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Microsoft Exec Opens Up About Research Lab Closure, Layoffs
alphadogg writes It's been a bit over a month since Microsoft shuttered its Microsoft Research lab in Silicon Valley as part of the company's broader restructuring that will include 18,000 layoffs. This week, Harry Shum, Microsoft EVP of Technology & Research, posted what he termed an "open letter to the academic research community" on the company's research blog. In the post, Shum is suitably contrite about the painful job cut decisions that were made in closing the lab, which opened in 2001. He also stresses that Microsoft will continue to invest in and value "fundamental research".
Of-course MS is firing American workers, why is it a surprise? The surprising part is that they are not doing it faster and bigger, but I guess everything in its time. There will be more cuts and then more and eventually MS will transition its operations to Asia out of the West, where the productive Asians can actually afford to purchase their products, while the Americans can purchase less and less, made unproductive by their socialist/fascist state and ideology.
You can't handle the truth.
That's a load of bull. Just about every company that's had significant research institutions and has closed them down has suffered long-term from that choice. Xerox, Bell, IBM, and several others in telecom/computing alone have done this and suffered the consequences.
Fundamental research is what drives long-term profit. Sure, it costs money. But it also produces patentable products that can revolutionize the market and allow the company to profit from patent licensing even when they aren't interested in the market that the patent would apply to. Get rid of the research and the company's products go stale over time, no new ideas, rehashing of existing ones to the point that someone with new innovation comes along and steals away all of the customers. Short-term it might make more profit, but long term it's like selling one's investments for cash.
This is a terrible mistake for Microsoft.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
In their defense, lots of research and development is done by startups these days, the successful ones are bought. What's the last thing to come out of M$ labs, and before you fall all over yourself saying "kinetic" there were several such devices offered by startups at the same time, they could have fired 18k years sooner.
I would like to thank the broad computing research community which has taken the time to share its thoughts and concerns about the recent closure of our research lab in Silicon Valley.
Translation: thanks, you guys are typical academic opinionated armchair quarterbacks...
I share with all of you a strong belief in the value of fundamental research and its importance for the long-term viability of our company, our industry and our society, and want to reassure you of Microsoft’s commitment to fundamental research.
Translation: The reason MS R&D was created was to do cheap R&D by passing on the hard work to Academia. And you guys bought it--an academic researcher being able to deliver directly to production....that's like being the next stanford's facebook or google.
Unfortunately, no organization – governmental, industrial or academic – is immune to change and the technology business in particular is defined by rapid evolution.
Translation: MS R&D partnering with academia promised so much in really unrealistic ideas, when it's all about execution. Hence we ran out of good will from our customers--you guys over promised. Look at Google X, they're heading in the same direction.
Technology businesses need to constantly adapt in order to survive.
Translation: Fundamental (aka academic) R&D gave us pipe dreams, stuff that only worked in controlled environments, un-manufacture-able. Businesses must adapt by churning out great products, not cool demos/ideas.
In July, our new CEO, Satya Nadella, discussed how Microsoft would transform to be the productivity and platform company for a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and evolve its culture to be more nimble. This transformation included reducing our workforce by 18,000 jobs. Each organization within Microsoft, including Microsoft Research, is accountable for driving changes in culture and organization, and each has to participate in the job reductions.
Translation: Fundamental/academic R&D sucked in the end. Obviously the community doesn't agree. Thanks guys.
MS does not need to spend anything on R&D. They simply allow other companies to take the expense and the risk, then buy them out.
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Profit.
I think a lot of the SVC people laid off were people working on Microsoft Products for Apple. Mountain View, at the facility South of the I-101/I-85 interchange, near Moffett Field, were there to do work on Mac OS X products. I you look at the Microsoft job postings, you'll see that almost everyone in APEX is a continuing engineer, and that there are a small number of Objective-C and iOS openings that all appear to be concentrated on front-ending Office 365 on Mac OS X and iPhone, iPod, and iPad, rather than native applications.
I expect this is the non-announcement that Office 2014 for Apple products is going to be nothing more than a front-end wrapper for their subscription products. This somewhat makes sense, given that Apple has been pressuring them on productivity apps on their platforms, and that "good enough" is the enemy of "expensive". If you couple this with Mac OS X *never* having been a tier 1 platform for Office products (where's VB 5, VB.Net, Acces, etc. for Mac OS X?), it was never intended that Apple desktop systems be able to compete with Windows desktop systems in terms of being able to do the same vertical market development using ports from Windows vertical market development. It was an avoidance of cannibalizing the Windows market in that area.
Obviously, I could be wrong, but when working at Apple, I visited the Office developers there several times to deal with OS and kernel related issues; the only place they seem to be willing to hire Objective-C people seems to be Redmond or Bellevue, and it appears to be for things like Skype development, not office; the APEX jobs appear to be remaining in Mountain View at present, and greatly scaled back.
gets a PhD to work in industry and have their work patented?
Microsoft is run by marketing alone. Research has no place there as it will never be able to influence any decisions.
HTTP/1.1 400
There are still 11 labs world-wide, and 5 of them are in the USA. http://research.microsoft.com/...
I suspect Silicon Valley is just a VERY high-cost location, and I know I wouldn't work there without 3x what I make now working in the midwest.
You can work remotely, you know...
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.