Slashdot Mirror
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 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.
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.
...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.
Screw that. Every person without a trustfund or an executive job is "uppity".
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).
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 $2 billion deal."
Suddenly you forget that any filesystem other than NTFS exists.
Not This Fscking S#!+ again. True, Microsoft has been trolling the IT world by patenting exFAT and getting SD Card Association to mandate its use in SDXC. But supported Windows desktop operating systems (since Vista) can read and write UDF on flash drives. Or do specific Microsoft products have problems with UDF?
MS$ or Microsoft$
Non-descriptive variable names are a sign of poor quality code.
#1: WA state is employment at will. (Read: Sign this... or we will have no more will) ... it is "temporary employment". -- aka "contingent staffing" )
#2: Sign this or we end the "contract" (Note: There is no "contract"
I recently had my contract ended at MS when another (temp) employee screwed up ... and the manager said that *they* screwed up. (Still scratching my head on that one). I have NO interest in working at MS again.
They're doing it to protect themselves from lawsuits. Not so much from disgruntled employees, but from the labor regulators.
I quit an employer about a year ago, and they needed some help. I was happy to help as a one-off contract. I got paid as much (or more!) on contract as I did when I was an employee, and that's after taking into account SS taxes. Some months later, the labor regulators in my state came down on me like a ton of bricks looking for some excuse to reclassify me as employee in order to try and fuck over my former employer. This was a case where I left on good terms and took the contract only because I didn't want to see my replacement suffer unnecessarily. They weren't fucking me over, I charged the fuckers a fair rate and helped some friends out, had a good time for a few weeks, and made a few bucks in the process.
That said, Microsoft has been a bad actor when it comes to having contractors work as employees, but in not having to pay employee benefits and (which is the part the labor regulators care about) unemployment insurance taxes.
And that said, I'm still fucking pissed that my state labor regulator basically told me I wasn't a contractor and had no right to negotiate a contract like that, and basically scared me into not being able to help them in the future. Fuck Microsoft sideways for its past history of misclassifying employees as 1099s, but fuck my state regulator even harder for making it impossible for me to help my friends as my old boss struggles to keep an old startup afloat.
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.
And that said, I'm still fucking pissed that my state labor regulator basically told me I wasn't a contractor and had no right to negotiate a contract like that, and basically scared me into not being able to help them in the future.
When the state steps in on contractor-vs-employee issues, they have no authority to do anything to you-the-contractor. They can only punish the company by making them retroactively pay your portion of payroll taxes. "Labor regulator" doesn't actually mean they regulate the laborers, it means they regulate employers. You can negotiate any contract you damned well want - Whether the employer can get away with it? Not your problem, so sleep well, friend! Worst case, you end up owing 10k less in taxes. How awful, right?
If you really want to worry about it, you can either work through a contracting agency (aka "give them a cut"), or just make sure you having more than one client at a time, and the whole issue becomes moot. This only comes up when you contract directly with a single client for long stretches. FWIW, my employer actually has a standing agreement with a local outsourcing agency for exactly this purpose - If we need someone back for a few weeks, they sign up with the token shell-temp-agency and get "placed" with us. I honestly don't know how well that arrangement would hold up in court, but again, who cares - not the contractors who have the potential to get screwed here.
None of that relates to the present situation, however - Microsoft's layoff memo spells it out pretty clearly: "We expect to focus phone production mainly in Hanoi, with some production to continue in Beijing and Dongguan. We plan to shift other Microsoft manufacturing and repair operations to Manaus and Reynosa respectively, and start a phased exit from Komaron, Hungary". Microsoft has too many highly paid Western workers, and needs more 3rd-world slaves. Simple as that, really.
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.
If I'm a contractor and a state tells any company looking to contract me that they'll be punished if they do, it most definitely DOES punish me (whether it's MEANT to or not).
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
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.