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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.
I don't know about Intel or Microsoft, but IBM is at a 20 year high for employment; the highest since it dropped 150k workers in the 90's.
Even though they managed to pull some solid growth last year, they're on the heavy side for a significant down turn. For a company that deals in services and hardware, it'd be shortsighted not to tighten up a bit.
Still, no fun. I sympathize with the workers over there. (Before anyone starts calling me heartless; I work for a newspaper company. My department has lost almost 70% of it's staff in the last 3 years. )
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Here is a link to the entire memo Steve sent to employees regarding the layoffs.
No, it's not my blog nor am I affiliated in any way with the site.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Go to the Microsoft Careers home page and search for job openings - there are six new openings for TODAY alone - 853 openings altogether. Wonder how many of those will eventually be closed?
That's the problem right there. Business ALWAYS over-extends itself. In good times, they open tons of new factories and rather than hire some Americans who are ought of work, these businesses insist upon brining-in foreign labor.
Then they turn-around and lay them all off, and what's left are foreigners living off the dole. I think when the economy is booming, the government should say, "No imported workers. Hire some of the unemployed Americans and get them off the government's payroll."
ASIDE:
I was recently laid-off. I had a phone interview for a temporary job, and now they want to interview me in person which is an unusual move for a temp job. The catch: I have to drive 14 hours from PA to NH without any kind of reimbursement, and frankly it's unlikely I'll get the job anyway. Would you be willing to go to an interview w/o reimbursement, for a temporary 6-9 month job?
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
All 3 are hiring out of the states and EU. It is called this is a mass move of jobs out of the states.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
15% layoff - or in that figure. We've known about it for months, coming, too. Today is the "notification day" for many Sun employees, too ;(
More perspective: Intel says that those jobs are "affected", not "terminated" or "cut".
Intel is actively trying to make sure those people aren't cut, but rather just moved to another facility. They're just temporarily consolidating their labor into fewer plants, since the need for production has been scaled back.
Disclaimer: I work for Intel, but I don't have any more information about this than the general public does. The only difference is that I knew about this last week, before it was made public.
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Huh? I thought it was the unregulated American financial sector that caused this world-scale shitstorm. Way to shift blame.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
Not quite.
Maine is known, among other things, for the blueberry crop. This used to be picked mostly by Micmac Indians from Maine and Canada, and high-schoolers (like me) and other locals that would do what is by any measure back-breaking work for pretty good pay. I made $600 a week for a month in 1970-1972. Not bad for a student. The majority of the crop was picked that way through the 80's.
Today, maybe a fifth is picked by hand, and most of that by Hispanic migrants. The Micamcs mostly pick on an Indian reservation farm.
The reality is that the major producers prefer migrant workers from away for several reasons. The one I hear the most is 'lower pay'. Just the way it is.
I hear a complaint sometimes that migrants, illegals, etc. take jobs Americans won't do. Mostly, I suspect this is because we 'Americans' don't want to do some jobs for the pay some employers want to pay. Not the same thing as 'not wanting' a job. How did toilets get cleaned before we had a serious illegal immigrant problem?
But the H1-B problem is a particularly nasty slap in the face. There are so many stories of qualified citizens not able to find work in fields where H1-B workers were being recruited that I'm not going to list any. Not hard to find.
I work for a company that uses both H1-B and other immigrants liberally for many sorts of IT work. Many of us are at a loss to explain how they can claim there are no US citizens available for the wor, the skill set is not unique, and neither is the workload.
One clever way around that they use is to contract with an offshore firm. No justification needed. the biggest number of these offshore workers are part of, you guessed it - IBM.
We'll be dealing with this soon enough, won't we?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
what's left are foreigners living off the dole.
I'm on H1b. If I lose my job, I have to either find another job or be out of the country in a week.
You're right, they're only the worlds third largest company, after Exxon Mobil and Petrochina, and second in the BrandZ (brand recognition) ranking to Google. Oh wait...
From Wikipedia, "GE, which was a conglomerate long before the term was coined, is arguably the most successful organization of this type."
Welch left GE in 2001, when they were doing significantly better than they are even today.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill