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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.
Once upon a time, a company had loyalty to it's people, and the worker's were expected to have some loyalty to the company. If the company had a rough quarter or a poor year, people pulled together and worked harder. A company USED to do layoffs to avoid going bankrupt. Workers viewed each other as extended family members - it was common for workers to get together at each other's homes on weekends and holidays. Families got to know each other, work was done in a 'team' enviroment; and if you pulled your weight and did your job - you could expect to retire with the company you worked for. 20 years of service was celebrated, opportunties for promotion were biased such that someone who had shown loyalty to the company had first dibs, over someone coming in from the outside.
Today, despite record profits, companies close plants and terminate people - so the few executives can reap huge bonus's. Getting laid off by a plant closing, business downturn, or poor managment decisions punishes employees who were powerless to avoid the mistake - but end up taking full responsibility in that they have to sell their homes, and re-locate to find work elsewhere. With the cost of housing - this means that the 401K money must be robbed today, so they can continue to make mortgage payments while they try to sell their home, and have money to bring to closing when their home sells for less than what they paid for it.
I've been there, I've had my retirment almost depleted because companies transferred jobs to India, a plant closing, terminating a project I was involved with, a company purchased and moved overseas, and a company that failed due to poor managment. Now after 20 years, I finally have solid career.
When did all this change? Why did this change? It certainly hasn't been for the better - for the USA used to lead the world in production, in technology and development. People used to matter, now each of us is just a cog in the company machine. We are all expendable, and will be dropped on a whim. I wonder why.
Jack Welch, when he took over GE started the whole 10% of your under-achiever hog-wash.
Now, if you have poor achievers in your company, who have been there for decades - as GE had - perhaps a 1 time 'cleansing' is necessary. But, if you are doing your interviewing competently, and are teaching and mentoring your new hires - to continuously 'fire' 10% of the workforce is not only stupid, it's counter productive.
Consider, how long does it take a person to learn his job function and all the nuances that take it from being merely fulfilled, but where he can then magnify it? Given the proper motivation, a below average performer can become a top-performer. If a person knows what's expected, is shown how to do this, and is encouraged - he will either refuse to conform (termination case) or he will improve. I've seen this, I've done this and it works.
Other employees see this, and morale improves. People do not want to leave that group/company. Motorola USED to be like this. When Samsung came into town, they had to offer 20%+ salary bumps to attract Motorola employees to leave. Why? Because the people at Motorola knew that they were 'safe', that they had a career and a future with the company. Then Hector Ruiz came along and killed Motorola, before moving on to AMD and killing them.
I do not subscribe to the 10% cull; because you very quickly come to the point that you are cutting good people, and replacing them with good people who you will fire in a year or so. This creates a hostile work environment (why should I welcome you, help you or agree to work with you - if I'm competing against you to keep my job?), slows projects down (people shift departments constantly, at the slightest rumor of a reduction in headcount in a particular division), and you spend a great deal of your time where 90% of your employees are waiting for 10% of the team to come up to speed with their job requirements.
Show me a company that embraces the 10% cull, and I'll show you a company that is on the way down the tubes. Companies that terminate the poor performers, not due to some obscure quota, but do to performance - tend to retain their employees for the long haul. IBM used to be famous for this, and they rose to world domination. Motorola used to embrace this, and they used to have a world-class semiconductor market, communications division, automotive parts, space, micro-controllers and cell phone groups. The people make a company great - not the managment. Management has never made a company great, but poor managment has certainly killed more than a few.
Well psychology is a real experimental science. Economics isn't. That is why economics is strongly affected by politics. Do you ever hear of liberal and conservative chemists? Or even psychologists? Furthermore, economics doesn't want to acknowledge the findings of psychology, so it is just plain wrong on many things. Economics is a social science like sociology. It is a discipline that attempts to be reasonable, but is ultimately not guided by the discipline of experimental results or even the need to only propose testable ideas. There is a lot of sophisticated math in economics, but without experiments that is just a rich toolbox to make up any story you want about anything.
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> IBM is at a 20 year high for employment; the highest since it dropped 150k workers in the 90's.
Yes, but where? We've done a huge amount of hiring in India, Argentina, and Brazil, and have been laying off US employees left and right.
We are absolutely cut to the bone in the US, and have been mildly dysfunctional for the last couple years as a result. Every time you try to get anything done, people have either been laid off or reorg'ed to death, and no one knows who to talk to anymore. Last year I was reorg'ed four times, and I can't even tell you who I report to beyond my first-line manager (seriously - I don't know off-hand).
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Yeah right. Im sure thats true a certain percentage of the time but the scenario "why pay someone 80k when we can get a slave for 24k" plays itself out too.
The problem with H1-Bs is that both of you are right. You're giving two extreme sides of a continuous spectrum of arguments. Increasing supply of labor with constant demand will lower equilibrium price, so yes you can get wage slaves. Likewise, decreasing supply will raise price, so you'll get Americans demanding $10/hr to tend fields.
Neither of these scenarios are wrong, it's a comparatively simple market situation. But the government is going to have to clarify what it means by "no available person" to fill a job. At what price? It's the law that's out of touch with economics.
Personally I will never hire an ex-Microsoftie; they don't have morals or ethics that are worth a damn, or they wouldn't have worked there in the first place.
I'm not willing to categorically eliminate tens of thousands of people like that. I've worked in enough organizations to realize that no matter how fucked up a company may be, any individual working there can still be competent.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I suggest you study advanced economics more critically. Having a PhD in economics from a top-tier program, yes I agree that armchair economists are much different from real academic economists. However, I also think there is a tendency for many economists to place too much reliance on ornate mathematical and statistical models and not enough time spent stepping away from the computer, looking out the window, and asking whether or not those models are realistic. Note that looking out the window and seeing what people are actually doing is NOT the same thing as running 10,000 regressions to try and prove your model is correct. Common sense has no substitute.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Personally I will neverhire an ex-Microsoftie; they don't have morals or ethics that are worth a damn, or they wouldn't have worked there in the first place.
s'okay. Fortunately for the world, with an attitude like that, chances are high that you'll never be in a position to make that kind of decision.