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Massive Job Cuts Are Reportedly Coming For Microsoft Employees
mrspoonsi (2955715) writes with news that Microsoft is reportedly planning a major staff reduction that would top Steve Ballmer's record 5,800-head layoff in 2009. From the article: The reductions — which may be unveiled as soon as this week — will probably be in areas such as Nokia and divisions of Microsoft that overlap with that business, as well as marketing and engineering, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans aren’t public.
And yet, they are still making gobs of money. In fact, they are more profitable than ever. Moves like this don't really help anything.. not even the bottom line, since the massive cuts crush morale and limit the ability of the company to innovate to keep ahead of the competition.
Not surprising at all. When a company buys another company, there's going to be a lot of jobs that are duplicated with the efforts of the buyer. Sure, there's an increased workload but nowhere near enough to justify continuing to pay people when you already have people able to do the job. And, when you have two people able to do one job, one of whom works for you and one of whom works for that other company that you just bought, the vast majority of time it's the outside who is let go. Sad reality of consolidation of companies but it isn't surprising at all.
In other words, if your company is ever bought out, you need to ask yourself if there's already someone at the buyer who's able to do your job. If the answer is "yes", you need to start polishing off your resume and getting in touch with head hunters because there's a high likelihood of you being out of work soon.
How much you wanna bet that they continue to ask for H1B candidates after the next round of layoffs?
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To be honest, this is Nokia's own doing. Hiring MS drone to take down the enterprise was pretty stupid. It was the least expensive option they had. It would have been better to pick one of the three lanes they had, and stuck with it. They went a fifth lane when that wasn't really a good option (fourth lane being Android). Even Microsoft is realizing that Windows Mobile / Phone / Whatever is not going to win in the market.
The result is typical short sighted vision of CxOs. But, I bet it looked good on paper, and instead of listening to the asshole who is usually right, they listened to the nice guy who lies.
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IBM did this repeatedly, and is still doing it, as large corporations regularly have to sift their work force and reset priorities, UNLESS they are consistently evaluating their strategies, have truly strategic planning that looks beyond the horizon, and work from a position of true knowledge of their business and performance. Microsoft is regularly accused of failed strategy and poor performance. And they can certainly be accused of being too big to be well managed, especially in the eyes of the minions who live with the decisions.
In the early '90s, when IBM nearly burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp, Lou Gerstner came in as a new CEO, and also oversaw massive layoffs, which helped it get back on track. However, a lot of people he let go were top executives, who were "yes men" to the old CEO, John Akers.
It would do Microsoft a world of good if it got rid of their Ballmer retinue who are still holding key positions in Microsoft. Just letting go a bunch of minions is not going to cut at the root of the problems at Microsoft.
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