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.)

Comments

Re:How many employees does Slashdot need?

[Penguinisto]

Nice flamebait, but let's make it an educational moment:

Every product/project-centric company builds up cruft over time, and not just Microsoft. Intel does periodic flushes as they dump R&D groups (I used to work for DHG at Intel). OTOH, let's face it - Microsoft's habit of counter-productivity between teams (coupled with their previous habit of stack-ranking employees) is frickin' *legendary*. MSFT seriously does need to clean house, and badly. They aren't the hungry company they were back in the '80s and '90s, and they've become about as nimble as a supertanker with a busted rudder. I mean, c'mon - who the hell else would sink untold billions of R&D money into a product (XBox/360/One) that still has yet to realize overall ROI, 15 years later?

The new CEO has a big job ahead of him. He's seen what happens to most tech companies as they reach middle age, and he knows that there's no crazy-ass visionary (e.g. Steve Jobs) coming to jump in and revitalize them.

Re:How many employees does Slashdot need?

[mspohr]

I am not a business expert but agree that MS probably has a lot of dead wood and poorly managed employees.
Mass layoffs are one way to deal with this problem and this is what most companies do periodically.
However, it seems to me that it is a sign of a poorly managed company if they need to do mass layoffs. A well managed company would be continuously evaluating employees and their work and making adjustments to personnel requirements every month. It seems supremely stupid for a company to suddenly wake up one day and discover that it has an extra xx thousands of employees.
If a company is continuously adjusting personnel, it is also much easier on the employees since there are more opportunities to move employees to more appropriate jobs, re-train them for new tasks, or, failing that, provide comprehensive out-placement service. This would define a company which values human resources.
Unfortunately, these MS employees are likely to be unceremoniously dumped with minimal chance of re-employment.

Re:How many employees does Slashdot need?

[drinkypoo]

Reading 'lol M$ sux' over and over again becomes extremely boring.

I think you need to work on the filter logic in your parser. It doesn't seem to be kicking in before you get all emotional. You likely want to filter out the things that you don't care about that don't matter before emotional engagement.

Also, Microsoft does suck, and replacing the letter S with a dollar sign has a long and hallowed history which in computing dates back at least to Compu$erve. Whinging won't change those things. Microsoft is a convicted criminal. If it were a person, even or perhaps especially a person as rich as Microsoft is, it would be imprisoned and its ill-gotten gains seized.