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Layoffs at Microsoft, Intel, and IBM
Normally I try to avoid posting straight business news, but I think that these 3 stories combine to something meaningful.
Muleguy noted Microsoft is laying off 5,000,
Mspangler reports that
Intel is cutting 5-6k, while
nonyabidness afraid4myjob submitted that IBM Layoffs have begun with no number, but estimates as high as 16,000.
There's 5,000 new empty chairs to fling around in Redmond!
"Skill shows through where genius wears thin." -Wittgenstein || Religion: uniting aviation and architecture.
SKID ROW, Redmond, Friday - Microsoft Corporation has enacted swingeing layoffs in mid-January after the failure of its stock buyback program, and has called for a government bailout in the face of the credit crunch.
"Vastly popular operating systems like Vista just aren't selling," said marketing marketer emeritus Bill Gates, "and it's all because people aren't confident to spend their money. In fact, they didn't start buying it in 2007 because they were expecting this even then. A subsidy to buy good, honest American computer operating systems is essential to the health of the economy, or my part of it."
Should the Big One of American virtual office supplies fail, economists predict that it could free up millions of dollars in business spending and provide a devastating boost to an economy reeling from the impact of the credit crunch.
Hiring in most Microsoft divisions has frozen in the last six months and 30GB Zunes are already on suicide watch. "The workload's impossible to keep up with," said blog technical evangelist Gary M. Stewart. "I've even been answering Slashdot comments on Boycott Novell or Groklaw. It's impossible to keep track of! Anyway, you're just another Twitter sockpuppet. Or Mini-Microsoft. Admit it."
Additional bailouts have been hooked on the bill as riders for HD-DVD, eight-track cartridges, 78rpm gramophones and Babbage analytical engine gear manufacturers.
Senators have stated they will only bail the company out with a change in top management. "What the shit," said Linus Torvalds as his draft notice arrived.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
The only way to fix this mess is with more H1-B visa's!!!
20th century Marxism is not progress...
I work for a newspaper company. My department has lost almost 70% of it's staff in the last 3 years.
Well, with apostrophe errors like that, it's no surprise to me!
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
I know somebody who works at IBM. They work on a project that supports HR department's requirements when they are doing big layoffs.
In a kafkaesque sort of way, they have job security just so long as things suck and there are additional layoffs coming down the pipeline.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I will concur that our tax system is severely broken. American workers are the most productive in the world, and if we had a rational tax system (like, corporate tax rates at least as low as Europe), that would remove most of the incentive for offshore production.
65,000 H1-Bs for IT workers means 65,000 domestic IT workers without a job
It's not that simple. A lot of those visas do in fact go to workers for jobs that an employer can't fill locally. It's like claiming that if we forced all the Mexicans to go home, that Americans would take the fruit-picking jobs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That's because Hoover sucks
Ah, I love the smell of Capitalism in the morning!
Maybe they just thought you were an asshole.
American workers are the most productive in the world
Erm... Citation Needed?
selling them for $5. Materials cost me $1 and labor costs me $4 per widget, so I make about a dollar profit.
No, you're going out of business because you cant count. :)
I am a free slashdotter. I will not be modded, blogged, DRM'd, patented, podcasted or RFID'd. My life is my own.
One other advantage of the 10% cut pioneered by GE - fear. Fear will keep the local employees in line. Fear of this battle station.
Do the words "Smoot-Hawley" mean anything to you?
Well Smoot was a cornerback with the Minnesota Vikings for a while, but he's best known for the "love-boat" scandal that made the team a laughing stock.
And Hawley Minnesota is a small town near my hometown that we played high school football against.
So I guess it has something to do with international recognition of Minnesota football?
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - President Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel
If this crisis has done anything for me, it's shown me that regulation is the main problem. If you think we had unregulated capitalism before, you are completely wrong. Banks were highly regulated, the entire financial sector was highly regulated. Government involvement is only making it worse.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
So am I. This is pretty much all a lie.
Everything that is old is new again, including the classic IBM joke:
Two lions escape from the zoo. They decide to split up and meet back in two months to see how the other is doing.
Two months later, one lion is scrawny and beat up, the other is fat and happy. The scrawny beat up lion says, "I went to the park and started eating children. The police and national guard came after me and I haven't stopped running since. How are you so well fed?"
The second lion replies, "Easy! I Just hid outside the IBM office and ate a manager every day. Nobody even noticed!"
blah blah blah
I've done the Dollar Dance before. You end up losing, and losing big.
A Slashdotter who is a stripper. Ugh...I'm feeling a little queasy...
Ding, Dong, the Bush is gone; Which old Bush? The stupid one.
You'll have to be more specific.
The system isn't called "capitalism" because it favors labor, you know.