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."

Comments

I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[AbRASiON]

Right, right? No way would they need anyone from overseas for any upcoming jobs, no sirree. Won't see any work of any kind going to other countries, nope!

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[JaredOfEuropa]

"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).

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[beelsebob]

As a foreign worker in the US, I have no idea where you got that $15 an hour from. I can assure you, I'm paid substantially more than that.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Dins]

"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."

Wait a minute. Microsoft has the ability to innovate? Who knew!

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Anne Thwacks]

Satya, is that you?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[cheesybagel]

At least one of these stupid companies finally got around to outsourcing their CEO from India as well. It has gone full circle.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[beelsebob]

more than $140,000 a year, but less than $180,000 (plus various other things like stock etc)

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[clickety6]

If 12,.500 layoffs are at Nokia, then weren't most of these jobs overseas anyway, from a US viewpoint?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a foreign worker in the US, I have no idea where you got that $15 an hour from. I can assure you, I'm paid substantially more than that.

Because you alone are representative of all foreign workers.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[beelsebob]

And yet, somehow, a figure picked out of GP's ass to cause a stir... is?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Entropius]

They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Lumpy]

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?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[jlowery]

As a foreign worker in the US, I have no idea where you got that $15 an hour from. I can assure you, I'm paid substantially more than that.

I once shared an office with two foreign workers from Eastern Europe. One was being paid $1000/mo., the other $500/mo. Don't know how the company got away with it, but they did.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[smooth wombat]

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.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Critical Facilities]

Also, where are you located? Cost of living in various US cities has a significant effect on base salaries.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[digsbo]

Who tolerates it? People who can't get better offers.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Agares]

I love how you got modded insightful.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[germansausage]

Are programmers willing to work for $45/hr? Then that is what they are worth. Did you think the laws of supply and demand don't apply to you (you precious thing)?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Salgat]

It amazes me that people need to realize that skillset is just one factor in compensation. There is a reason why even lawyers can have a hard time finding a good paying position; it's because they, just like programmers, have to compete for high paying jobs. More competitors means more selection and less monetary incentive required by the employer to hire people.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[AnOnyxMouseCoward]

Thanks for the link, found it very interesting. To me it appears most large companies have average salaries in the 80k+ range for H1B, and most of the 50-60k companies are either small, Indian (sorry, calling it like I see it), or universities/non-profits, in which I can assume the average salary is already way lower.

Also keep in mind not all H1Bs are software developers, and might not commend such a high salary in the first place, so.. I don't see anything that unusual, frankly.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[phantomfive]

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.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[Anonymous Coward]

He might have been born in India, but he is a US citizen now (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satya_Nadella). Does that still count as outsourcing?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[macs4all]

"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."

Wait a minute. Microsoft has the ability to innovate? Who knew!

Wait a minute. Microsoft has the ability to innovate? Who knew!

Are you kidding? All Microsoft DOES is "innovate".

What they NEVER seem to do (or only rarely), is stick to a particular technology long enough to actually get it working, before abandoning it for the next generation of buzzwords and alphabet soup that never quite work, before it's time for "Rinse and Repeat"...

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[geekoid]

"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.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[geekoid]

They don't apply when they are being intentional undermined.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[RabidReindeer]

You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product.

Apparently you don't work in the field. Because management doesn't want a better product. They want it fast and they want it cheap and if we don't meet those demands then we're hit with the "There are people in [Third World Country] who'd be GLAD to do your job faster and for less money!"/

It's not likely to be a co-incidence that your samples of producers of notably bad products are also very heavily invested in just such cheap resources. Because A), they're big enough not to care if some two bit customer doesn't like their sloppy quality standards and B), the customers are more interested in Lower Prices Everyday than in quality products anyway.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[RabidReindeer]

They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.

No they don't. They just change the suck icons, names, and desktop locations with each new edition. Still the same old suck.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[wannabgeek]

Of course, they shouldn't send work to any other countries. It's not like they're selling their products in other countries, are they?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[rsborg]

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.

Right - like programmers are all that controls a software product's destiny. You know there are these groups in almost every software vendor called "product management" and "sales", right? Lets not forget about "legal".

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[ranton]

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?

First off, $45 per hour is not too high. After factoring in benefits that probably equates to a salary of about $65k per year. So while I agree that making less than $65k per year is low for all but junior developers (or those working in very low cost areas), I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that most developers are underpaid. The average salary of a developer is about $90k per year, which is an incredibly high salary. And this is an average salary. From my experience your average developer doesn't spend much more time outside of work improving their skills than your average professional outside the field.

Perhaps the top 10% of developers spend far more time learning outside of work than the top 10% of non-developer professionals, but they also tend to get paid much more (and are usually in consulting or are entrepreneurs). I was able to get past the 6-digit salary hurdle in under 10 years in the field (in a low cost of living area), and that was after making many stupid career damaging mistakes in my early 20s. And I didn't even need to take many risks to get there.

Almost the only jobs that allow you to make this kind of money without significant training are ones where you are essentially gambling with your career. I have quite a few friends / colleagues in sales and management, and plain old luck has a huge impact in which ones fail and which ones win out big. On the other hand every single skilled developer I know has done exceptional in their career.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[davydagger]

next week they are hiring 10,000 more people for half the salary, who don't understand Microsoft Lync is not normal.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[turgid]

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.

When the PHBs conspire to make that (producing a better product) impossible, it doesn't matter what engineers you employ or how much you pay them.

The relentless push to cut costs, do "more with less," let the staff numbers dwindle through natural wastage and lack of vision, invent fantasy project schedules (requiring weekend, evening and holiday work) and no resources (what do you mean you need physical hardware to develop and test on? I just sold the test kit to a customer. It was revenue just begging to be had...) catches up with every company eventually.

My current employer is now in this state, and almost everyone (who knows anything) has left and I'm about to as well, however as far as the PHBs and VPs are concerned, everything's fine and dandy. Targets are at 100%, the share price has doubled and we're making a consistent profit.

The fact that tumbleweeds are blowing through Engineering hasn't quite registered...

It's the natural cycle these days. They call it "capitalism" but it's not the capitalism I understand.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[DuckDodgers]

A person negotiates for compensation once every few years, at best. The people handling hiring at companies negotiate compensation every day. Companies almost universally make it company policy to forbid employees from discussing compensation with each other.

So when you and your employer are trying to agree on what you're paid, they've got more experience at the negotiation and access to much more information than you have. That makes the game field completely uneven.

Or in other words - no, you're not worth only what you can negotiate out of your employer, regardless of what field you work in.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[shutdown -p now]

I am an H1B Microsoft employee. I know quite a few others inside MS, and some more ex-MS guys in Google and Amazon.

To the best of my knowledge, all of us are getting fair payment - as in, we're not underpaid compared to citizens. We're also all sponsored for green cards as soon as eligible, so they don't seem to be interested in keeping us in H1B status as long as possibly. Guys in Google and Amazon tell a similar story.

My understanding is that, while most H1Bs are underpaid or otherwise abused, where it happens is various sweatshops like Tata. Collectively, those actually account for the majority of issued H1B visas. Large tech companies, on the other hand, play fair, but represent something like 10% of the overall H1B labor force.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[david_thornley]

Depends on the location, actually. $45/hr as a salary of $90K/year is decent in some areas (yes, I could get more money if I wanted to relocate to somewhere I don't want to relocate to). $45/hour on short-term contracts is only for those unlucky enough not to get a real job in a bad job market.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[david_thornley]

The quick and dirty conversion from hourly to yearly is to double and multiply by a thousand, so $45/hour is about $90K/year. Most employees also get benefits, including some paid time off and not having to take the "employer half" of FICA off the gross, so you do have to add on to an employee salary. (Then again, I very rarely got paid overtime when I wasn't working hourly.)

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[david_thornley]

Two words: Windows 8. You can't tell me that UI isn't innovative.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[n7ytd]

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?

First off, $45 per hour is not too high. After factoring in benefits that probably equates to a salary of about $65k per year. So while I agree that making less than $65k per year is low for all but junior developers (or those working in very low cost areas), I'm not sure I agree with your assertion that most developers are underpaid. The average salary of a developer is about $90k per year, which is an incredibly high salary.

$45/hour * 40 hours * 52 weeks = $93,600/year. I'm sure where your message goes from there... is $45/hour "not too high", or is $90k an "incredibly high" salary?

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[n7ytd]

They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.

No they don't. They just change the suck icons, names, and desktop locations with each new edition. Still the same old suck.

Well, yeah, but now it's got the Ribbon of Suck.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[VTBlue]

Are programmers willing to work for $45/hr? Then that is what they are worth. Did you think the laws of supply and demand don't apply to you (you precious thing)?

While neoclassical economics models equates labor as a commodity that obeys supply & demand, the evidence is actually dismal. Labor does does not follow supply and demand in the real world modern economies. Wages earned by the laboring class from the capitalist class is more accurately described by classical economics; essentially that profit is derived by the systemic underpayment to the laboring class. The greater the ability of the capitalist class to dictate legal, financial, and operational terms, the more profit it is able to extract from labor. For the value that the CS and IT profession creates within all industries, it is vastly underpaid. Capitalists and financialists recognise this, but the general public does not.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[buybuydandavis]

Are you direct with Msoft?

My experience is the abuse of the H1B system comes from indirect hires through contract agencies. Basically, if you have a pimp, you're treated like a whore.

Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas?

[shutdown -p now]

Yes, direct. So are all people that I know. I don't think you can be a blue badge otherwise.

justice

[Anonymous Coward]

revenge for the start button

I really really hate

[bravecanadian]

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..

Re:I really really hate

[gunner_von_diamond]

I thought it was rather straight-forward and cold.

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.

Eliminated!

Re:I really really hate

[Jason Levine]

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"

Re:I really really hate

[bangular]

It's meant for the shareholders. They know they'll get at least a quarter of artificial profits from such a massive layoff.

Re:I really really hate

[Eristone]

You beat me to it - thanks. (posting because my mod points expired yesterday so giving you props this way.)

Re:I really really hate

[B33rNinj4]

I agree! About a decade ago, the company I was working for hired a high-priced "consultant" to help us cut costs. Instead of suggesting we streamline our inventory or ordering processes, he suggested a 10% staff cut. The company folded less than two years later.

Re:I really really hate

[GeekBird]

They announced layoffs where I work in a memo that had at least 38 buzzwords in it, some more than once. The more buzzwords in the memo, the worse the news. I swear some of these C-suite people have translators just to convert ordinary English into buzzword bullshit.

Re:I really really hate

[DuckDodgers]

Good point, and good song. But I think Al left out "perfect storm", and even though I'm not hearing that phrase quite as often this year as I was three or four years ago it still deserves a top spot among the worst corporate buzzwords.

Re:I really really hate

[david_thornley]

I thought it looked like a morale disaster waiting to happen. Six months of wondering if you're getting the axe, and even then there's a possibility.

Re:I really really hate

[2fuf]

> morale disaster

I think that's the plan. They want to give as many people as possible the motivation to leave on their own accord, saving them a lot of hassle and cost.

Buzzword speak

[i ate my neighbour]

The synergy will get you.

Re:Buzzword speak

[zieroh]

The nineties called. They want their buzzwords back.

Re:Buzzword speak

[steelfood]

The synergy will shock and burn you.

FTFY.

Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1Bs

[sinij]

Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B visas.

Beware these muppets

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

The cycle begins again

[Anonymous Coward]

Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.

Re:The cycle begins again

[geoskd]

Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.

I'll bet you anything they were never any of the ones on the chopping block for a layoff...

Re:The cycle begins again

[Dan667]

telling they don't work at microsoft anymore

Re:The cycle begins again

[Raenex]

Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.

Many of the early employees of Microsoft became millionaires due to stock options, so they could afford to jump ship and do their own thing. I doubt that's true of the people being laid off.

The other 5500 jobs

[timrod]

The article mentions where 12,500 of the 18,000 jobs to be cut are coming from, but doesn't account for the other 5,500 jobs. There was another article on this a few days ago that mentioned people being cut from marketing teams and people cut from the Xbox division, but I wish the article would go into more detail.

Re:The other 5500 jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got an email Scott Guthrie. A small number of people are being cut from Cloud and Enterprise Group too.

Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Squidlips]

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.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[gstoddart]

Nothing can be as demoralizing as being managed by exec's so stupid that they have never read Dilbert.

The problem in real life, as it is in Dilbert, is the things we cringe at are the things the executives think "now there's a damned fine idea".

There's a huge disconnect between how management people respond to those things versus what the rest of us do.

Unfortunately, they're the ones calling the shots -- and what we see as parody and satire, they see as an instruction manual.

I don't believe I've ever worked at a company where the management team didn't (on a semi regular basis) take a page straight out of the Dilbert playbook and begin to implement it.

It's like we experience an entirely different reality.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Anonymous Coward]

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...

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[CanHasDIY]

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...

And now you should understand why they call it the Human Resources department and not Human Relations.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like we experience an entirely different reality.

Well of course you do. Your reality is working on a project, shielded from higher-level concerns. Their reality is trying to shield you from higher-level concerns by managing them. You are no more equipped to understand their job than they are to understand yours. Dilbert does a great job lampooning the aspects that are visible to you, but a poor job of explaining the aspects that are not. You won't get this until you become a manager, I'm afraid.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Casualposter]

Oh what utter rubbish! Management is mostly irrelevant - especially the over paid CEO types who can't seem to figure out what the company does - but they can sure "manage" it. Good, driven, visionary management can keep a company healthy and profitable for centuries, but most of these managers are about as useful as pot holes. What they are really good at is convincing themselves and their cronies on the board of directors that they deserve more pay, more bonuses, because well, they are paid millions so they must be worth millions more! In reality, the average manager is not any smarter than the guy running the project and certainly not better at predicting where the market it is headed, or what the economy is going to do, or what the sales for next quarter will be. AS for the higher level concerns . . . what higher level concerns? A business has all the same issues as a family - income, taxes, the crazy dude next door with the chainsaw and the lawyer...which church to go to for the tax breaks and legal loop holes. Please don't put any faith in management - they either understand the company because they've worked there (and can do an adequate job of keeping the place running) or they are just some rich dude in a suit with less clue about how to run a company than a chimpanzee has of running a zoo.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Anonymous Coward]

You are no more equipped to understand their job than they are to understand yours.

If they can't understand my job, they damn sure aren't competent to manage it.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Sir_Eptishous]

Most CEO's and Executive Level types are sociopaths.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[gstoddart]

You are no more equipped to understand their job than they are to understand yours.

Horseshit.

I once worked at a company which primarily grew by acquisition.

The running joke (albeit real) was that the VP of R&D from the last major acquisition was now the VP of R&D for the entire company.

And that VP would develop a huge sense of "Not Invented Here", and start to decide that any product which wasn't invented by his company wasn't worth pursuing.

In several instances they tried to fiddle with the core competencies, get rid of things which were absolutely central to the business model, and generally fsck things up. Because the particular brand of hammer they sold was all they understood, and anything else must therefore be unimportant.

I can't even count how many MBAs I've met who had precisely zero experience in the industry they were suddenly in, who started to make decisions which demonstrated that, other than the case studies they did in school, they didn't have a frigging clue. In fact, I've seen numerous examples where their understanding of the technology was so non-existent they couldn't understand what it did, and why their arbitrary choices were disconnected from the real world.

People get parachuted into management positions in companies they know nothing about and don't fully understand, and then apply their one size fits all solution -- even if that solution is a terrible idea.

This belief that someone who has studied management understand either the business or the process of management is a crock of shit. Because anybody who has worked in tech long enough knows damned well that most of them are doing things just to make themselves look important.

We once had a departmental manager insist on building ER diagrams for our product. The problem was, the software wasn't based on an RDB, the ER diagrams were meaningless and misleading, and had absolutely nothing to do with anything.

I've seen situations in which the guy who owned a piece of technology was responsible for deciding that it was the one we should go with, despite overwhelming evidence that the piece of software he was responsible for wasn't capable of doing what it was supposed to replace. This was purely ego, politics, and carving out their own little fiefdom.

You think Elon Musk went into Nokia with an understanding of what Nokia needed as a business? Or merely a view that whatever they were doing was wrong because it wasn't based on Microsoft stuff?

You won't get this until you become a manager, I'm afraid.

If I hadn't seen so many examples of gross incompetence in management, I might actually believe there is a kernel of truth here.

But since I have, I don't.

Management isn't some elite bunch of people with all of the answers. They're a bunch of people who were chosen by a bunch of people like them to carry out policies which have already been decided upon.

And it is as much about politics as it is reality.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Richy_T]

There was nothing wrong with "Personnel".

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[supremebob]

Actually, they sound like lyrics to that new Weird Al song "Mission Statement".

Amazing piece of music... it's like Weird Al went through my old IBM mail archive and wrote a song from the management newsletters.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[CanHasDIY]

Well, obviously the term was too personal.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[erp_consultant]

The latest buzzword is Human Capital Management. Note the use of the word Capital, as in asset. You, as an employee, are nothing more than a piece of furniture in their eyes. In the old days they called it the Personnel department. At least that had some sort of human element to it.

The morals of the story?

1) Don't trust management. They will cast you aside at the blink of an eye to save their own ass.
2) Don't get fooled into thinking you have lifetime employment with anyone.
3) Even when you have a job, never stop looking for the next one.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[zieroh]

You are no more equipped to understand their job than they are to understand yours. Dilbert does a great job lampooning the aspects that are visible to you, but a poor job of explaining the aspects that are not. You won't get this until you become a manager, I'm afraid.

Speaking as a manager, you're completely full of shit.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[steelfood]

MBA programs exist to line the school's coffers, which they then use to hire more administration (MBA grads). It's the biggest ongoing scam in education in the past 20 years.

I wouldn't be surprised if it is directly responsible for the soaring higher education costs.

Now, the Executive MBA program, that's different. That's where the new inductees into the ol' boy's club get to meet each other.

Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing?

[Art3x]

You think Elon Musk went into Nokia with an understanding of what Nokia needed as a business? Or merely a view that whatever they were doing was wrong because it wasn't based on Microsoft stuff?

You mean Stephen Elop, not Elon Musk. Quite a difference, but I can see myself making the same Elop flip-flop.

Burning platforms

[stoploss]

I guess Nokia's platform really was burning after all. It's just that it was arson.

Re:Burning platforms

[Kjella]

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?

Re:Burning platforms

[cyber-vandal]

There are a lot of enterprise customers wondering who they can go to now that Blackberry have faded away. That's where WinPhone is going to shine unless the other 2 ecosystems start being able to integrate seamlessly with things like Active Directory and Exchange and the plethora of third-party Windows-only software.

Re:Burning platforms

[geekoid]

The vast majority, it not all, these position are management. Or so I am lead to believe.

And in totally unrelated news....

[Chordonblue]

MSFT stock goes up a few points...

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[donscarletti]

Here's the thing.

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."

They are announcing layoffs that will not be implemented, in some cases for over 6 months in the future. That means, for over 6 months, Microsoft employees won't know for sure whether they will be laid off or kept. In management terms, that is going to result in dramatically lower morale and productivity for half a year for what? So that Microsoft can announce 5,000 more layoffs than they are actually capable of firing right now.

It really just shows how much more Microsoft cares about stock value than running a good company.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[gstoddart]

Wait a minute. Microsoft has the ability to innovate? Who knew!

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.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[Aqualung812]

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?

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[GNious]

In some (many?) countries, sizable lay-offs have to be announced well in advanced by law - they may just be trying to accommodate for this.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[bangular]

Why are tech companies under the same quarter-to-quarter cycle as fast food and retail industries? You can't get anything meaningful done in a quarter.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[sootman]

> How does this make Microsoft better?

You always here that competition in the marketplace makes all companies stronger. So, maybe that? Kind of indirect, but it might work. The losers who stay behind will have to up their game to compete with their now-stronger competition.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[Shados]

The valuable and talented employees will not be laid off and they know it. Microsoft pays fairly well and their benefits are pretty darn good. So unless their projects are boring them and they have nowhere to move to, they're not going anywhere.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[frank_adrian314159]

If you don't play the game, the mutual funds won't like your stock and your stock, potentially affecting the share price negatively. Then the board gets all pissy and you don't get as big of bonus. So you play the game. You didn't understand that?

Situations start when there are multiple players in the market and one can obtain acute, short-term benefit by causing more diffuse, long-term harm - unless all players participate in the harmful action, they will suffer more with neither short- nor long-term gains. The efficiency that using economics as a model in this case brings merely ensures that this harm accumulates as quickly as possible.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[Aqualung812]

The valuable and talented employees will not be laid off and they know it.

You're saying that they trust their management to make the right decision? Maybe, but if they are as bright as I hope, they would have a healthy lack of faith in their management based off Windows 8/Windows Phone 8.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[shutdown -p now]

It depends on whether the cuts are performance-based or area-based. There were some strong engineers who were laid off in 2008-2009 because they were on the wrong team.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[arglebargle_xiv]

Well with a bit of luck the layoffs will include the cretins who decided to inflict the Win8 UI on the world. In fact I think they need to fire them several times over just to make sure they're really gone.

Re:And in totally unrelated news....

[jwhitener]

I suspect a lot of people may know its coming. The 6 months could be a nice way of saying "start looking for a new job now, and start saving up money". It is certainly better than having no warning.

h1b going first?

[Revek]

I can't even type that without laughing.

Re:h1b going first?

[drinkypoo]

Probably true. The H1Bs are easier to dispose of, so the ones they are letting go will be let go first.

Re:h1b going first?

[godrik]

I know this is against the thought-stream, but the H1B are likely to be most recently employed (lifespan of an H1B visa is 3 or 6 years). So I'd say they are more likely to be well aligned with the company strategy. I expect them not to be layed-off because they are probably not in the sections of the company that needs to be shrunk.

Re:h1b going first?

[GeekBird]

They are also ~20% cheaper, overall.

Re:h1b going first?

[shutdown -p now]

Not in Microsoft.

IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:IBM

[Anonymous Coward]

Nothing to do with IBM. The oligarchs have seized power over the last 20 years and now the screw is being turned. The more they turn, the more scared you become. All around the world, policy is dictated by the corporations and they're invariably directly working against the population.

Re:IBM

[allquixotic]

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.

Re:IBM

[Alioth]

None of the stuff he lists is particularly time expensive.

Cooking? It's fun anyway, and there's no need to cook a five star gourmet meal every meal. Most days just simple, good tasting food - 5 or 10 minutes prep and cooking time.

Car? Even an old car doesn't need that much time spent on it. I've just finished with my nearly 20 year old Audi, I spent about an hour or two PER YEAR on maintenance.

Not buying shit? This actually gives you MORE time not less since you're not driving to and from a shop and browsing for stuff you probably don't actually need.

Re:IBM

[bangular]

My first thought was IBM. I'm curious, can anyone think of a company that has done these sorts of layoffs and recovered? I sure can't. They end up like IBM. Still technically a company, but surviving only on branding and legacy products.

And for what? It'll get them a couple of quarters of phony profits to make shareholders happy, but devastate them long term. You can't attract the best of the best talent when you've announced such a layoff. Why would anyone go to a company that seems so volatile?

The last job I left announced layoffs three quarters in a row. The first quarter I decided to get my ducks in a row to leave. I would rather leave on my own accord than have constant anxiety that next week or quarter I'll be jobless.

Re:IBM

[Agares]

You make a good point about pay being in decline. My dad made more per hour in the 80's and 90's than he does today doing the same job. If he made the quivalent today of what he made then he would probably be making around $50.00 an hour or so I would guess. It is crazy when you think about it that way.

Re:IBM

[BigDaveyL]

Haven't been there studies that prove this? I seem to recall some study that if a company ends up laying off some non-insignificant amount of people over a period of time, that they never really recover over the long term by most metrics - revenue, profits, margins, stock price. In other words it may make some sense to not be trigger happy.

Re:IBM

[Salgat]

Heaven forbid other people who happen to be from different countries compete for your job, right? I have no problem with immigrants and others coming to our country to earn a living. You have to remember, these people will be using their skills for American companies, their salaries for American taxes, and as an added benefit, they can help themselves and their family to earn a better living (which yes, is a good thing because they are humans, people just like us). I have family in China that benefit strongly from outsourcing and I'll be damned if outsourcing hasn't brought hundreds of millions out of crippling $1/day poverty. We work in a global economy now, your cushy jobs with little competition no longer exist, and I feel no sympathy for you losing that.

Re:IBM

[lgw]

Most of these layoffs are around an acquisition. This is very common, and you're only hearing about it in advance from MS because they're laying off enough in the US to trigger the WARN act, or a similar law in Finland.

MS has a bunch of people who make phones that don't sell.. Nokia has a bunch of people who make phones that don't sell. I'm guessing all the overlap will be jettisoned, along with a significant reduction to adjust to poor sales.

So far what we've heard is constrained to the failing mobile business - but we don't know yet. There are 6K jobs that could be anywhere (but given MS has over 100K employees, that might not be a big deal).

Re:IBM

[lgw]

Come on now, you're missing the key point here: those people who will be taking good American jobs have brown skin, and that's why it's evil. Threads like this reek of racism. (Nevermind it's Finland where any actual job-shifts here are likely to happen, you'll notice everyone banging on about India).

The world market for developers is pretty good, actually. For this skill set, there's no real cause for complaint about the competition. For a while it looked bad thanks to doubling of labor supply every few years, but pretty much every university CS program world-wide is tapped now, and so labor supply has stabilized (growing mostly linearly now with average worker age), while demand continues strong.

Re:IBM

[Dragonslicer]

The layoffs from Microsoft are only about 5500, though. We already know the fate of Nokia.

Re:IBM

[ruir]

The problem is not them taking the jobs, they are brought to reduce costs, bring down the power of unions and bring the nacional salary means down.

Re:IBM

[DuckDodgers]

bangular, IBM does almost $100 billion in annual business per year, a solid $20 billion more than Microsoft. Though to be fair their profits are slightly lower. IBM is more than just surviving.

Re:IBM

[DuckDodgers]

I have nothing against people from India, China, Africa, South America, etc... but you will notice that this ruthless drive to keep productivity up while lowering expenses does not extend to top executives. So you and me and the guy down the street and the woman across town take a pay cut or lose our jobs so someone in Indonesia can have a better life, while the person that decided to axe our positions and everyone on the board of directors get a bigger mansion.

I am happy when anyone anywhere gets a better economic opportunity. That's a good thing. But the more important point is that we're heading towards oligarchy - the middle class in the US is seeing their standard of living move more in line with the rest of the world, the average person in the rest of the world is seeing their standard of living inch towards the American middle class, but the great majority of the financial benefit to cutting middle class wages and outsourcing jobs goes to the 1%.

There is a class war, we're in the middle of it, and we're getting beaten badly.

Re:IBM

[lgw]

The national average salary somewhere else goes up, though. It's hard to argue against jobs moving from your country to another without claiming that people in your country are somehow better, more deserving of those jobs; otherwise, why is it wrong?

Re:IBM

[Some_Llama]

"The national average salary somewhere else goes up, though. It's hard to argue against jobs moving from your country to another without claiming that people in your country are somehow better, more deserving of those jobs; otherwise, why is it wrong?"

Because who is doing it and why... that's why it's wrong.

Re:IBM

[chihowa]

It isn't as though each $50,000 (say) job lost in the US or Europe leads to $50,000 worth of jobs in India or whereever, though. Jobs aren't being moved overseas out of some egalitarian desire to bring the third world up. The difference in wages is pocketed and further enriches the already wealthy. Instead of making the entire world better, you're making one place slightly better while making another significantly worse. At the moment, the people paying the salaries of those jobs are the people who are losing their own jobs. If offshoring is all about fairness, why is the whole system run as a labor arbitrage: paying third world salaries for labor but charging first world prices for products? That is wrong.

Besides that, it's nice that you and the wealthy get to decide who is more deserving of these jobs when your lot clearly isn't on the line. Why is it fair to demand that the American middle class give up their tiny portion of the pie (to make the world a better place, no less) while demanding nothing of those who hold most of the pie?

Re:IBM

[bingoUV]

I have nothing against people from India, China, Africa, South America, etc... but you will notice that this ruthless drive to keep productivity up while lowering expenses does not extend to top executives. So you and me and the guy down the street and the woman across town take a pay cut or lose our jobs so someone in Indonesia can have a better life, while the person that decided to axe our positions and everyone on the board of directors get a bigger mansion.

Doesn't make sense at all. The guy who sent this email about firing thousands of people, was born in India. So some American was denied the Microsoft CEO job so that this Indian (US citizen now, I think) can get the job. Rules of the game are the same in top management too.

Re:IBM

[david_thornley]

Ever notice that that's one-sided? Companies are free to find cheaper labor anywhere. Meanwhile, there's stuff that gets sold for a lot cheaper in poorer countries, but it's sometimes illegal for the average guy to bring it in and sell it cheap over here.

Re:IBM

[lgw]

The amount that an $80000 job affects the lives of people in America is much smaller than the amount that the $30000 job helps the lives of people in India. You have to compare purchasing power, not "dollars".

One developer job in America means one guy lifted out of the social safety net or retail job in America (if you think anyone in America is poor, look around the world more). One developer job in India means 10+ people lifted out of abject poverty.

Believe me my job is on the line - I compete for jobs directly on the world market, working for companies large and small that can easily hire developers in India or China and in most of the places I've worked in fact have the majority of their staff there. And those people deserve a job every bit as much as I do.

Re:IBM

[chihowa]

I'm aware of the differences in the context of the wages and I'm completely sympathetic to the plight of those living in abject poverty. What I don't agree with is the current method of "equalization", since it is unnecessarily destructive to the first world middle and working classes while also further increasing global wealth disparity. The social and safety nets in the first world depend on tax paying workers in those countries, so the long term prospects for the first world counties become more bleak as/if unemployment rises. The resources exist to bring everybody's lifestyle up to the level of the first world middle class, they're just poorly distributed. Equalizing almost everybody's lifestyle to just above abject poverty is a non-optimal solution.

There are other methods to achieve this uplifting effect that are truly "equalizing" across the entire range of incomes and not as destructive to to the first world middle and working classes. Avoiding participation in labor arbitration and encouraging the growth of local economies is a more ideal solution. Depending on a richer country for handouts (that they will certainly withhold when your standard of living increases) is short-term zero-sum thinking.

Re:IBM

[lgw]

I don't see it at all. It's not a race to the bottom: it's a race towards first-world middle-class standards for all. It's not like reducing labor costs goes into the pockets of some rich guy somewhere - it's spilt between lower costs for everything, and better returns for all shareholders (and more than half of Americans own stock now).

Long term, the effects on demand from e.g. India emerging as an economic world power would be hugely positive for everyone. It the whole world were consuming at middle-class levels, there'd be no shortage of good jobs for all, even with most manufacturing done by robots.

Re:IBM

[chihowa]

Lower costs for products generally aren't of the same order as lower costs of production, and this doesn't help someone whose income has been significantly slashed. While over half of Americans may own stock, stock ownership only represents a source of income for a tiny fraction of them. Most of the owned stock is held by a small number of people. The "over half" statistic also counts participation in retirement funds, which obviously do not offset a lack of income before retirement age. The lack of income before retirement age also halts further contribution to retirement funds and limits their potential for useful growth. The largest beneficiary of the current trend is indeed some "rich guy somewhere".

How do we race toward middle class standards for all by cutting middle class jobs in first world countries and simultaneously concentrating the wealth of those countries in fewer hands?

Re:IBM

[lgw]

"How do we race towards middle class standards for all by cutting middle class jobs for white people, simultaneously concentrating white people wealth in fewer hands"

By creating many more jobs for other people, which clearly you don't even see as people in your moral equation.

Re:IBM

[chihowa]

Oh, come now.

Is that how you signal that you're done with this discussion and you just want me to shut up? You're not even arguing against anything I said at this point. Nowhere in any of my posts did I even imply that, but you've got to shoehorn that card in don't you?

Please come back when you have something intelligent to add to this discussion. I didn't agree with you, but your posts were rational up to this point.

Re:IBM

[DuckDodgers]

I was speaking in the general case, where a company is cutting and outsourcing at the bottom end and paying top dollar and providing bonuses for executives. In this case, no matter how much dislike I have for Microsoft, I'm guessing the move is just plain old cutting of dead weight. Satya Nadella can't think of anything useful to do with this particular set of 18,000 employees, so they're being let go - but he has no plans to replace them with cheaper alternatives. Departments and projects they've decided are not part of Microsoft's future are being shut down.

I'm glad an Indian guy made CEO in the US. I think that's great.

Re:IBM

[lgw]

You seem blind to the fact that your arguments only make sense when viewed through the "only Americans matter" lens, but are obviously false otherwise. How else do you explain it?

Re:IBM

[chihowa]

The entire gist of my comments is that everybody matters and no group of people should be thrown under the bus for any other group. I know that's not as PC as saying that Americans, white males, or your oppressors de jour don't matter and that the only way to make the world a better place is to cut them down, but you're letting your need to fit my argument into a racist context keep you from understanding what I'm actually saying.

Globalism and offshoring, the way it is currently implemented, is not a process that is making the world a more equal and fair place. Those benefitting the most from the current setup are the rich white Americans you despise so much (in fact, the richest and whitest of the lot). The fortunes they accumulate have historically been spent on directly oppressing and subjugating the poor brown people you pretend to care about (and not through their vague "privilege", but through actual East India Company style incursions into their land).

I'm not an isolationist or some jingoist "they took our jobs" guy. I'm not even white. I'm interested in an ideal solution that has a more solid chance of a long-term successful outcome. If you could at least temper your need to see everyone who disagrees with you as some sort of monster, maybe you could participate in finding solutions to our world's problems. We need fewer closed-minded, my-way-or-the-highway ideologues and more people capable of rational, non-histrionic discussion. Would you care to join us?

Nokia sure has bad luck

[satuon]

It's sad that they got bought just at the moment when Microsoft's CEO was going to change. I fully expect the new CEO to soon admit that the mobile market has been lost forever, and discard Nokia. In the end, all the Nokia saga would have been for nothing.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[Exitar]

Nokia can only blame itself for letting Elop become their CEO years ago.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, like most corporate fuck ups, the board made the decision and the everyday guy trying to grind out a living to support his or her family gets the consequences.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[jcdr]

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.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[cheesybagel]

Nokia was just for getting the patents which are worth a lot of money. Everyone has figured their angle a long time ago. The smartphones, as Microsoft usually does, will just be outsourced to someone in China.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[satuon]

Yes, ultimately they were all "consenting adults". But did the board act against the shareholders' interests? Ultimately, it's the shareholders who appoint the board, so even then they should blame only themselves.

As Stalin said "Cadres are a key to everything" - meaning be careful who you appoint to what. The shareholders should have thought about who they are appointing as directors, and the board (if the shareholders appointed them well) should have thought about who they appoint as CEO.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[jcdr]

There exists a more cynical possibility: some entities could have buy enough share to impose key members into the board, fully knowing how the story will end. The cost of destroying Nokia could have be lower than the risk of losing others long term investments of the same entities.

Re:Nokia sure has bad luck

[rsborg]

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.

The Nokia board had already screwed it, they were in the hole to the tune of $1B before they went to the loan-shark (Microsoft) who required Elop as the CEO for their "investment", I imagine. They had years to respond to the Blackberry, the iPhone showed up with the Androids right after it, and the rest is history. I remember 12 years ago lusting over some of those smartphones that Nokia offered, but never really actually wanting what was offered - it all kind of sucked. I loved my Palm Treo 600 - it was the first real smartphone with apps that I could grok. Had Nokia taken that inspiration or acquired Palm, things might have been very very different today (though not likely - the iPhone was future-tech compared to everything around it when it landed).

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Anonymous Coward]

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
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/ /sarcasm

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)

Lets cut the H1B's!

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Lets cut the H1B's!

[bigpat]

A company I worked at paid significantly less. Also, even if particular companies are paying the "exact same salary" as other employees in the same or similar positions then the mere fact of increasing the number of prospective job seekers is going to dilute the market and reduce salaries for everyone. That combined with the fact that some companies are actually abusing the h1b system and paying reduced salaries reduces what the "market" rate is for those types of jobs.

Re:Lets cut the H1B's!

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Fuck this xenophobic bullshit. Curb H1B abuse, leaving only the genuine cases, and you solve the problem.

Re:Lets cut the H1B's!

[GeekBird]

Most companies I've worked for paid H1-Bs less, usually by giving them a lower title for the same qualifications and not giving them raises during their visa.

Re:Lets cut the H1B's!

[GeekBird]

I agree with this, and I'm a US citizen.

The US government needs to issue green cards on a fast track to technically skilled people, who then compete fairly in the market with other residents and citizens. Eliminate the incentive for companies to abuse their H1-B indentured servants, and then use that abuse to force citizens and green card holders to work under equally crappy conditions.

A fast track green card program for technically skilled people would provide the ability for those people to become fully invested in American society sooner. Plus, it would really prove how much of the 'skilled labor shortage' is real, and how much is really just a 'cheap skilled labor shortage'.

what this says

[slashmydots]

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.

Stephen Elop

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Stephen Elop

[CanHasDIY]

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?

looks a Ballmer

Pretty bad, apparently...

Re:Stephen Elop

[cheesybagel]

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.

Re:Stephen Elop

[Marginal Coward]

"Never ascribe to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by incompetence." (Or something like that.)

Re:Stephen Elop

[Jaime2]

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.

Re:Stephen Elop

[Richy_T]

So who will buy Microsoft? Facebook? AOL? Taco Bell?

Surprised? More to come

[whiskeytangofox]

"Synergies" is newspeak for layoffs and when there is M&A activity, layoffs inevitably follow. Looks like Nokia people are taking the lion's share of the cuts. With 127,000 employees there are probably a huge number of seat moisteners and business preventers who need to be dispatched. Perhaps some of them will go in the next waves.

Anyone left at Nokia afterwards?

[sasparillascott]

With 12,500 gone from the Nokia, is there going to be anyone left at (what was formerly known as Nokia) after this? Or did Microsoft just kill off their phone division?

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Anonymous Coward]

[Posting AC because I'm talking about my own employer.]

Bullshit. H1-Bs save employers more than enough to pay for the bureaucratic overhead of hiring them. That's a one-time cost that's easily amortized over the three or six years of the visa, and if you hire lots of H1-Bs, the process can be pretty well streamlined. You can even outsource the paperwork.

The last time I had to hire two code monkeys, the company hired an agency in India to find H1-B candidates. We interviewed over 20 candidates, and made offers to ten. Two of them turned out to have misrepresented their work histories, we finally hired two, and the rest ran screaming the other way when they saw what we offered. It was infuriating, but the bean-counters wouldn't budge. Get people who will take what we offer or do without.

This is what companies do. Their employees aren't their greatest asset, they're their greatest cost center. In the long term, it's stupid, but the suits don't care. They only care about this quarter's (or this week's) results. Why buy socks at Nordstrom when you can buy them at Walmart?

They are also killing off their Android phones

[core]

Not exactly a surprise
http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/17/5911909/microsoft-kills-off-its-nokia-android-phones

Re:They are also killing off their Android phones

[Nyder]

Not exactly a surprise
http://www.theverge.com/2014/7...

No way, MS kill a phone off after they just release it? They'd never do that, twice!!!!!

BINGO in the first paragraph alone

[darylb]

We have buzzword BINGO in the first paragraph. Holy cow.

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/

Re:BINGO in the first paragraph alone

[gstoddart]

We have buzzword BINGO in the first paragraph. Holy cow.

I have yet to hear a CEO speak without winning buzzword bingo in the first few sentences.

It's funny (and cringeworthy) because it's true.

I honestly can't decide if they know what they say sounds absurd, or if they really think they're saying intelligible things.

Years ago at another job, during the quarterly "Kool Aid/Rah Rah" speeches, if they were on a conference call ... people openly played buzzword bingo in the meeting room. With HR in the room.

Heck, we used to look at the semi annual roadmaps to see what unicorns and rainbows the CEO had cooked up now -- because invariably there were several entries which were gone in six months, and several entries which were so far outside of what the company did that nobody understood WTF they were about.

You can only hear a CEO be completely wrong about what we'll be doing in six months (let alone two years) before you come to the conclusion CEOs live in their own little bubble, and mostly company success happens without their help (or more accurately, despite their help).

But they still give themselves massive bonuses, even if not a single prediction they made in the last year actually came true.

Re:BINGO in the first paragraph alone

[timrod]

I think in this case, it's to avoid lawsuits. "Buzzword Bingo" speeches are made specifically to be as vague and neutral as possible so that there's zero chance of a discrimination lawsuit from someone who gets laid off as a result of these job cuts. A friend of mine just recently showed me a good example of why executives do this. His company went through a round of layoffs, and his was one of the jobs that was cut. Rather than simply use CEO-speak and lay him off, they fired him in an attempt to dodge paying him unemployment benefits - they claimed he was sleeping on the job, but none of the statements the managers there gave to the unemployment office matched up. He brought this up in an appeal to the unemployment office, and they awarded him benefits because they saw through the company's BS.

Outside of that, though? I think it's a Jungian thing. The CEOs think that successful CEOs speak in buzzwords all the time, so they form their own CEO persona and start acting like that because they want to be successful as well. What they probably don't realize is that the truly successful CEOs don't actually do that unless it's absolutely necessary and just assume they're doing the right thing by using buzzwords all the time. Whatever gets them promoted, I guess.

Re:BINGO in the first paragraph alone

[GeekBird]

I wish I could get one of those jobs. I guess I'm not enough of a sociopath.

Re:BINGO in the first paragraph alone

[david_thornley]

Most places in the US, you can lay off employees as you like. There's anti-discrimination laws, but they're pretty easy to get around if you don't flout them too badly. There are wrongful termination suits, but not all that many, and they are hard to prove. Firing for cause is another matter entirely, and anybody that does that too much will be on the wrong end of lawsuits.

I have seen CEOs of small companies that were direct, forthright, and honest in their speech. That's one reason I prefer to work for smaller companies.

Favorite buzzword used 3 times in her email

[DaveM753]

Ballmer: "Developers! Developers! Developers!"

Nadella: "Synergies! Synergies! Synergies!"

I predict that these layoffs will not prevent

[Presto Vivace]

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.

Re:I predict that these layoffs will not prevent

[Shados]

You can be pretty sure they're not going to lay off senior engineers, unless they're closing down certain offices and said engineers don't want to relocate, and its those they have issues finding. The junior mobile app devs and the HR people? Tough luck for them.

Re:I predict that these layoffs will not prevent

[Squidlips]

All the good senior engineers will have their resumes out already....

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[beelsebob]

And when you had to present evidence of how much a US citizen earned doing the same job, and why the salary you were paying these guys was at least as high, how did you prove that?

Things that make you go hmmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Squidlips]

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.

Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/12/2046214/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking

Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't I read here on Slashdot just last month that stack ranking is no longer used even at Microsoft?
http://slashdot.org/story/13/11/12/2046214/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking

Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Squidlips]

Too late.... Let's close that barn door after the cows have left. Innovation has evaporated at MS and they lost too many opportunities. Game over. They will have a long agonizing death living off companies that are hooked to their database and office products.... And I am sure that the deluxe douche bags in management who came up with Stack Ranking will have dreamed up some other way to demoralize the employees. Using Dilbert weasel words like synergy is a sure indication that the DBs are still running the show.

Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Daniel Hoffmann]

I believe they no longer practice stack ranking, I believe I saw an article on /. this year or last year about that.

It did take them a long time to stop using it though.

Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Roadstar]

Whoops! Did I get bitten by a beta bug or what? I'm fairly positive I had proper quote tags in the quoted part, but apparently they were ripped out when publishing the comment. Sorry about that.

Re:Freak out everyone for 6 months?!

[CanHasDIY]

>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).

Dead Sea effect looming?

[Squidlips]

The management is so bad at MS that I wonder if they have a Dead Sea effect. First there was "Stack Ranking", then the stifling of innovation, loss of market share, and now the looming huge layoffs in the next 6 months. You have to believe that all the best people have left or will leave shortly leaving just the salt. This will further stifle innovation...

Awesome news

[gelfling]

Another company eats its own buzzwords and kills over tons more jobs.

Re:Surprised? More to come

[cheesybagel]

The Wikipedia page says Nokia has 91 K employees. This layoff number seems mostly arbitrary. It is the typical management rack em up tactic of firing 10% of employees when the company is losing ground.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Raseri]

Present evidence to whom? There is no oversight of the H1-B program. What country are you from, if you don't mind my asking? (not being snarky, I'm genuinely curious)

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[beelsebob]

Bullshit, the forms you need to fill in when you submit your H1-B application require you to provide listings of similar jobs, and how much you pay them. I'm from the UK, but I live in the US, under an H1-B, hence knowing what you have to fill in on the forms ;).

Re:Surprised? More to come

[non0score]

Usually the "seat moisteners and business preventers" are the last to go. They are that because they have some ability to not get fired. The ones who tried to change the company for the better tend to be outcasts, and are usually the first ones to go.

Re:There's a shortage!!!

[dale.furno]

shortage of workers that have skills that will make money for the company

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Raseri]

Sorry, but nobody checks any of that out, thus, there's nothing to stop any company from putting whatever they want on the form and then paying the employee much, much less. You didn't get fucked over because you're from the UK, congratulations. It's much easier to fuck over people, from third-world shitholes like India, who think $30k/yr is a lot of money.

I hope you're enjoying your time in the colonies, anyway.

Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[CaptainDork]

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."

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[alexo]

You should have offered to help.
For $200/hour + expenses.

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[Richy_T]

Too cheap.

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[Voyager529]

You should have offered to help.
For $200/hour + expenses.

Too cheap.

You're negating the value of the "plus expenses" part when paired with a little creativity...

"I'd never make it there in time to help you if I didn't rent that Aston Martin!"
"The only place to eat between my location and your office was Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. I certainly didn't want to drive out of my way and delay this further!"
"The only laptop capable of handling that kind of process was the top-tier Macbook Pro...but I negotiated a discount on the iPad that I gave to the CEO in your name to ensure that you get full credit for leveraging the synergies!"

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[geekoid]

Still too cheap.

500+ expenses, 80 hour min.

That will still be cheaper then the actual; cost of figuring it out.

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[steelfood]

$200? I'd start at $400 and negotiate from there. Somebody's gotta pay for those rising medical care costs after all.

Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ...

[rsborg]

You should have offered to help.
For $200/hour + expenses.

That's the on-going contract rate with a 10hr monthly minimum, adhoc should be 2x that.

Half of their employees to be fired.

[pavon]

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.

Employees are assets - in a good way

[sjbe]

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...

Just playing devils advocate here but what terms would you suggest? Take the emotion out of it for a moment. I agree that it is rather cold but its hard to argue that employees are not a type of asset to the company. The most valuable kind of asset in many ways. Not one the company owns of course but you do not have to own an asset for it to be beneficial to the company. If someone is hired by the company to do specific work and the work they perform is no longer needed, exactly how is that functionally different than any other type of asset that is no longer needed by the company? On a coldly rational basis there is no difference.

That's not to excuse the horrible way many companies treat employees whose employment then need (or want) to terminate but just because the term is cold doesn't mean it is wrong. Disrespectful maybe but only in the sense that it is kind of coldly clinical.

Putting the emotion back into things, I can assure you from personal experience that having to fire someone is nearly as uncomfortable for the person doing the firing as it is for the person being fired. It is absolutely the thing I like least to do in my job and virtually all people who have ever had to let someone go will tell you the same thing. I've sat on both sides of the table and it's almost equally uncomfortable either way. Absolutely ruins your day as well as the time before and after usually. In some ways referring to it in coldly clinical terms is a bit of a coping mechanism.

Re:Employees are assets - in a good way

[Lumpy]

"Just playing devils advocate here but what terms would you suggest?"

Be honest and call it what it is...

Human resources will be renamed to "human trafficking and exploitation" so that it will be more accurate.

Re:Employees are assets - in a good way

[Richy_T]

It is correct but not politic. I don't know who thought it was a good idea. It sets the ground for an "us vs them" mentality which is probably not a bad idea from the employees point of view (many of whom have a fantasy-land vision of the employee/employer relationship and are frequently the most shocked when it comes to the rude awakening) but not from the company's point of view which has an interest in nurturing such delusions.

Concern for you employees is like sincerity. Once you can fake it, you have it made.

Re:Employees are assets - in a good way

[geekoid]

" Take the emotion out of it for a moment. "
no. That's the point. The shouldn't take the human out of it. They should take that into account when making these decisions.

Thank about it: We are creating a system to dehumanize our own species from survival.
That's bad, and it far more important then optimizing a bonus structure.

Re: Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason H-1Bs are popular in the us, even with the paperwork involved is simple:

H-1Bs produce actual work.
H-1Bd do not sue their employer constantly and frivolously.
H-1Bs do not sabotage or leave logic bombs behind.
H-1Bs do not spy and steal data.

The fact that imported labor is so prized just shows how incompetent and entitled so many Americans have gotten.

Re:Surprised? More to come

[gaudior]

Mergers & Acquisitions. It's a Wall Street Term of Art that describes the rape and murder of smaller companies by bigger ones.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Alioth]

But they are Nokia employees, the majority of which are in Finland. They don't have H-1B visas in Finland.

Re:Freak out everyone for 6 months?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah incentive for them to work harder to jump that sinking ship. If you wait for the RIFs, you're now competing with 17K people looking for a job.

They don't need to do this

[heusserm]

The company has had record profits for the past 4 years. Each year, they make more sales and more profit. They have 65 billion in the bank. They could take those 18,000 people and reorg them, give them a new mission, and make new software whose value exceeds the salaries.

Unless they can't.

Why can't they? Two possibilities come to mind. The first that MS is out of ideas, and the second that these people just aren't very good - that this layoff is a face-saving mechanism for MS to dump bad people on the market. By structuring it as a layoff, MS gets to give them a severance package in trade for a non-disclousre agreement - which ensures they don't go to the press. "Everyone wins."

Except for lady wisdom, honesty, and truth. Those are sort of shoved in a corner and ignored.

I'm pretty sure it is this second option because MS will continue to hire even as it fires.

Re:They don't need to do this

[Shados]

Generally when a successful company has massive layoffs, the number would technically be much, much higher, but the majority of people are transferred, moved to other initiatives, offered to relocate, etc.

The ones getting laid off either have incompatible skillsets (let say, embedded developers in a company that doesn't do embedded development...sure, you could retrain them, but they probably won't even want to), are weaker, or are in offices where the entire office is shut down.

Also, this isn't 18000 software engineers getting laid off. You only need so many HR people and project managers. Microsoft also has a LOT of open reqs, and anyone willing to relocate and who's qualified will be able to internally apply for those positions.

You can retrain and reorganize, but there's management overhead for that, and you can only do so many at one given time.

Re:They don't need to do this

[godrik]

It might be much easier to layoff people you don't need and hire people you need rather than trying to be a match-maker. That way you can pick people out of a pool of applicants rrather than out of a pool of people not useful in their current job.

Re:I guess they won't be hiring in the near future

[Squidlips]

Wrong. HR departments do not layoff themselves. They just keep getting bigger and bigger and more annoying and more annoying. They will keep dreaming up way to make themselves relevant such as politically-correct training programs or other such garbage.

How many affected are H1-Bs?

[poached]

During several rounds of layoffs I experienced in 2009, all of the workers laid off were non-H1-B holders. H1-Bs have better job security than their American counterparts (until they get their green card). I won't be surprised that the 18,000 are going to be either Western European or Americans. Hey at least in Western Europe they have better social services and losing your job won't be the end of your health care and other necessary services. America? Fuck it, you are out on the streets if you didn't save like a hawk. In this economy, finding a job will be very difficult, especially with that many hitting the streets at once.

Get rid of the dead weight and retrain the rest. You won't ever need H1-B to fill any jobs if your workforce is always trained and on the cutting edge.

Re:This is the beginning of the end for M$

[art123]

Ha ha. Good one. Last 7 quarters with $5 billion operating income per quarter.

M$ Vista Xbone Windoze sucks hard. Ha ha.

http://www.microsoft.com/Investor/EarningsAndFinancials/TrendedHistory/default.aspx

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[DigiShaman]

If we had any elected official worth their salt, they would state that we now have 18k back in the unemployment pool; thus we don't need 18k H1Bs.

Stil In Use?

[oshkrozz]

"toward synergies"
Seriously? I thought this buzzword was gone it has been years since I saw it as they got more organic ...

Are they just shutting their Cell Phone division?

[rsilvergun]

I find it hard to believe Nokia can lose 12,500 jobs and still be a company. Yeah, yeah, redundancies and all.

Or maybe they can, but what's that mean for the rest of us in this era of mergers where Company A buys Company B and suddenly there are half as many jobs. If that's really the case then we're just plain running out of work to do...

Grammatical Error Point made...

[michael_rendier]

That was funny. While reading the post you are ranting on, I didn't even notice the lack of periods or capital letters...and since talking about visas, i completely understood that the 'us' meant 'U.S.'...you must be having a difficult day at work...

same old, same old

[SonnyDog09]

I used to have a sign in my cube that read "The floggings will continue until morale improves." That seems to be the Microsoft strategy.

Will have no effect in the company

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

All those people who can make a difference have are all gone, pushed out, cashed out or burnt out. It is PHBs all the way up and all the way down. What salary they save will be paid out as bonuses to the executives. It was going nowhere with N people, now it will get there faster with (N - 18000) people.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[BigDaveyL]

Even if they did check things, I've seen write ups on how to abuse the system, like writing job descriptions for senior level positions but listing the job as a more junior level position.

So, they list the job as a "Junior business analyst" or even "business analyst" and then when Uncle Sam comes knocking, they can say "we're paying market rates, here's the BLS data for the position" even though if you looked deeper, the employee is expected to do much more.

Elon Musk at Nokia?...

[MikeRT]

You think Elon Musk went into Nokia with an understanding of what Nokia needed as a business? Or merely a view that whatever they were doing was wrong because it wasn't based on Microsoft stuff?

Don't you mean Stephen Elop? If Elon Musk had taken over Nokia, chances are Nokia would have ended up owning Samsung not being acquired by Microsoft.

Re:Elon Musk at Nokia?...

[gstoddart]

Don't you mean Stephen Elop?

Apparently, yes ... I knew there was an "Elo" in there somewhere. :-P

Re:Elon Musk at Nokia?...

[CronoCloud]

I'm always mixing them up too.

Re:Elon Musk at Nokia?...

[geekoid]

here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Anonymous Coward]

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."

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Meeni]

You do not know what you are talking about, and you are wrong. The forms are checked, and very often acceptance is conditional to an increase in salary. The administration do check the numbers and is not shy of bumping the salary requirement to match prevailing wages.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Raseri]

Tech wages are stagnant or falling, neither of which would happen if there was a shortage that was being met by equally- or more highly-paid imports. This would indicate that the rules are being neither followed nor enforced. You are, of course, free to believe anything you choose.

The sad part, IMO?

[King_TJ]

You'd think/hope that a company like Microsoft would have hired a pool of pretty intelligent and talented people. The brand name alone means they can advertise a new opening and get the "cream of the crop" chomping at the bit to work for them and submitting resumes.

Now they're essentially saying, "We've got at least 18,000 hires here who we can't figure out a way to do anything useful with that would earn us enough money to keep paying them, so we've got to let them all go."

What does that say about the company's vision and management abilities?

Re:The sad part, IMO?

[Shados]

The majority of the people they're letting go are people who joined via acquisition. That's fairly different. Then its probably going to be operation, redundant managers, etc.

I'd be surprised if a single engineer that was hired by Microsoft and who's actually performing, was let go.

Citation Provided

[Radtastic]

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...

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[geekoid]

". H1-Bs save employers more than enough to pay for the bureaucratic overhead of hiring them"
depends on industry and product. The cost of overseas work is going up, and it won't take much more for it to not be worth the hassle.
China is already starting to loose work.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[geekoid]

This is in Finland. Just so you know.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[godrik]

I am a foreign worker under H1B and currently in the process of applying for PERM. I don't know how other places are doing, but where I work (a US university) all these forms are posted on the boards of the building. They are right there for anybody to see AND complain if they think something is wrong or the position is unnecessary.

I know many H1B and they are not underpaid compared to the other people in the same company.

In this story, they are mostly firing assembly line workers from nokia it seems. Do you really believe they will manage to get an H1B to do that kind of job? I hardly think so.

Re:Are they just shutting their Cell Phone divisio

[cbhacking]

MS brought in about 25,000 Nokians, so it's about half of that. 50% cuts is huge, but part of the problem Nokia was having before (Pre-Elop, even) was a massively overinflated headcount of redundant positions. Add to that the fact that Nokia really does have a lot of redundant people now (MS already has marketing folks, sales folks, legal folks, etc.) and I can believe that they're getting cut by a large measure without it being crippling to the phone division.

Whether or not it survives a few more years, though... can't say. The 8.1 update finally brought a ton of stuff that people have been asking for since basically day one (unified notification center, one-touch control of settings, ringer volume separate from the app volume, etc.) and while some would say it's too late, there are parts of the world where 8.1 is actually fairly common (over 10% market share). That's enough of a foothold to carry on if they don't wreck the things they have going for them.

Just when you thought morale could not go lower

[Roadstar]

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/).

The correct tense is had. http://www.businessweek.com/ar...

Being an asset is circumstance dependent

[sjbe]

That's the point. The shouldn't take the human out of it. They should take that into account when making these decisions.

Sometimes you have to take the emotion out of it. I'm not saying remove all humanity from the situation but throwing a fit because you get referred to (accurately) as an asset is rather immature. I AM an asset and I wear the term proudly because it means I'm valuable to others. That doesn't mean I'm valuable in every situation. You put me on an NBA basketball court and I quickly become a liability and I'd be a fool to not realize that. I'm valuable for some things and not so much of others. Sometimes people who are assets in one circumstance become liabilities in another or when circumstances change. Treat it like the term geek and own it and you'll make it a positive thing.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[caywen]

code monkeys? You speak of employees not being the greatest asset, about how the "suits" don't care about them, only the quarter's results. Yet, you call your colleagues monkeys, unnecessarily demeaning their value. I smell hypocrisy.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[Curunir_wolf]

China is already starting to loose work.

Chinese work has actually been pretty loose for a long time.

Re:M$ astroturfers will always defend M$

[art123]

Ah shucks, anonymous coward is butt-hurt over simple facts from.the financial statements of a publicly held company.

I've been reading this site since day one. I guess MS is playing the long game when it comes to astroturfing. Yup, that must be it.

I Had Something Snarky For This

[Greyfox]

Oh, yes, that was it. "Now is a great time to unionize your labor!"

Re:Surprised? More to come

[GeekBird]

Agreed. I've been in the first wave too many times to not know it for truth. I still haven't learned how to kiss ass.

Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B

[shutdown -p now]

Last time MS had large layoffs, their H1B quota for 2009 was cut down significantly.

Good move :)

[LostMyBeaver]

First of all, Nokia was only worth the patents. Their tech was lame and Microsoft can do it better themselves. Also, Nokia focuses too much on making too many phones. A good team focusing on one damn good phone at a time is far superior and Nokia sucks at that.

Microsoft couldn't possibly just dump Nokia dead weight. If they did, it would be a disaster politically. So finding 5000 more workers in that monsterous company shouldn't be hard and there is certainly a pile of dead weight.

Well done!

Re: Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1

[DuckDodgers]

I don't have a problem with some man (or woman, whatever) in India getting a good job from a US company. That's fine.

What I dislike is that a US corporation will cut twenty million dollars off their annual payroll, replace it with eight million dollars in foreign workers - some outsourced and some cheaper H1Bs, and then the company divides the other twelve million per year between executives and shareholders. Clearly spending more money to hire, attract, train, and retain good talent is the height of stupidity. Unless of course you're dealing with corporate executives, in which case giving them little bonuses worth more than fifty regular employees earn in a year is the only reasonable way to do business. Long live the oligarchy!

Re: I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas

[wheeda]

I love this idea. The problem is programming/CS is too much of a mess to be able to engineer anything to a PE level. I suppose one could argue that NASA can do it. A PE quality programmer could do it on an extremely simple processor and tool chain, but having PE quality software isn't where the market is at.

Re:Freak out everyone for 6 months?!

[CanHasDIY]

We spell color without the "u" as well..

WWWwwwoooOOOOoooOOOooo, scaaaAAAaaaAAAarrrRRrrryyYYYyy AAaaaaaammmMMMEeeeerRRRiiiiCCcAAAAaaannnNNNsssSS!!!

H1Bs

[NewYork]

H1B is originally intended for extra-ordinary professionals like Albert Einstein, Linus Torvalds etc.
Google "Companies ruined or almost ruined by Indians".

Adaptec - Indian CEO Subramanian Sundaresh fired.
AIG (signed outsourcing deal in 2007 in Europe with Accenture Indian frauds, collapsed in 2009)
AirBus (Qantas plane plunged 650 feet injuring passengers when its computer system written by India disengaged the auto-pilot).
Apple - R&D CLOSED in India in 2006.
Apple - Foreign guest worker "Helen" Hung Ma caused the disastrous MobileMe product rollout.
Australia's National Australia Bank (Outsourced jobs to India in 2007, nationwide ATM and account failure in late 2010).
Bell Labs (Arun Netravalli took over, closed, turned into a shopping mall)
Boeing Dreamliner ES software (written by HCL, banned by FAA)
Bristol-Myers-Squibb (Trade Secrets and documents stolen in U.S. by Indian national guest worker)
Caymas - Startup run by Indian CEO, French director of dev, Chinese tech lead. Closed after 5 years of sucking VC out of America.
ComAir crew system run by 100% Indian IT workers caused the 12/25/05 U.S. airport shutdown when they used a short int instead of a long int
Dell - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Delta call centers (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Fannie Mae- Hired large numbers of Indians, had to be bailed out. Indian logic bomb creator found guilty.
GM - Was booming in 2006, signed $300 million outsourcing deal with Wipro that same year, went bankrupt 3 years later
HSBC ATMs (software taken over by Indians, failed in 2006)
Intel Whitefield processor project (cancelled, Indian staff canned)
Lehman (Spectramind software bought by Wipro, ruined, trashed by Indian programmers)
Microsoft - Employs over 35,000 H-1Bs. Stock used to be $100. Today it's lucky to be over $25. Not to mention that Vista thing.
Microsoft - Lian Yang, Microsoft-Contracted Engineer, Arrested in Smuggling Plot After Another FBI Sting in Portland in 2010
MIT Media Lab Asia (canceled)
PeopleSoft (Taken over by Indians in 2000, collapsed).
Qantas - See AirBus above
Quark (Alukah Kamar CEO, fired, lost 60% of its customers to Adobe because Indian-written QuarkExpress 6 was a failure)
Rolls Royce (Sent aircraft engine work to India in 2006, engines delayed for Boeing 787, and failed on at least 2 Quantas planes in 2010, cost Rolls $500m).
Skype (Madhu Yarlagadda fired)
State of Indiana $867 billion FAILED IBM project, IBM being sued
State of Texas failed IBM project.
Sun Micro (Taken over by Indian and Chinese workers in 2001, collapsed, has to be sold off to Oracle).
United - call center (closed in India because Premji's conmen don't even know how to use telephones, let alone computers)
Virgin Atlantic (software written in India caused cloud IT failure)
World Bank (Indian fraudsters BANNED for 3 years because they stole data).

stupidity

[pavlz]

i am happy, how things are going to m$- So people will understand, that they don't need to work for a corporation. if they was good developers of software, they would not have need to develop for such corporation. corporations are moved from the interest to capitalism. it is possible to gain money, without the need to develop for corporations. they could realize a team, dedicated to the develop of software, so that anyone can join anf gives his own contribute to the develop of software. now, will be again lay off for 18,000 workers. fine