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Microsoft To Lay Off Another 2,850 People In the Next 12 Months (businessinsider.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a report via Business Insider: Microsoft is planning to lay off 2,850 more employees in the next 12 months or so, according to Microsoft's full 10-K report it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Part of the document reads: "In addition to the elimination of 1,850 positions that were announced in May 2016, approximately 2,850 roles globally will be reduced during the year as an extension of the earlier plan, and these actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2017." Business Insider reports: "The first 1,850 layoffs mentioned here were mainly from Microsoft's struggling smartphone business, including 1,350 employees in Finland working at what was once Nokia world headquarters. These layoffs also included people in Microsoft's salesforce, which was recently reorganized and saw the departure of COO Kevin Turner. In total, Microsoft laid off 7,400 employees in its last fiscal year, which ended on June 30th, 2016. The new layoffs are a continuation of the same plan, and include the sales group as well as others. About 900 people affected by the new layoffs were already informed during the sales reorganization, according to a person familiar with Microsoft's plans."
The severance pittance^W package is tied to an "exit interview" that involves upgrading to Windows 10.
MS must have some kind of assurance the H1B pipeline will be at full capacity for the foreseeable future.
to pay off all those judges & lawyers that are going to be sueing the pants off of them over the windows 10 upgrade debacle
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
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Sick of seeing profitable companies laying people off like this. I'm a right to work guy normally but this is starting to really piss me off. My company did the same shit. Had a great quarter then the next day after earnings released "By the way we need to lay off 3% of staff to position us better for next quarter."
Tech industry should really unionize. I hate unionize generally but this industry needs it.
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have promised this for years. Only Trump and the Republicans are complaining about the loss of jobs for Americans. This is what I read and hear in the News Media.
that pipeline has a name: hillary clinton
They are pivoting to the cloud. Firing people who worked on non-cloud projects (mainly smartphone), hiring new ones to work on cloud projects. Incidentally, the total Microsoft workforce is ~115,000, so this is not a huge amount.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It looks like 2014 saw a large bump in employees:
:)
Fiscal Year Ending Head Count Net Revenue (US$) Growth Net Income (US$) Growth
June 30, 2016 114,074 $85.32B -9% $16.79B 38%
June 30, 2015 117,354 $93.58B 8% $12.19B -45%
June 30, 2014 128,076 $86.83B 12% $22.07B 1%
June 30, 2013 99,139 $77.85B 6% $21.86B 29%
June 30, 2012 94,290 $73.72B 5% $16.98B -27%
June 30, 2011 90,412 $69.94B 12% $23.15B 23%
Going from 99,139 in 2013 to 114,074 in 2016 seems like it tracks better with previous growth patterns.
http://news.microsoft.com/fact... But please don't let this change your opinion.
1. They unload Win10 on the world, only partially designed, and sucker us into doing their product testing. Then, the add more and more complexity with unnecessary "features" that are mere click bait.
2. Then, the declare it's the last of the "Windows" line (unlikely, and a stupid claim by an executive without credibility to assert it.)
3. Now, they plan to get rid of productive employees. Why? "Bottom line" or, as Jack Welch said, early in his career at GE CEO, "the purpose of a corporation is to maximize shareholder return on investment." Then, two years ago, after retirement, he admits in Forbes' magazine that his was "...the dumbest idea in the world."
4. And Microsoft is joining the cadre of companies with "great (aka overpaid) CEOs" (usually self-proclaimed) who produce poor results over the long-term (see http://www.wsj.com/articles/be...).
They're about to fall off a cliff...and they think they're on solid ground. Mark my words.
Trump also complained that salaries are too high...
What a shock, MS is bailing on the phone business, i.e. an industry where their bully monopolistic practices were useless and they had to rely on their shitty, shitty code, interface, and business practices to compete with competitors who actually know how to make software that isn't a steaming pile of shit. Shocking! But of course, MS won't reverse course on developing shitty bug-ridden software, they have trademarks to protect after all.
Monstar L
So technical training is all I need to get a good job and keep it?
I'd say so, given the pattern of MS layoffs thus far:
* QA people
* Salesmen
* Manufacturing workers in FInland
* More salesmen
Coding seems to be the place to be. I know some devs were layed off along the way, but from what I hear backchannel it's still a net increase in coding jobs (cloud and mobile growing fast, other areas slowly shrinking).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Perhaps "received" would be a better word than "earned."
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have promised this for years.
Only Trump and the Republicans are complaining about the loss of jobs for Americans.
This is what I read and hear in the News Media.
Trump is known for exaggerating and in many cases just making up crap. I've never heard of him being known for going out of his way to buy American, which might have been an indicator that his H1B stance wasn't full of it. As far as the Republicans go, well they generally support H1Bs. Some democrats do as well.
My own opinion on H1Bs, is that they should rapidly have a path to citizenship. People that are in a country and contributing say more than 2 years should at least have all of the "right to work" rights their employers have, as well as the ability to vote.
And if you think that Trump and the Republicans are going to cut back on H1-B visas, I have a very nice bridge to sell you.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Of course don't forget that M$ were at the DNC, the corporate convention to pick politicians with their cheque books, to lobby for more H1B this whilst planning those layoffs or what, redundant, cough, cough too expensive, fully trained and experienced individuals. Those ass hat corporate executives are truly shameless, in public, don't care who sees it, corruption or the democratic process to feed their greed. You reckon M$ would pull it's head in a bit after the mass invasion of privacy of Windows anal probe 10 but nope, not one bit of shame or embarrassment, straight back at screwing customers and staff over, like there is no tomorrow (I will never understand why M$ employees put up with that shit, I wonder how many of them are comfortable using Windows anal probe 10 at home, looking for a job, complaining about working at M$ or just trying to relax with some pron, whilst their employer looks over their shoulder or right at their face or just what they are looking or recording their communications or doing all of that at once, M$ employees would have to be the most spied on people on the planet, ugh).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
That's only 3% of their workforce. My last publicly traded corp I worked at is laying off 30,000-60,000 employees, or 20-30%. THAT is a true "bloodletting". That's not even taking into account the upcoming spin-off/merger with CSC.
Funny how many illegals built Trump's properties? Why didn't he hire real Americans?
Who was the party that supported outsourcing? Who created a whole department in the White House funded by tax payers to help corporations fire Americans and replace them with foreign counterparts?
You think protectionism and higher wages will force your boss to pay you more if they can't bring in Indians? Or will they give someone in Bangalore an AD admin account or root access to do the work there and just not bother to bring anyone into the office for IT work?
What will happen is if these positions can't be filled they will start outsourcing more and since they alreayd have an office in India now they will just eventually move the whole IT department there for cost savings since they didn't have one pre-trump thanks to protectionism.
http://saveie6.com/
CEO salaries sure as shit are.
The problem Windows Phone had was not that it was bad, it was that it wasn't disruptive or innovative. Apple's iPhone disrupted the market, Google followed their lead and years later Microsoft caught up with an operating system that would have been great had it not been so late to what had by then become a mature market. You need a feature - or set of features - that will entice users to the point they will be willing to abandon their existing applications in favor of your platform and its applications. This is the same reason Linux hasn't been able to supplant Windows on the desktop, it's not that there is anything wrong with it, it's that it doesn't offer anything compelling in innovative or disruptive features. There's no point waiting for Microsoft to screw up, if their past screwups with Windows haven't driven customers to Linux then nothing will, Linux needs that disruptive innovation to capture the users. Windows Phone needed this too, but it didn't have it so it was relegated to that low single-digit marketshare.
Hillary Clinton and the Democrats have promised this for years.
While this is true...
Only Trump and the Republicans are complaining about the loss of jobs for Americans.
...complaining? Yes. Sincerely? Not so much.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So technical training is all I need to get a good job and keep it?
I'd say so, given the pattern of MS layoffs thus far: * QA people * Salesmen * Manufacturing workers in FInland * More salesmen
Coding seems to be the place to be. I know some devs were layed off along the way, but from what I hear backchannel it's still a net increase in coding jobs (cloud and mobile growing fast, other areas slowly shrinking).
A company doesn't need Salesmen when it can push out a product digitally and only a few people whine about it. As for Q&A people just reduce them, after all we have over 300 million testers out there and we can always push out mandatory patches latter.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
Their destruction of Nokia accomplished it's purpose. Maemo had so much promise that was never realized.
Why would you develop for a windows phone when you know MS reputation for fucking people?
because there aren't enough tech workers...
It was definitely late, but another big issue is that after releasing WP7 internal politic'ing stalled it for 2-years before the completely re-written WP8 was done.
The problem Windows Phone had was not that it was bad, it was that it wasn't disruptive or innovative.
This is not how I saw things go down.
Initially once upon a time there was a solid base of former CE developers very interested in windows phone. They wanted to get on board but Microsoft had to go f*** it all up.
They locked everything down emulating the Apple walled garden, required very specific versions of windows /w hyper-v and visual studio to develop anything and made you buy a Microsoft account. They militantly insisted on a Spartan ugly interface with no customization options. UI was all based on some forsaken piece of shit called Silverlight, APIs were half baked and not even finished and oh by the way you can't run any native code whatsoever.
On top of draconian bullshit, no compatibility, no apps, absence of basic core features that existed even in windows mobile and no user base developers basically gave MS the one finger salute and went to Android.
You need a feature - or set of features - that will entice users to the point they will be willing to abandon their existing applications in favor of your platform and its applications.
My personal opinion if Microsoft started out with feature parity and dropped the misfeatures (Fugly Metro/Silverlight, malware, Apple style lockin and lack of customization) windows phone would have a healthy market share today.
This is the same reason Linux hasn't been able to supplant Windows on the desktop, it's not that there is anything wrong with it, it's that it doesn't offer anything compelling in innovative or disruptive features.
If that were true you would think we wouldn't be hearing of high profile attempts to switch to Linux desktop failing.
There's no point waiting for Microsoft to screw up, if their past screwups with Windows haven't driven customers to Linux then nothing will, Linux needs that disruptive innovation to capture the users.
My opinion is they just need parity with Windows and Linux advocates need to stop pretending it already exists.
General purpose operating systems are mature technology driven by incremental accumulation of dead labor. If you bet on disruptive change you WILL lose. The only changes we are likely to see going forward will be both hard won and increasingly inconsequential. I think Linus had it exactly right on his comments about wearing the competition down.
Ross is still cool. Trump will never be.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you're an unemployed programmer, the problem is you.
Bullshit. The employment market has been negatively affected by the deliberate actions of the government and corporations. If you think that you're such a special snowflake that these sociopaths wouldn't get of you in a heartbeat you're one of those libertarian delusionalists. That you're employed is simply because they haven't finished yet, but there's no reasoning with the pull yourself up by your own bootstrap crowd. You probably believe in tax cuts for 'job creators' too.
Sure, doing those things you say will increase your odds and you'll be ok for a while. Of course we'd all have an easier time were it not for very active sabotage of our career prospects by well funded sociopaths encouraging foreign trade schools to turn out legions of barely qualified third world job stealers.
One wonders if you think that unemployed steel workers are their own problem. I mean the government at the behest of large corporations actively encouraging and subsidizing import of cheap steel had nothing to do with that, it's all on the individual, right? Libertarians disgust me.
They replaced the Q&A department with end users. We already knew that.
Well, there is a person he could fire that would solve the issue.
What? Support? Wait, who said anything about support?
Guys? Did anyone miscommunicate in some way? There's someone here thinking there would be any support for Win10, what gives? No, not for the real customers, for the home edition.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Management thinks anyone is replaceable. People are just like cogs in a machine, throw an old one out, plug a new one in and there you go.
They only think they're irreplaceable, despite more and more evidence that they could easily be replaced with a magic-8-ball without any loss of decision quality.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Hmmmm.... do you really think that this was the reason why developers flocked to iOS and Android? The expectation/hope they would not be fucked over like those who had burned fingers with Microsoft?
Or could it be that it was really clear that developing and marketing apps for iOS and Android had (has) huge market potential and straightforward way to sell apps and see the money come in.
I could be wrong, but I suspect that the reputation or history of MS dealings with partners and with their own technology was not as important as major competitors coming up and saying "Here's what you do to reach our millions of prospective buyers. We deal with distribution and growing the market, you get 70% of the sale".
Between piracy, traditional distribution channels, customers used to not spending at all, there were/are plenty of reasons why developing for PC was never that straightforward. The realistic prospect of finding 10,000,000 people willing to pay you $0.70 each was a major reason, more than anything MS did or used to do.
Personally i think a good number of the wealthy are hoarders.But instead of keeping every newspaper they ever touched, or plastic bag, or wanting to buy every single doll they see. They hoard money, and like other hoarders they are emotionally pained to see even one bit of it removed.
That does seem to be the way these days, though I expect they still have a strong sales force on the Azure side.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
A company doesn't need Salesmen when it can push out a product digitally and only a few people whine about it.
Exactly. Not long now, with Windows 10 adoption, for Microsoft's wet dream of software rental to come true. Once MS have persuaded people to "upgrade" to Win10 (or rammed it down their throats), thus giving MS control of their PCs, MS just need to let the unpaid Win10 user experience deteriorate and fall behind until the user caves in and signs up to rental for the perpetual updates that will come with it.
MS have said that Win10 is the last ever version of Windows, so they will soon be sacking thousands of developers too. Once people are on Win10 all MS will need is a security update team, and maybe some graphic artists to give the interface a make-over now and then.
Perhaps "extorted" would be a better word than "received".
Is Satya Nadella an H1B himself? Sounds like one.
You might want to re-evaluate your chosen profession. Millions of .NET/C# developers seems to get along just fine. AWS and Azure are #1 and #2 in cloud and Azure is growing revenue faster than AWS (not necessarily unexpected for the second place player).
Get a big shovel. MSFT had $93.58 billion revenue and $12.19 billion net income in 2015. Agreed that mobile devices/OS are dead for Microsoft which is why they need to be strong on back-end which is where Azure helps.
Windows 10 is the best they can come up with. They have to shove it down the throats of Windows 7 users for FREE. How are they supposed to pay their staff if they are giving their latest OS away?
If I may ask, how old are you?
Translated: If you're a white male over 40, time to update and polish your resume; you'll need it.
I know they have said that, but if anyone believes that I've a bridge to sell...
Yes. Blame Democrats. Trump is clearly the answer. /sarcasm
Thinking that way makes you part of the problem in American politics. Both party heads love H1bs. If you think Trump will stop them, you may have a mental deficiency.
While I hate what Microsoft have done with Windows 10 most of their employees have part in it.
It's obvious that the spying features, the bundling of Ms services, etc. are features demanded by the higher ups. Those who implemented them where merely following orders
The decent thing for Microsoft to do would be to shut down the Company and return the money to the Stockholders.
Not to reply to my own post; but this was meant as a JOKE, FFS!
Inevitable?
http://sammyboy.com/showthread...
Casteism
My personal opinion if Microsoft started out with feature parity and dropped the misfeatures (Fugly Metro/Silverlight, malware, Apple style lockin and lack of customization) windows phone would have a healthy market share today.
But who is going to switch to Windows Phone? Android offerred you all that already and it's the incumbent. It was entering a mature market, you're suggesting that their problem was the imitated Apple's business model when they should have imitated Google's but I still don't see how that gives them any advantage.
If that were true you would think we wouldn't be hearing of high profile attempts to switch to Linux desktop failing.
There's no reason to even attempt to change, that's the point. On the rare occasion that it has happened the reason has been down to cheapness but even then the marketshare has remained pretty much flat for the past decade or so.
My opinion is they just need parity with Windows and Linux advocates need to stop pretending it already exists.
What features does Windows have that Linux desktop OSes do not?
General purpose operating systems are mature technology driven by incremental accumulation of dead labor. If you bet on disruptive change you WILL lose.
Smartphones were the same until the iPhone came along. You can't attract users with a "me too" device.