAPD told O.J. "Sure, you can turn yourself in down at the station when it's convienent, Juice. We don't want this to be any more embarrasing for you than it already is." Well, we know how well that approach went. Even if you seem like a nice guy, no manager is going to risk that one-in-a-million chance that you might go bonkers on your way out. That's the way PHB think. Remember, it's called "Human resources" and not "personel" for a reason.
GMD
watch this
...can be seen at IGN's monthly article "Gaming Life In Japan". Every month they release hardware and software sales for what are considered the major gaming consoles in Japan. Take a look at what was presented in June's article. The numbers are quite disturbing for Microsoft, though I'm sure that disappoints all the Open Source fans out there. ;)
Hardware Sales in Japan:
PS2: 44,300 (1,397,700)
Game Boy Advance SP: 31,800 (1,116,900 this year)
Game Boy Advance: 6,900 (890,800)
GameCube: 1,900 (284,800)
PSOne: 910 (42,800)
Xbox: 770 (58,00)
Swan Crystal: 320 (23,200)
I don't know which is funnier:
The fact that the PSOne outsold the Xbox during May, or the fact that this isn't the first time it has happened.
Here's a link to the actual article, but to give a fair warning, you have to be an IGN Insider to read it.
The reason employers do this "kick them out quick" approach is not out of spite but, rather, to protect themselves from employees who might try to exact some revenge on their way out.
Really, if there is worry that ex-employees will try to sabotage things, shouldn't that be an indication that the company didn't treat them very well in the first place? I guess escorting them out is just a continuation of that...
Anyone who gets fired can be expected to be a little upset... but I think it takes a vested hatred of the company to start sabotaging things.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Microsoft Exec: "Sabotage our system...HA...to do that they'd have to exploit some security flaw in our softwa....oh, wait.
> "..according to one of the employees who was cut, it felt as though they were treated like criminals."
It feels like that here in the US as well. It's really a shame. The only thing you can do is take preventative maintenance. For every file you keep at work that you want to keep after you're fired, burn it to disk, or email it home, or log in remotely and copy it, keeping as up-to-date as your needs call for. It's also not a bad idea at work to heavily encrypt things like your resume, locally stored personal email, and anything else personal you might have. Sure they can fire you and delete it, but they can't look at it. Having something at home on permanent loan, like a company laptop (even better, with sensitive data on it) also helps for when you want your USB drive, 8 port hub, speakers, flash card reader, and optical mouse back.
The times when you are least likely ever to get fired are the times to arrange this sort of minor parachute, not the day after they announce layoffs.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I disagree. Implementing this kind of draconian solution to a fear of reprisal just invites the employee to create security holes he can later use to extract revenge.
.com I worked at even had a ritual of employees who thought their jobs were on the line madly trying to copy sensitive documents onto CDâ(TM)s that they then carried off-site.
A large
A better way to do things is to work with IT and have access to systems turned off when the employee is terminated. That way the employee can still recover personal data and his effects without the potential to damage production machines.
One place I worked at actually removed the cat 5 cable from workstations of terminated employees to solve this problem in a rather low-tech fashion.
So lock their network access. There's a huge difference between locking someone out of the network and affording them a day to go say their goodbyes to coworkers and gather up their personal belongings and maybe have a last lunch at the company cafeteria... and just kicking them out like a caught shoplifter.
After putting in many years at a company, the least I deserve is notice ahead of my firing and the courtesy of allowing me time to deal with things like packing and such before leaving. If you're a temp employee, that's a little different and I can understand not being quite as patient/giving.
Think of it in this way. If I go out and get a new job and don't give my current employer two weeks notice, he'll probably use that against me if I ever use that company on my resume. But if I come back from my lunch break (and exhausted from having worked 48 hours straight) and they can me out of nowhere, it doesn't affect the company one bit, because *I* can't act as a reference to OTHER future employees about the place they're about to work.
Fuck that.
That's why it's important to keep a lot of NDA stuff in your posession on some disks. That way when you get pissed, escorting you out like a theif won't do them a shit of difference.
Man, congrats on being exactly why this happens. It wasn't always like this. So did the company create it, or did society change? Chicken and the egg.
Would you (paid) losers please stop this pathetic whining about the fact that Microsoft receives some (healthy) compatition at last in a non-US country? Is this paid corp. patriotism I smell here? Or are you really waiting for a Video Game monopol that simply sucks?
So naive. All employees are temp employees. You think you are better than someone because of some arbitrary designation? Unless you own it, you are a temp.
Flame ahead: Another post from an example of why they do this, NDA violater man. Thanks for helping create the situation.
Here's to hoping you get caught! Some people still work there. Does it make you feel better possibly damaging their livelyhood by disseminating sensitive information? Grow up.
I don't know exactly what you're purporting with all this, but if I follow you correctly, you're the reason we have such lame policies as the one discussed above.
Are you saying your employers don't give back property which is yours? Are you saying that to get it back, you need to bribe them with property you stole from them? Are you saying you regularly keep personal stuff on their computers? Isn't that a little silly, to be keeping email and your resume there on the hard drive? Maybe once in awhile, you might have your resume there for some odd reason, but that just sounds stupid if you leave it there all the time.
Exactly what kind of sketchy companies have you worked for in the past?
We need to release a open source console!!!
GNXB/Tuxbox
Very true, especially the last three sentences.
Perhaps the lack of interest is the lack of Japanes only titles for the XBox. The PS2 has a constant stream of Japanese only titles being released. As bizare as I find some of those games they obviously have a market because they keep putting them out. The Xbox may not be properly targeting their audience.
I think you're absolutely right about this. Having been laid off before myself, I can attest to the unfriendliness of it all. It's practically a feeling of betrayal in some aspects because sometimes the people laying you off were who you would consider "friends", if only at work.
When I watched my entire development team dissolve before my very eyes, someone swiped the source code, among other things. That isn't the only thing, either. But still, it's in a company's best interest to get people off-site quickly.
As an aside, I feel really sympathetic to all employees of Xbox Japan. They are basically trying to sell ice to Eskimos (the Xbox is *that* unsuited to the Japanese market), and it's not their fault they can't. It's the boneheads at Redmond designed the stupid thing, and yet these guys are taking the fall for it. How maddening that must be.
A lot is made about the console's size, but if the next PlayStation is the size of an Xbox, I guarantee that it will still be bought in droves. Not to mention the fact that the Xbox is not significantly larger than the PS2. It's heavy as a brick, but it's only an extra half-inch taller, about 3/4" wider, and maybe a full inch deeper. Larger, to be sure, but it's ridiculous to think that the rather modest difference in size means anything at all. (Now, before you check my sig and complain about hypocricy, the thing about the Xbox is that it's heavy as a brick. Which really means nothing when it's sitting on a shelf, but makes for a good thrown weapon nonetheless).
The Xbox does nothing to cater to the Japanese market. It caters to the US market, which is a prime reason why it outpaces Nintendo's offering. Sony is too big for anyone to take on in their first shot, but remember, Nintendo once was too.
Lame policies are due to exiting employees who have hurt companies. All I'm talking about is getting out the door with your belongings, whether they be documents, files, hardware or a favorite mug. If you work some place a long time, you make a home there. I just think it's prudent to watch your back, and even the playing ground as much as possible. Nowhere did I advocate harming a company.
I would never bribe, again it's just more even footing. They are less likely to scoff in your general direction or treat you like a trespasser if they also want something from you. I only know of other peoples' layoff and exit problems, I've been lucky myself, so far.
For every honorable layoff story, there must be at least a hundred sketchy ones.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
Are you saying your employers don't give back property which is yours? Are you saying that to get it back, you need to bribe them with property you stole from them? Are you saying you regularly keep personal stuff on their computers? Isn't that a little silly, to be keeping email and your resume there on the hard drive? Maybe once in awhile, you might have your resume there for some odd reason, but that just sounds stupid if you leave it there all the time.
The company I work for generally handles lay-offs by taking your badge and access card (which are their property anyway) and escorting you from the building with a quick stop-by at your cube/desk to pick up small personal belongings. Anything large will be packed and sent to you, and you can't log back into the computer and/or network, or take any disks/CDs. They also have a tendency, based on the employee's record with the company, to give you paid leave if you give them 2 weeks notice (in other words, you go home immediately), unless you're working on something that you intend to finish before you leave, which the company wants finished in that time.
As for the other things: I've had my employer imply that I was attempting to steal company equipment on a few occasions when I decided to take home parts that I had brought in for testing purposes (which they had known I was bringing in for those purposes when I did it), and I wouldn't be surprised if they tried to claim ownership of my keyboard and mouse if/when I leave, despite the fact that they would not be able to produce any record of having purchased or reimbursed me for them, and not having a single keyboard or mouse in the building that is remotely similar. On the other hand, I'm somewhat more confident that they would return my books and coffee mugs to me, though they might just move them to the 'library' in the office.
As for personal stuff on the computers, there's not really much the company can do about that here. They allow a certain amount of it, and unless it was the reason for the layoff in the first place, they don't take the time to look at the contents of your computer once you're gone anyway (unless there's something they think is on there that they need to find, such as data related to what you were working on). They also require us to update our resume periodically (to be submitted to various customers in order to win a contract), so it's quite normal for everyone in the office to have their resume on their own computer.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
I have no doubt that there are plenty of shifty employers that partake in such lame acts, but you have to admit that there are plenty of employees who have brought that unto themselves as well.
As for resumes and such, if it's in the interest of the company, of course you should have it on your computer. The poster was clearly indicating that he was leaning towards the more personal of things; personal emails, resumes that had nothing to do with current employment, and private documents. Again, fine to have laying around once in awhile (it's fairly inevitable if you spend most of your day in one particular spot), but to constantly have it moving in and out?
I run a small production company and I make it a point to tell my employees that they are free to do personal business as (including emails, phone calls, and the like) as long as it doesn't overwhelmingly interfere with matters at hand; I don't want them to feel like they're in prison, and I don't want them staring at the clock, waiting for lunch breaks, other breaks, or the end of the day to get to things. But I also point out that their workstations aren't personal repositories and/or filing cabinets, because I don't need (or want) to know their personal business, and they also shouldn't be tying up too much company time.
Balance goes a long way in this situation, and it seems like most of the posters are leaning too far to either side.
As for resumes and such, if it's in the interest of the company, of course you should have it on your computer. The poster was clearly indicating that he was leaning towards the more personal of things; personal emails, resumes that had nothing to do with current employment, and private documents. Again, fine to have laying around once in awhile (it's fairly inevitable if you spend most of your day in one particular spot), but to constantly have it moving in and out?
The way I see it, if you don't want your company to know you have it, you shouldn't put it on the company's computers. Personal email is legally tracked by most companies large enough to afford to do so if you put it on their computer and/or ethernet lines, especially if it's coming to a company email address (in which case it's going through their email servers which almost always are reading your email). The company I work for also monitors most employees' computer usage through programs that would put most 'spyware' to shame, collecting information about what applications are used for how long, with the ability to track much more if they feel the need to monitor a particular person more closely, and all internet traffic is monitored at the individual sites as well as at various corporate offices (almost all internet access is routed through corporate offices rather than being direct from any particular site).
At any point in time the company can easily copy anything from my hard drive or delete it completely, and can install anything on my computer. Of course, most of the people here don't use their computer as their primary tool for daily work, but rather for communication and paperwork.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
But I think they lead you to a room with a large sword and a door out of the building, and leave for about 30 minutes, and expect you to be gone when the get back (one way or the other). =)
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Open Source Sysadmin
.... was when the company escorted out of the building a guy that had invested 10 years of his life who used to make emphasis on loyality to the company. For the way he was treated you may have believed he was just remmanded in custody by the police.
I am a sane person and would never do anything unprofessional, but when you go hurting people feelings like that, sooner or later somebody will want to be nasty, and that somebody would not be necessarily the same person that was treated like dirt.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.