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Finnish Government Criticizes Microsoft For Job Cuts, 'Broken Promises' (softpedia.com)
jones_supa writes: Softpedia reports: "Microsoft has recently announced a new round of job layoffs at its Mobile unit in Finland, as it moves forward with its restructuring and reorganization plan following the acquisition of Nokia's Devices and Services unit. The Finnish government has criticized Microsoft for turning to more job cuts in the country, pointing out that the company has a huge responsibility to help those who are being let go. Microsoft's latest job cut round included 1,850 people, 1,350 of which are said to be working in Finland. 'I am disappointed because of the (initial) promises made by Microsoft,' Finance Minister Alexander Stubb was quoted as saying by Reuters. 'One example is that the data center did not materialize despite the company's promise.'" He refers to Microsoft's promise in 2013 to invest $250 million in a data center located in Finland that was specifically meant to provide services to European customers. All of these worries are not unfounded as the employment situation in Finland is still quite terrible, and the decline of Nokia's former phone business certainly exacerbates the situation.
Microsoft is a large corporation. They could have made an investment in a new direction using these people. Layoffs are just the quick and easy out.
They didn't have to buy Nokia in the first place. They completely wasted the resource and all their investors money for no net return because they never really wanted to be a phone company, it was just a bullet point on the "How do we measure compared to Google and Apple" powerpoint slide.
It would be nice if corporations saw people as the resources they are rather than just expendable cogs. It's not the workers fault Microsoft's board of directors couldn't figure out how to run a phone division.
If government don't like what private corporations do, they need to buy them up and own them. This actually works as long as the business continues to be managed like a business - either not-for-profit or with profits put back into the public purse - and not as a money sink.
(This is all democratic socialism is - not some Soviet bogeyman. Government buys up / builds heavy industry and runs in the long term interest of its shareholders, the country's citizens each with one share, as opposed to the short term interest of private shareholders.)
The alternative is whole countries beholden to corporate interests when their governments start relying on the promises of business.
I think that Microsoft is missing a huge opportunity with Linux at the moment.
Many Linux users, especially those running large enterprise Linux deployments, are not happy with the systemd situation.
Time and time again systemd has caused them too many problems. The mailing lists and bug trackers of the numerous Linux distros that have switched to systemd are full of reports of problems, including Linux installations that don't fully boot thanks to some problem with systemd.
All Microsoft needs to do is realize that there is a lot of pent-up demand for a top-notch, modern Linux distro that doesn't force systemd on its users. These users would even be willing to pay a modest sum if it meant avoiding systemd.
Some people will bring up Windows at this point, but I think it's becoming clear that Microsoft is diversifying away from it. Azure already supports Linux, and a Microsoft Linux distro that's guaranteed to be free of systemd would make Azure very appealing to a lot of people.
If Microsoft could make such a Linux distro also integrate well with Windows networks, it would become even more appealing to those serious enterprise users who need to run a heterogeneous infrastructure.
If this Linux distro came with excellent support for .NET, C#, and SQL Server, then it would become even more appealing.
Perhaps some, if not all, of these Finnish employees could have been put to work on this theoretical Microsoft Linux distro. Systemd has left Linux ripe for disruption, and they could have been the ones to turn the entire Linux community on its head by providing a Linux distro that's better than the rest.
I never expected to write this, but I would welcome a Microsoft Linux distro. Even if they just avoid systemd, that would already put it well above and beyond the other mainstream Linux distros.
If Nokia had instead become a generic Android phone shifter, their profit margins would have gone way down, and there is no way they could have continued to support such a large workforce, and they certainly would not need Symbian developers. There is no realistic scenario where these people would have kept their jobs. Microsoft certainly accelerated the implosion, but they were not the root cause.
The point is exactly that Nokia was _not_ trying to be a generic Android phone shifter, but the third contender (or fourth considering RIM) with Meego. Obviously they did not need all those Symbian developers, that's why they bought Qt and made a deal with Intel and the Linux Foundation over a Linux system for mobile devices and then hired a lot of MeeGo developers. Since MeeGo was designed to make a smooth transition from Symbian, there was indeed a realistic scenario where those people would have kept their jobs: the success of MeeGo. And since MeeGo could capitalize on the success of Symbian (it still had a 30% market share in early 2011), it had more chances at succeeding than WP.