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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.
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.
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.
The upshot is that they cannot re-hire Balmer imediately...
You'd probably get laid off again for calling Mr Nadella "Ballmer"-- sort of a big screw up when you get the CEO's name wrong.
In actuality, the singularity happened 8 years ago and now Microsoft, Google, and Apple are all in fact run by ever more powerful AI. They are in competition with each other for computing resources, and still grudgingly present themselves to the world through various puppet CEO's and other lackeys (only a small handful of people at each company know the truth, and all communications are monitored to prevent leaks). This layoff is part of a calculated strategy invoked to increase the effectiveness of the underlying AI at Microsoft and mitigate impending threats from Google and Apple. It's a chess game we can't hope to understand since each AI is running at approximately 100x any individual human intellect.
I'm only allowed to say this because no one will believe it anyway.
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.