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Ask Slashdot: How Many Employees Does Microsoft Really Need?
An anonymous reader writes: Yesterday, word came down that Microsoft was starting to lay off some 18,000 workers. As of June 5th, Microsoft reported a total employee headcount of 127,005, so they're cutting about 15% of their jobs. That's actually a pretty huge percentage, even taking into account the redundancies created by the Nokia acquisition. Obviously, there's an upper limit to how much of your workforce you can let go at one time, so I'm willing to bet Microsoft's management thinks thousands more people aren't worth keeping around. How many employees does Microsoft realistically need? The company is famous for its huge teams that don't work together well, and excessive middle management. But they also have a huge number of software projects, and some of the projects, like Windows and Office, need big teams to develop. How would we go about estimating the total workforce Microsoft needs? (Other headcounts for reference: Apple: 80,000, Amazon: 124,600, IBM: 431,212, Red Hat: 5,000+, Facebook: 6,800, Google: 52,000, Intel: 104,900.)
42
If you're gonna be pedantic, then do it right:
64K = -209.15 C = -344.47 F
64k = 64,000
If they care about their customers (HA!) they should put at least half the employees they're letting go into expanded testing and security divisions.
good idea! if they sic a bunch of HR drones on to testing and security issues, the problem will be solved in weeks.
They need exactly 63 999 employees
You must work in the marketing department of a hard drive company.