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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.
They have to pay for microsoft licenses for each employee. Of course they are going bust.
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?
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
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!
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.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
FWIW...
I work for a S&P 500 financial corporation. I've been here through multiple major layoffs, one a 10% global layoff, the other a 20% global layoff. One in response to the unpleasantness in 2008-9, the other in response to business decisions to refocus and drive growth by investing in new markets and new products, necessitating divesting and letting a lot of good people go that simply did not do what was needed at the time.
It's a familiar and trite complaint that layoffs serve the C-level exclusively, but I can easily see Microsoft choosing to remove distractions, reduce current expenses, and even take the opportunity to shake the tree and rid itself of (real or imagined) low-hanging underperformers.
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.
Microsoft's market(s) is(are) difficult places to predict performance. Intangibles rule in that space, and failure is the norm. Success if fleeting. Windows is Microsoft's bedrock, so as the marketplace starts to embrace nontraditional devices that need not use Windows, Microsoft should be looking beyond traditional and on to emerging opportunities. Can they move quickly enough to outflank competitors? Google is huge, but acts like a startup on specific projects. From my viewpoint, Kinect is the last Microsoft project that could be described as nimble. There are some interesting things they show off, but none yet ready for a product. Surface is just not floating anyone's boat yet. Nokia was dead on arrival, so losing that is admitting they could not resuscitate it with Windows Phone, the poster child for losing the traditional to the nontraditional. Ask me some time about my new set top box, running Microsoft Mediaroom, and closed captioning. At least Microsoft left this in marginally perfect state, but another idea they had to abandon.
Harrison's Postulate confirmed. Enjoy.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
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.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
> And yet, they are still making gobs of money. In fact, they are more profitable than ever.
I remember in the late 1970's when IBM people were laughing at these 'toy' microcomputers. HA HA! Those toys will never be like real computers. Certainly not a threat to IBM which is making gobs of money. In fact, IBM is more profitable than ever.
IBM introduced a PC in 1981. Thinking they might sell up to two million. By the mid 1990's IBM had lost the PC market, abandoned the PS/2 attempt to re-monopolize it, and eventually got out of the PC business completely. Before the end of the 1990's IBM had re-invented itself. Think the same thing won't happen to Microsoft? You may be too young to remember, but in the 1980's, even by the late 1980's it was completely laughable to even consider that IBM might find itself on hard times. But it happened. And just a few years ago it was laughable to suggest that Microsoft might lose its industry dominance. Not so much laughable anymore.
> 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.
Moves far more radical than this may be the only way Microsoft stays around in the long term. We'll see what Microsoft looks like in a decade.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You forget that it affects morale.
It can affect morale in either direction. People that work hard tend to resent the deadwood. If the layoffs are carefully targeted, and employees see long term problems being addressed, then morale can go up. The important thing is to make the cuts deep enough that you don't have to come back for a second round. Nothing kills morale more than the uncertainty of waiting for the next salami slice.
I once worked for a CEO what didn't believe in firing people. Employees realized they could spend time gossiping in the break room, or working on their own side projects, while ambitious employees quit and went elsewhere. Morale was horrible, everyone thought the CEO was an idiot, and the company went bankrupt during the dotcom implosion.