Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Rumored To Lay Off Thousands Worldwide
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."
Microsoft saw that 10% of their employees were hanging around on /. all day hoping for a first post.
What's a shame? 15,000 Microsoft employees losing their jobs.
What's a crying shame? 75,000 continuing to work for Microsoft.
All of them are from the Zune department
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
It makes one wonder if they'll ask congress for a bailout to save all those jobs...
There are lots of smart people who deserve jobs at Microsoft.
Why, what did they do wrong?
Blank until
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.
"layoffs are being used as a way of culling the bottom 10 or 20% of performers"
Ballmer should be nervous.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
or, if you have bought enough votes, demand it bail you out when you fail
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...
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?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
I'd call him a great performer. Well, circus performer. Doesn't that count?
Bingo! Give the man a cigar! The economy makes a GREAT excuse to fire those that are not producing enough or cost too much without catching a lot of flack from the press or even giving the sacked a big hassle, since they can just say "hey the economy is bad." to any new prospective employer. I am sure that MSFT has a lot of dead weight and unprofitable areas that could use pruning and frankly they are being smart by doing it now.
Now if they only fire the guy that keeps saying "We can be as cool as Apple! No really we can! Quit laughing at me!" and go back to making nice boring low resource business operating systems instead of the multimedia nightmare that was Vista and looks like Win7 is shaping up to be(no quicklaunch? A freaking dock where everything is all jumbled together? WTF?) then I might actually buy Win7 instead of hanging onto my XP Pro like a starving man in a plane crash hanging onto the fat girl. Let us just hope the Apple wannabes get a nice pretty pink slip from MSFT.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
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.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Yo, you tell him! I hate it when peeps can't spell for jack!
im psting frm my celly u nsnstve cld
"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?
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.
-- Posted from my parent's basement
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.
Please don't use "umm" or "err" or "erm".
I'll handle translating this one:
I'm pasting farm my celly up unison steve cloud.
Some peeps just don't get English.
So, that is how you finally got promoted? ;)
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
What office are you in? Stop by and say hi some time, maybe we can do lunch.
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