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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.
Domination in the desktop eroding. Products not making a big splash in the market. Shareholders restless and right after an announcement by the new CEO about agility and business realignment. All of these things add up to reductions in force in areas where they're not profitable. It'll be interesting to see if the cuts will be across the board.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
They have to pay for microsoft licenses for each employee. Of course they are going bust.
I know when Ballmer resigned as CEO, there were members of Microsoft's board calling for them to drop the Xbox division entirely because it wasn't profitable enough. The article mentions that people on the marketing teams for the Xbox are among those being cut, and I'm wondering if this isn't MS taking the first steps to selling off the Xbox division to someone else.
Watch your mouth. Broken microsoft products account for massive amount of I.T. payrolls world wide!
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.
One has to be careful about demoralizing effect of these huge layoffs. Employees you most want to stay will perceive the company as a thinking ship and quit or start slacking off in disgust. A company like Microsoft has enough money in the bank to go through a slower and more transparent process. Offer everyone who is performing well a six month contract and a chance to find a permanent position in the meantime. Above all, explain to remaining employees exactly what is it that they gain for sticking around. Raises? Stock grants? New perks?
Pity that corporations like this always seem to want to lay everyone off at once, though. Why can't they do it gradually?
Sometimes they do, through a process of natural wastage. Trouble is that it means that you put a block on hires, meaning that skills gaps can't be filled. And often your best people leave, whilst the dead wood clings on.
Sometimes they do, through a process of natural wastage.
Yeah well, what about something in between? Fire people in order of how badly they need to be fired, for example. You might just find yourself only firing a subset of those you planned to eliminate before things get back on track.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
How much you wanna bet that they continue to ask for H1B candidates after the next round of layoffs?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Fire people in order of how badly they need to be fired, for example.
Over an extended period of time? That's the worst thing you can do for morale. For sure fire the worst people, but you have to do it quickly and get it over with. Otherwise the rest feel that they have the sword of damocles continually hanging over them.
Because they are publicly traded, and that makes their HR policies extremely stupid.
Layoffs raise the stock price. Most stock holders are short term, so buy low, sell high. Layoffs mean the company is at its low, and with less expenses it may shortly make more, so in the next year you can sell the stock and make money.
Even though you loose a lot of talent, which will go their competitors.
When the company grows again you will then need to hire and retrain new people back. Costing on the average 150% more then if you just kept them employed.
What I hate more then just layoffs, is when they do blind layoffs, not really considering who is good and bad.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Otherwise the rest feel that they have the sword of damocles continually hanging over them.
Only if you keep it a big secret why the people were fired. If they were fired for an actual business reason, that reason should not need to be kept a secret. Meanwhile, not firing those people promptly, and keeping them around to cause problems shows other people that they don't have to work to get paid. Isn't that bad for morale, at least, of your most useful and productive people? I'd think it would be better for them to see the dead weight cut away.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
it's about time that any one useing any h1b's must lay them off first.
I use a linux desktop for all my day-to-day stuff, both at home and at work. The desktop environments are either plane jane or way overdone, but they are adequate for doing work and that's a lot difference than 5 or 6 years ago. Excluding the braindead acceptance of Office file formats for a moment you *can* do your everyday business on linux. It's that Office lever that causes the most issue, and being an admin that isn't really an issue for me, of course.
Yeah well, what about something in between? Fire people in order of how badly they need to be fired,
That's what Cisco does, they do regular bottom 5% cuts where those who are ranked in the bottom 5% on their performance reviews are let go. Groups that are performing well and are full of talented people are sometimes allowed to take their 5% from open positions, but only with the approval of an SVP or above. (at least this was the practice when I was there in the early 2000's)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Actually, many people don't want to work with Linux, given the abysmal choices of desktop environments, each with their own style of suck.
I've one word for you. Metro.
He's suggesting that those are the first ones let go. Which won't happen as those are the most expensive to let go. Its designed that way to help prevent the companies from abusing foreign workers, causing them to move here, only to let them go.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
This is a normal cyclical occurrence in companies such as Microsoft, they'll have skimmed off the kids who can actually write C++ compiled binary and assembler software well, and thrown the rest out. I know from years of experience, you'll think you are in a room full of programmers but in reality there will approximately two brainy kids amongst 200. This is the nature of human intelligence, it's a rare commodity and MOST people are “wannabes.”
Then there's the people who can do it but spend all day on Slahsd... oh shit I'd better get some work done!
This is probably just about MS laying off all the useless middle management from ex-Nokia divisions. Nokia failed because they had practically unrestricrted growth of middle management at the expense of R&D. This diet is necessary. Under the original Finnish management Nokia had no balls to lay off anybody. Finland is unfortunately still largely a 1960s-style socialist market economy where layoffs mean labor union strikes and the emloyer being deemed socially irresponsible.
Isn't Microsoft a big proponent of the H1B program? This smells like them cleaning house of old expensive greybeards.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
... stocks.
They sell stocks. They cater to the shareholder and that's a money-grubbing bunch of folks.
Look at Facebook. They are making decisions that are radical departures from their pre-IPO culture. It has to be.
Facebook, too, sells stocks.
Knowing that explains the business model and strategy of public corporations.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Eroding? Hah.
The number of offices (of any kind) that I've seen running non-Microsoft software on end-user systems can be counted on one hand. Offices -- which is to say, businesses -- are what counts. They don't just get software that comes with the computer. They pay for upgrades ("maintenance") and technical support. They pay for their actual usage, because they agree to be audited for license compliance as part of the deal. I don't remember the last office I saw that WASN'T an academic institution that wasn't running Exchange. Exchange/Outlook make the world go 'round at these places. After 20+ years of effort, it mostly works. Why would companies get rid of it in favor of an inferior solution? Just imagine the hell of migrating all that old email, required for all sorts of compliance, to another solution.
Maybe you don't have Microsoft software running your phone or tablet, but it still powers employee desktops and servers all over the place. All of that is quite high margin. An Intel-based Windows tablet can run an awful lot of software that is STILL unavailable for the other mobile platforms.
And, frankly, while I don't use the Modern UI on my Win8.1 desktop (in favor of Classic Shell), I quite like Windows Phone 8. I like it a lot better than iOS, in fact. I didn't think I would, but a missing smartphone had me using a $70 Windows Phone for a week. (There is no Android phone selling for under $150 that's worth using.) I was hooked.
Once again the employees pay for managements mistakes. Everyone could see, clear as day, what Microsoft was doing wrong. Hell, it's still obvious, and anyone with an ounce of common sense could turn that company around. Instead they just keep firing off moonshot after moonshot hoping to rediscover the next product that will be as successful as Windows was. How many more billions are you going going to waste before you realize people aren't willing to pay for an OS anymore?!?! You still have a dominate position in the desktop OS market, use that to make "Reasonable" profits and be ok with that! If you continue with the belief that anything less than double digit growth is failure you'll be bankrupt before the end of the decade. Ever read that Tortoise and the hair story? Oh... nevermind.
Blame Julie Larson-Green.
She's responsible for this and the awful Office ribbon: perfect examples of graphic design stomping all over useability
Why she's still around: I think this is a case of people being swayed by her personal "charisma" and not facing the fact that Windows 8 "metro" is a gimmicky circus act that literally gets in the way of using Windows. Just terrible!
Pity that corporations like this always seem to want to lay everyone off at once, though. Why can't they do it gradually?
Because doing it gradually is a Really Bad Idea (TM). If you have to let people go you need to be able to tell the staff that is left that their jobs are safe and mean it. Otherwise morale goes in the toilet with people constantly wondering if they are next on the chopping block. I can show you tons of case studies where companies did layoffs a few at a time and the result was a staff that never was sure they'd have a job tomorrow and performance suffered accordingly. People start brushing up their resumes instead of doing the work they were hired for. Nobody likes layoffs but doing them gradually is far worse than doing it all at once.
Only if you keep it a big secret why the people were fired.
Explaining why someone was let go is a great way to get yourself sued if you aren't super careful. Particularly if the person terminated is a member of a protected group like a minority. Terminating employees is (almost) never good for morale but if you have to let a lot of them go then you want to do it all at once, explain in general terms the business reason why but no specifics about a particular person and explain why you will not have to let anyone else go after this. I've seen first hand what happens to companies that try the slow band-aid removal method and the results are not pretty.
If they were fired for an actual business reason, that reason should not need to be kept a secret.
The reasons usually aren't a secret (office gossip might be the only thing that travels faster than light) but unless it is something like "we are getting out of this line of business" you have to be VERY careful about what you say. Any competent HR pro will tell you that terminating employees can be something of a legal minefield if you don't do it right. This includes employees that were terminated For Cause. Some of this caution is unfortunately absurd but it is equally necessary.
Layoffs raise the stock price.
Sometimes, sometimes not. The effect of layoffs on stock price is not causal. You can easily find cases where the stock price drops when layoffs are announced when investors take it as a signal of deteriorating strategic position.
Most stock holders are short term, so buy low, sell high.
Depends on what you consider short term. Average length of share holding is somewhere between 6 months and a year depending on the exchange and considerably less frequent for privately held companies. Bearing in mind that this is heavily skewed by high frequency traders you can make a pretty good argument that the majority of shareholders hold stocks for well over a year which our taxing authorities consider long term.
Because the remaining employees would live in perpetual fear of losing their jobs and would not be able to focus on work. Machiavelli advised a prince to carry on all punishments at once, so they are quickly over, but to reward the people gradually. It's a consequence of human psychology and how we perceive the future.
There is that aspect as well going on, but even if they were making the same salary, it would be more expensive to fire the H1B.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Stack ranking is a scam and has proven to be bad for companies, especially now that employees are wise to it and game the system. The worst part is a company can throw away good employees simply because somebody has to go.
Look out, M$ is firing in the US and EU and hiring in Vietnam and India or anywhere else where employees can be had fora bag o' beans.