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Microsoft CEO To Slash 18,000 Jobs, 12,500 From Nokia To Go
DW100 (2227906) writes "Satya Nadella has taken an axe to Microsoft's 127,000-strong workforce by announcing a whopping 18,000 job cuts, including 12,500 from the recently integrated Nokia division. At least 13,000 jobs will go within the next six months."
It's official, Ballmer's layoff record has been smashed. From the email sent to employees: "The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months."
revenge for the start button
CEO-speak.. "building the right organization" "work towards synergies and strategic alignment" gobbledygoop
I'm all for cutting out bureaucracy where it isn't needed but come on man..
Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B visas.
Just another puppet inheriting the stink barge. Nothing will change at Microsoft. Cuts, layoffs, and generally contribution to economic stagnation is all these clowns are about. Pay no attention to what they ever say. Watch what they do... and it's always the same...
Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.
Words like "synergies and strategic alignment" and right sizing are right out of the Dilbert Mission Statement generator (which used to be on the Dilbert web site). Nothing can be as demoralizing as being managed by exec's so stupid that they have never read Dilbert.
I guess Nokia's platform really was burning after all. It's just that it was arson.
"In order to ensure continued access to scarce skillsets that are key to our ability to innovate, we need to be able to draw flexibly from a global pool of professionals."
(Oh, and we also resent having to pay those scarce and valuable individuals more than $15 / hour. So we'll still need some foreign worker visas, thanks).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Wall Street is that free loader who somehow convinced you to let him into the house. Every time one of your family members dies, he celebrates because it means more food for him.
On a more serious note, the moment you compromise your mission statement as a company in order to make money a group of people who are using you as a racing horse, sometimes even betting against you, to make a betting number go up you've lost all sense of reality and its usually just a matter of time. If Microsoft was actually all about making good products that improve people's lives and not making money for shareholders then I imagine we'd have a much different opinion of them.
That's what IBM does: lays off thousands here in the USA and just hires overseas.
And they still charge an obscene amount for their products and services.
It's all about cost arbitrage now: really cheap technical labor overseas and charge like you have 100% American or Western European labor.
Our country and economy is being bled dry by the multinationals.
While we are distracted by cheaper big screen TV and other electronic toys, the things that really matter are becoming more expensive while our pay is declining - and it's not just inflation. I see jobs here in Metro Atl that are paying $60K+ that once paid $80K+ back in the late 90s. If you include inflation, that's a hell of a pay cut.
But in the meantime, fuel, medical, education, food, housing (rents are going back up) and essentials to living are going up.
We are in a spiral to the bottom because multinational companies are importing poverty from the Third World.
Solution? I stopped buying shit. It helps that retailers are becoming more and more obnoxious. No more rip-off cable or other services like that. Smart phone? Shove it.
Food? I cook and it's all unprocessed - no packaged shit with shit additives.
Car? 20 years old and counting. And I do the maintenance: clutch, head gasket, brakes, you names it. Sorry for the local mechanic, but that's the new reality of our country.
Right, because getting ah H-1B is /really/ easy!
No bureaucratic nonsense there!
And they are also a lot cheaper, because they can be lower than comparable US workers, right, right?
http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php /sarcasm
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
Can we skip this useless blabber?
You hire someone on H-1B because they possess quality you can't find in the country.
Hiring H-1B for cost-reduction is idiocy! (better just ship your production overseas)
Sign the petition, lets get Obama to address why we still have H1B's
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/discuss-why-we-still-allow-h1b-visas-during-slow-economy/BxntX3JC
Nokia can only blame itself for letting Elop become their CEO years ago.
It's amazing that this guy can run the company into the ground and still have a job. How badly do you have to screw up to get fired as a CEO?
Microsoft from going to congress and crying that they need more H1-B's because they can't find workers with the skills that they need.
3 steps to making your company great:
Step 1) Recognize your company has a problem and need help MS -"We are incapable of breaching the mobile phone market on our own"
Step 2) Buy a company that has success in the area your current employees are having trouble with MS -"Lets buys Nokia"
Step 3) Fire employees of the successful acquisition and keep on your incompetent ones to manage the downfall of the tech your just acquired MS - "Lets be the right size"
You'll be the right size in no time MS.
Keep up the good work
MS already has a hideous management technique called "stack ranking" that killed morale (http://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2012/07/03/the-terrible-management-technique-that-cost-microsoft-its-creativity/). Now some idiot in management decides to float the story about 5K jobs going away in 6 months and couch it in Dilbert weasel words. So everyone who is not demoralized enough by stack ranking will be terrified by this announcement.
Very true. How the board was misinformed to the point of doing a such clear suicide is still part of the hidden story. Even more strange is the constant support the board give to the CEO even after all the alarms was turning full red. The "No plan B" concept was the biggest mistake ever from a board.
That means, for over 6 months, Microsoft employees won't know for sure whether they will be laid off or kept.
Which means the most talented and valuable employees will find new jobs before there are layoffs, and Microsoft will end up keeping the ones that couldn't find a job elsewhere.
How does this make Microsoft better?
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
And yet, somehow, a figure picked out of GP's ass to cause a stir... is?
They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.
Yeah, my company escorted me out the gate because I was a network jockey and they didn't want me to sabotage the system.
Two days later they're calling me with, "How do we ...," and "What's the passwords for ...," and "Where are the ..."
I offered to respond by email:
"The Firm has made the decision to "right-size" its IT department to better align with strategies going forward. In support of that decision, I know the Firm has retained the very best-of-breed systems analysts and I think we should rely on those superior personnel to figure out what knowledge I departed with. I know you will agree that Firm policy prohibits sensitive communication with non-employees and it is with a spirit of cooperation that I decline to ever speak to any of you ever again."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Microsoft brought over 25,000 Nokia employees in the merger of which 12,500 are to be laid off in the next 6 months. Probably all that's left is the hardware engineers, with nearly all of software, marketing and management getting the boot.
If you are not making $45 or more an hour you are being robbed. Programmers are massively underpaid compared to the skillset we need to do our jobs. Why the hell do we tolerate deflating the job down to the level of a factory worker?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Programmers are massively underpaid compared to the skillset we need to do our jobs.
Considering the lousy end products I have to deal with on a daily basis, paying programmers more money won't improve the skillset. You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product.
As to the products I'm talking about, let's start with Oracle and SAP then move on to Microsoft itself, Apple, HP and Siemens to name the most used ones I deal with.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Programmers are massively underpaid compared to the skillset we need to do our jobs.
A bachelors degree? We don't 'deserve' to get paid more than chemists, but we do. Like everything else, we get paid according to supply and demand. The skillset required to be an artist is tough to develop, but those guys don't get paid much.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product. "
nope. That does not impact pay. Get thing out at the arbitrary schedule, regardless of quality, mean you are a team player, and as such worth more.
Look at you own post. It seems Oracle, SAP, MS, et all make a lot of money with their crappy products.
Yeah, I work with them to.
We need a solid push for actual engineer in software. Not just some coder who calls themselves an engineer(often illegally), but someone who is certified and needs to sigh off on projects. Lets put actual testing in place. Actual documentation.
Like actual Professional Engineers.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on