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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.
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.
Indeed. I worked in a Fortune 500 company--I arrived in the middle of a new CEO's "three-year turnaround plan," and shortly thereafter he was replaced by another CEO and shortly thereafter the company collapsed with stunning speed.
One of the things that was interesting was seeing the effect of a layoff from inside. It isn't just morale, although since layoffs were done on the "night and fog" principle--they didn't post lists of those laid off--for about two days after each layoff, all worked stopped as everyone else in the company spent their time telephoning everyone they knew to see if they were OK.
But there was also an immediate, precipitous problem with any kind of customer support or service. The air was full of overheard conversations. "Let me put you on hold. Uh, Marie, this customer wants to order a license for a vestibulator spracket. Who handles that?" "It used to be Bob, but he was laid off yesterday. Uh, Lewis, do you know?" "No idea, maybe his manager would know. Let me see, his manager was Kelly Sundstrom." "Oh, she's no longer with the company..."
No joke. Customers wanted to buy stuff and couldn't. Customers with service contracts couldn't get gear fixed. The stock price went up because at that time Wall Street seemed to love layoffs, but there were, actually, reports in the IT press about customers being disgruntled at bad service, and Wall Street never seemed to connect THAT with the layoffs.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
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.
... 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.
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!
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.