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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.
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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?
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 ;(
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.