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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."
I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
He might as well have written "Hey everyone, stop giving a shit about your job because you're probably fired." The same thing happened for the contracted/outsourced IT dept at the hospital where I worked. They told them 2 years in advance that they were not renewing their contract and were switching to a crew from IBM. So they stopped caring, didn't follow the dress code, outsourced internal support calls to Mexico, and their support response time rose to 3 months.
You should listen to a song on the latest Weird Al album: Mission Statement. Sung in the style of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, it's a perfect parody of those managers who love to speak in "corporate talk." Next time you go to a meeting with one of those managers, recite some of the lyrics (spoken, not sung, of course) and see whether they nod their heads in agreement.
"We'll set a brand trajectory
Using management philosophy
Advance our market share vis-à-vis
Our proven methodology
With strong commitment to quality
Effectively enhancing corporate synergy"
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
If 12,.500 layoffs are at Nokia, then weren't most of these jobs overseas anyway, from a US viewpoint?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
>the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
Really? With that one half of a sentence, you've just killed morale for 6+ months.
You're looking at it all wrong, from an employee mentality.
You need to look at it from a PHB mentality - telling people they *might* get fired in the next 6 months is incentive for them to work harder so that their job isn't the one that's cut (nevermind the fact that management decided who was to go a long, long time ago).
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
That's been true of most companies since the .com era.
Long term thinking is out the window in favor of short term increases to the stock, which increases the net worth of the CEO and makes them darlings of Wall Street.
That they might be actually harming the company long term is irrelevant.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
He ran Nokia into the ground so it could be acquired by Microsoft for peanuts. Now that he has done his job he gets the reward of a cushy job at Microsoft. I do not see anything strange here.
more than $140,000 a year, but less than $180,000 (plus various other things like stock etc)
Unless you are doing the job of someone they would usually be paying $200,000 per year, then I would say you are probably a good example of when H1B works. But looking at the numbers and average salaries I see a lot of average salaries in the $50k and $60k range which is really very low and likely is undermining the market for entry level jobs in the US.
Microsoft does seem to be competitive with an average salary in the $100k range for H1B Visas, but that also means that there could be hundreds of people there who are really paid very low salaries and it could be offset by very few people making very very large salaries. In other words they can pay a few token executives, managers and key engineers large six figure salaries or even millions and get hundreds of cheaper than competitive rate programmers and still make the averages work out in order to make it look good on paper.
Personally, I've worked with experienced H1B people making 20% less than the competitive salary both for their formal position and the work they were *actually* doing. I am sure there are outliers on both sides, but I do think the numbers combined with the anecdotes do paint a picture of a H1B system that is often times abused by employers to get cheaper labor.
As eloquently said by Truxton Spangler (portrayed by Michael Cristofer) at the end of the show Rubicon (which was pulled off the air after 1 season, IMHO, because it hit too close to home for the oligarchs):
"Do you think anyone will give a shit?"
That's the problem. It's the boiling frog problem. Most people will downplay this move as Microsoft exiting the mobile business. But it's much more than that. It's just one more step down the ladder into tyranny.
So is Microsoft even an American company anymore? I mean, fuck it, move the entire HQ over to India and be done with it.
Well if the idea was to start a fire he overdid it, what's left of Nokia - at least the mobile division Microsoft bought - is nothing but a smoldering, burned out husk. Despite burning all other sales to the ground Windows Phone still only has about 3% market share and meanwhile Android has covered 80%+ of the market by units and makes money by volume, Apple with their high ASP (average selling price) and margin still do good on revenue while Microsoft is even deeper in no man's land than before.
I doubt Microsoft wanted to buy Nokia, but at this point they were really in danger of losing their one and only remaining hardware partner so it was either that or flunk out of the phone market entirely. Which would pretty much kill the vision they're selling with Windows across the board on phones and tablet/laptop convertibles. That the market isn't buying it yet - and IMHO never - is one thing, but it's what the stock holders are buying into and if Microsoft had to wave the white flag the stock price would tank.
I don't think Microsoft will do well as a hardware company and I don't really understand where all the synergy is supposed to come from, true they have the XBone division but apart from die shrinks they offer a new model maybe twice a decade. If they don't stay on top of all the latest screen, CPU, GPU, broadband, wireless, GPS, camera, sensor, SoC technology and so on then outdated phones don't sell worth shit. And the software to support it is also all mobile specific, what's left to chop?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
KMart was run into bankruptcy 13 years ago by it's CEO and COO. I don't mean they happened to be there while something bad happened, I mean that business strategy that was chosen directly caused the bankruptcy. The COO was the one making most of the calls and his previous two jobs got rid of him when they went bankrupt (Hechinger, Big V Supermarkets). Yes, he bankrupted three companies in a row. He's still an executive. Also, when he left KMart, he wasn't really fired - he "left voluntarily" and on the way out he was given a 3 million dollar loan and a document that said he would never have to pay back that loan. They did that because they weren't allowed to give him a bonus due the whole Chapter 11 thing and they felt so bad that he was going to be out of a job and needing to live on his meager eight figure investment portfolio.
India is a third world 'shithole'? Ouch, that hurts, because that is only one facet of the reality. I am an Indian here, who got his PhD in computer engineering from the USA and lived there for a decade before returning to my homeland. :)
You are right, compared to developed countries, India is yet a shithole going by the infrastructure, public cleanliness and rampant corruption. But methinks you have not been here yet
Do visit India! You will find many wonderful things here like the many schools of spirituality, Yoga, Ayurveda and the natural scenic beauty. Many different religions coexist here relatively peacefully most of the time. Its a culturally extraordinarily rich country with mostly mild mannered people who for the most part follow a philosophy of peace. We have never initiated war with any of our neighboring countries despite continuous provocations.
I am sure you know this funny anecdote: Around the time of the World War II, a reporter asked Mahatma Gandhi in London as to what he thought of Western civilization? Gandhi: "I think it will be a good idea."
Most CEO's and Executive Level types are sociopaths.
Perhaps not "Most CEO's", but the position tends to attract them: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke...
You stereotypers are all the same...