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No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months
theodp (442580) writes So, what does Microsoft do for an encore after laying off 18,000 employees with a hilariously bad memo? Issue another bad memo — Changes to Microsoft Network and Building Access for External Staff — "to introduce a new policy [retroactive to July 1] that will better protect our Microsoft IP and confidential information." How so? "The policy change affects [only] US-based external staff (including Agency Temporaries, Vendors and Business Guests)," Microsoft adds, "and limits their access to Microsoft buildings and the Microsoft corporate network to a period of 18 months, with a required six-month break before access may be granted again." Suppose Microsoft feels that's where the NSA went wrong with Edward Snowden? And if any soon-to-be-terminated Microsoft employees hope to latch on to a job with a Microsoft external vendor to keep their income flowing, they best think again. "Any Microsoft employee who separated from Microsoft on or after July 1, 2014," the kick-em-while-they're-down memo explains, "will be required to take a minimum 6-month break from access between the day the employee separates from Microsoft and the date when the former employee may begin an assignment as an External Staff performing services for Microsoft."
Likely not just to prevent leaks, but also to prevent any contractors from being reclassified as employees.
This is a repeat of 2k9. They laid us off scheduled the 4th of July, but we were removed from our posts on 4th of May, and our access revoked. And while they hired the same number of people immediately the people who were laid off could not apply for 5 months.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
I was in the same situation once. Laid off by Northern Telecom in the late '80s, I started work as a contractor at their head office three weeks later for double what I'd been paid as an employee. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Not sure what blocking re-employment has to do with leaks. If anything driving people to other companies is likely to cause MORE leaks.
This is almost certainly about eliminating the risk of contingent workforce being classified as employees. My own employer does the same thing, though it does not bar long-term relationships as long as the company doesn't interview individual workers. That is, if we hire Fred to help out with something, then Fred is gone in two years and must take a break. On the other hand, if we hire Acme janitorial to clean our trash and they send over Fred then he can work for years, but we don't get a veto on who they send/etc.
I have mixed feelings. On one hand it does make things harder on those who end up having to move on. On the other hand, before the policy we used to have a LOT of people who would be dragged along in a contract position with the elusive promise of a hire that would take years to happen. The policy forces managers to act if they don't want to lose somebody.
I wonder how local governments will feel about this. Not only do they have ratepayers who have lost their jobs, but those rate payers can't then get jobs with other local companies with roles open for Microsoft work. In bigger cities it might not matter but in smaller areas that might be quite a cross section of the local economy blocked to the ex-staff. Pretty much guaranteeing them needing to move.
But I guess that is just corporate behaviour 101.
Microsoft "Managers" are managing, for a change.
Microsoft adds, "and limits their access to Microsoft buildings and the Microsoft corporate network to a period of 18 months, with a required six-month break before access may be granted again."
This is standard operating procedure in the financial industry. The whole reason is to avoid an uppity contractor from getting too buddy-buddy with staff and then turning around and suing either Microsoft or their contracting company for not giving them employee benefits. Nothing to do with NSA and snowden antics. That wouldn't solve the access problem with snowden anyway
I am a contractor (green badge) at Intel, and I have to abide by the same policy. 18 months on, six months off. It's no big deal.
In fact, I kind of like it. I know when my "use by" date is, and I can't negotiate it, so I don't get too comfortable. Not that I don't like working at Intel, I do, but I try never to get too comfortable as a contractor.
It's akin to someone's 80 year old, 400 lb grandmother barricading herself in her house with a shotgun to prevent 20-something horny frat boys from taking advantage of her body.
And wondered was M$ chipping their employees now
For those needing another reason not to purchase Microsoft products...they just fired 18,000 people but are lobbying the government for an ever increasing number of wage slaves from India and other countries. They can hire these poor saps at lower salaries, bully them into working long hours for no additional pay (it's that bad 'ol offshore middleman that's blamed for the sweatshop hours) while backhanding profits to cronies in these offshore companies. Meanwhile, they whine that they can't find any qualified local staff. Actually, they just can't find local staff willing to work for third world salaries while living with first world expenses and taxes. Just say no.
Grandma's still got a chance of being raped if those frat boys are drunk enough and high enough.
...seems to be a great reason not to work for MS. He and Microsoft took one of the finest companies in the world, turned it inside out, and devoured it like a panic-stricken predator conscious that the end of the path it was on was in sight. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the acquisition of Nokia only bought time. When you rip open the goose that lays the golden eggs, it stops working.
Grandma's still got a chance of being raped if those frat boys are drunk enough and high enough.
... Which pretty much explains every 'Enterprise IT' purchasing decision ever.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Grandma's still got a chance of being raped if those frat boys are drunk enough and high enough.
Well, I guess that's one way to describe why people buy Microsoft products...
Specifically, states like California are now trying to reclassify temporary employees as permanent in order to collect additional tax revenue. This happened with Apple before, and they also now have a 6 month rule. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Microsoft is particularly sensitive to the issue, given that it was a lawsuit against them that triggered the whole idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
So this has nothing to do with the laid off employees (unless they are laying off contractors first, which is pretty common, if they can).
Not sure what the rules are at MS or CA, but I took voluntary redundancy from my job last year. That company had a minimum 6 month stand down from being re-employed there. This was to prevent people getting a large redundancy payout (proportional to time employed) and getting a job back at the same company the next day. I took my 6 month payout, had a nice two month holiday and got a job at another company for more $.
I don't see anything sinister with this policy from MS.
Nothing in that language excludes cafeteria workers, janitors, HVAC repairmen, etc. Does MS really mean to restrict blue-collar workers to 18-month stints too? Their employers won’t necessarily have another gig available for them, and they’re far less likely than coders and managers to have a financial cushion.
Hey, looks like Donald Sterling's getting a $2 billion dollar Microsoft "severance" package. From TMZ: "Ballmer went to Sterling's Beverly Hills estate Monday at 3 PM, along with Shelly Sterling's lawyer, Pierce O'Donnell ... who brokered the $2 billion deal."
I was constantly amazed at how clueless the executives were when talking about the company with people being laid off present: "We're excited about the future things are going to be great, everything is roses, etc". Like they were saying "getting rid of all of you is so awesome."
I think Microsoft is setting up a situation that the courts will find repugnant. Restraining future employment seems to be at play here.
See, we need to bring in more H-1B talent to take these American jobs, because we will not let the people that we fired even work for our vendors.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Suddenly you forget that any filesystem other than NTFS exists.
Not This Fscking S#!+ again. True, Microsoft has been trolling the IT world by patenting exFAT and getting SD Card Association to mandate its use in SDXC. But supported Windows desktop operating systems (since Vista) can read and write UDF on flash drives. Or do specific Microsoft products have problems with UDF?
An unregulated business practice designed to funnel jobs and monies overseas? Say it ain't so, George, say it ain't so!
What else would you use for a company that started out publishing BASIC interpreters for 8-bit microcomputers, where string variables' names always ended with $? (DEFSTR, DECLARE, and unnumbered lines came in the 16-bit era.)
Will Microsoft Corp. refer RIF'ers to the US Justice Department and DHS as suspect Terrorists !
They already did ! And for a sweet load of pennies; thousands of Trillions of pennies.
Nice pay day Microsoft.
1. Hire contractor.
2. 6 months to train them up.
3. 6 months of actual work from them.
4. 6 months using them to train their replacement.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Given the sheer amount of time it takes to get someone effective in a large bureaucratic organization, it is *mind-boggling* that critical staff positions end up being held by contractors who have to do the contractor dance. Most companies have tricks they use to avoid the contractor dance (reclassifying something as an SOW, rather than hourly position, for example), but that's just another dodge to avoid actually hiring someone and giving them employee protections.
Most large projects take *years* to get to fruition - if you're going to use contractors for anything other than dumb, grunty labor that takes a tech only a week to get up to speed in, you're abusing people and destroying value.
by the end of next decade they are building a Linux distro. The trick is that it will only run a version of Microsoft Office and almost nothing else.
Linux already runs Office. I have MS Office installed under Wine and it's always run fine for me.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
If you do not sign an agreement when hired, is it legal for Microsoft to bar employment after termination? While it's surely possible that MS makes many sign such an agreement at hire time, for those that don't I'd be contacting a Lawyer for a class action lawsuit.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Pink-slips are so pretty waving in the bright sun!
Table-ized A.I.
As a former paid Microsoft shill (okay, contractor on like four different projects), I would wholeheartedly welcome this if I ever went back. Which I won't, but still.
One year was too little time. It takes months to ramp up; now you get a lot more productive time.
And 90 days of downtime between jobs was awkward--it's hard to set up a 3 month contract that fit perfectly in those dates. Realistically, you'd find another 6-month job in the meantime, and not go back to Microsoft until well after the mandatory break, even if MS was the best job you could get at the time.
So yeah. This is better for employees' stability, and for managers getting more productive time out of contractors.
I mean, if they were laid off, then that tends to mean that they *can't* be hired back on... at least not immediately. My understanding is that "laid off" means that the person is being let go because there isn't enough work to justify paying them, so how could they even *think* of hiring back anyone?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
MS has had problems with perma-temps before: class action suits, Dept of Labor troubles, IRS troubles.
This isn't all that unusual: most companies have a "can't work as a contractor for us for more than 18-24 mo" with a blackout period
from Canada? Are they all evil?
Mostly random stuff.
I remember a BASIC interpreter where only the first two characters of a variable are significant.
On the contrary, I wish we'd had this when I was laying off low-performers in 2009. Maybe they wouldn't have been able to come back as vendors and pollute the ecosystem in a month.
Legally, if you are continuously working for the same company as a contractor for longer than 2 years then you are considered a regular employee, with all the rights and privileges that go along with that. Washington State may say 18 months, who knows, or Microsoft is being cautious. At any rate. It is more of a legal move than a jerk move. I agree they hire too many H1B visa employees. I also agree that companies such as Microsoft who lay off huge numbers from their workforce only to turn them into contract workers should be illegal. They do it for economic reasons. When a company is run by a bunch of MBA's, this is what you get. Everyone is a number and has an assigned value. You are just a cell on a spreadsheet.
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
Oh who am I kidding. You stupid fucks are too stupid to strike. Fuckers. All of you.
I wish I still had mod points. +1 Fuck Yeah. Or something like that.
No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months
Maybe it's common parlance down your way, but what does RIF mean? Recently Inconveniently Fired? Real Imitation Fur? Raw Industrial Faeces?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm guessing it's an acronym so let's see what might fit...
Reading is fun!
Resistance is futile
Resource interchange format
Royal Irish Fusileers
None of those seem to have any bearing on the context of the article (other than a tenuous reference to Borg Gates). Any editors around to perhaps explain what it means?
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
I took 'voluntary' separation from IBM, and part of the conditions for leaving with a lump sum was that I can never work for IBM either directly or via an agency or contract anywhere in the world ever again.
There's always a risk that IBM would take over all of the major employers and I would have been right royally fucked, but then what are the real chances of that ever happening?
If I got a memo like that I would have stopped reading it after the first two paragraphs, if not after the first one. I have better things to do!
This has only to do with labor laws and how contractors can be reclassified as regular employees under certain circumstances. For example, an employee cannot "quit" and then come back right away as a contractor to make more money. The IRS does not like this, because most of the time it is done by employees with extraordinarily long commutes or other ways to take huge deductions from their gross.
It also prevents companies firing employees only to hire them back as contractors to avoid paying benefits and FICA taxes.
Microsoft is only making sure they do not run afoul of labor laws. Because, you know, in its zeal to "protect" workers, the government would be all too happy to fine Microsoft millions of dollars and then not give a dime of the fine money to affected workers.
I think that was "Applesoft", the BASIC interpreter that Apple licensed from Microsoft for inclusion with the Apple II Plus and later.
When they close the door, they close it hard.
The move dooms Microsoft to irrelevance by preventing it from using the talent necessary to fix Windows' problems. BUT - without Microsoft to absorb the accusations of "monopoly" by economic know-nothings (at any given time in any market, there is always a largest player. This does not make that player a monopolist), it will now be Apple's turn in the barrel.
There is not discrimination against smokers. They aren't allowed to smoke anywhere they want to and pollute other people's lungs. They had a century or two to to police themselves, and it seems they couldn't do it, so laws were passed. Is it reasonable to hike Smoker's insurance because they tend to get cancer a lot more than other people and incur more medical bills? Sure, because it is a choice they make. Unlike a genetic condition, they can choose to change their behavior. In the meantime, they are just being asked to pay their share of medical bills being incurred. The flip side would be to boost the rates of non-smokers to subsidize the medical treatment of someone who just felt like taking up smoking.
African-Americans were discriminated against, they couldn't change their skin color. Any time smokers feel picked on, they can stop smoking.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
What does RIF mean, for those of us not employed in Washington state (or maybe US).
Since MS can't find a use for the people they're laying off, they obviously don't have a need for anymore H1B visas. In fact, the Feds should cut the H1B visa allotment back by the same number of employees tech companies furlough every year. As Republicans like to say, "Let the Market work it out."
Nokia had some issues but was still profitable as Tomi Ahonen clearly documents in this long post. tl;dr? A couple of short quotes and links to graphs:
Let me repeat. Nokia did NOT have a problem in its handsets business. Its issues were in its Networking business line.
Now the graphs:
Nokia profits by business line Note: Elop took over Sept. 21, 2010.
Which company had the strongest handset business?
Which company saw their handset business tank and when?
Smartphone marketshare
Ballmer isn't CEO anymore dude... He got his golden parachute already and he's well out of the game.
Catch up, would you?
... but really? Wouldn't it be better to just work a normal job and not have to screw around like that?
"Normal" jobs are gone. It's all about Bullshit Jobs now (see http://strikemag.org/bullshit-... ). The combination of unchecked greed of the ruling class, the pace of technological innovation, and placation of the peasant masses by shit like "hiding in the basement playing WoW" is resulting in a structural social REMOVAL of what we've been sold as the path to the American dream. The american peasant class (e.g. the 99%) has been systematically screwed for over a 1/3 of a century now. And hardly any of us are paying attention to it...
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
I read that RFID'd, and then I spent about 60 seconds wondering what those guys I Redmond had been up to. Then I calmed down and reread it.
You can do anything you want. Only if you were fired you would be help liable.. if you are let go they can't stop you from earning money with the skill set you have.
The US is an anti-social middle income country which happens to have some very wealthy people who live in it and run it.
It only feels wealthy for the average person when buying consumer electronics.
Or maybe Clippy?
CLEARLY the Nadella (or whoever is doing this under his name...) is going to damage and possibly DESTROY Microsoft's competitiveness...
The KILLING OF A EXTREMELY POPULAR BRAND like Nokia, the PANIC EJECTION of huge numbers of VERY TALENTED staff together with USELESS YES MEN/WOMEN will HALT any capability MSFT might have left to successfully EVOLVE into a future-proof company.
The HUGE INSUCCESS - not to use the word DISASTER - of windows tablets IS a BUSINESS BOTTOM LINE CRUNCHING debacle tha ONLY ILLUMINATED, STRATEGIC THINKING "DOERS" and NOT YES MEN can ever be able to implement.
Time for investors TO GIVE NADELLA AN ULTIMATUM or BE FIRED by Q4 2014.
This sounds very similar to rules that have been in place for contractors for a long time (i.e. since the early 1990s). Contractors at many tech companies (in the Silicon Valley at least) are limited to a certain period of time, so as others have said, they aren't "effectively" employees.
I got outsourced from my company (Large Insurance Company) to a three letter integrator that starts with I and ends with M. I worked for that large integrator for 2 and 1/2 years. Then the axe came and they laid me off. I worked for another huge insurance company for 3 months and then got the call to come back to my same job same seat same everything but as a contractor. I took the position back because I got sick of driving to Boston from Hartford / Springfield every day. I don't know why the integrator thinks it's better to fill their rolls with contractors but they do. Each time I got laid off I got a huge package which wasn't bad either though of course if I get laid off now I'm going to have to rush finding something quicker than before. I feel like I"m falling off the ladder of success and hitting every rung on the way down....
Paul E. Bahre
Again, a Nokia buy, the writing was on the wall. Buy the company, absorb what you want, and discard what you don't; especially the employees. How sad.
Repeat, Microsoft buys out FoxPro to get their Rushmore technology and kills it. Again, another David vs Goliath where David continually dies.
I worked at Microsoft through the 1990s. The manufacturing division went through this retraining genesis spending $1 million of budget in consulting fees to train employees to be better so they could work for another company who quickly died from existence within a few years after sale. The writing was on the wall in pulling that much money from, ahem, my budget for some BS. I get it, manufacturing and replication, not our core business anymore. In-source it for years to get it the engineering right, setup up authorized outsourced manufacturing and get them right and perfect, and then complete 100% outsource to improve shareholder portfolio and move supply to a contract rather than employees. Employees are contracts with headaches, Contracts are just lawyers with an itchy finger on their take no matter who wins or loses. I get it.