Microsoft Will Close Its Skype Office in London, Nearly 400 Jobs To Be Impacted (techcrunch.com)
Microsoft is closing Skype's office in the UK, according to the Financial Times. The move is likely to affect jobs of nearly 400 people at the London HQ. Commenting on the report, Microsoft said it will "unify some engineering positions," but that it "will be entering into a consultation process to help those affected by the redundancies." From a TechCrunch report: The London office is a key part of Skype's history, since it was the primary engineering site and headquarters of the company before Microsoft acquired it, and it also survived Skype's strange interlude under the ownership of eBay before it was acquired by the big M. While the move is no doubt a blow to London's tech scene, some former insiders told the FT that it's also not a surprise to see it go, largely because a steady stream of executive departures over the last few years have foretold a shift in the locus of power at the company. Post-acquisition, Microsoft has also done a lot of product work on Skype, with plenty of integration with Office 365 and a number of feature introductions that bring it closer in line with Slack.
That's because they have to by law. https://www.gov.uk/redundant-your-rights/consultation
Can anyone think of a single MS purchase where the employees did well out of the deal, leaving out the original owner?
"Microsoft is buying us" should convince anyone employed by the firm to update their resume.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Compared to Europe, the US is basically an offshore tax haven.
In fact this is how the US started: by people not wanting to pay taxes. See boston tea party.
Enjoy your food stamps.
Wrong. The US didn't want to pay taxes without representation. Their tax dollars were going overseas and staying there.
The old pensioners have known the EU for what it is and even helped built it. As for today's "workers"... They never had a snowball's chance in the Sun anyway.
The firing company. Last one out turn off the light. This means you, Satya.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
unnecessary social programs
Others would use the term "a civilised society with consideration for the not so well-off".
How the fuck do you run your organization so badly, that you get to the point where you have 400 "redundant" people in the first place? And how the fuck something like Skype is using all those people? It's a fucking VOIP app, it's not rocket science. I'd expect the _total_ size of the org to be smaller than that.
to outsource to India or obtain cheap labor through work visas. That's why you see this pattern repeated so much. It's also why small business is the only real source of (net) job growth in most modern economies. You just can't compete with the likes of India, China and the Philippians. It's useless to even try...
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Actually corporate and payroll taxes in the UK are lower than the US, and probably the salaries are too. If the new government doesn't change plans then corp tax in the UK is heading for 15%, which is a lot less than the US' 35% + local rate
and crime will be committed by trailer park white trash meth heads, and meth head kids of middle class and the one percenters. bravo.
MS already has (probably better placed) people to deal with regulatory/tax collection agencies than Skype had. Or they would have moved those people off Skype to a more core function.
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It's a tradition to make this software worse and worse and worse on every version, so it's only natural that they have to cripple the development team.
I've used this site longer than 99.9% of the idiots on here, and it has changed immensely under the new management - but that change started even before Rob Malda stepped out. Slashdot started to die around 2004 roughly when the libertarian crowd concentrated and drowned out all of the comprehensive analysis with “cite” requests designed to stop discussion, and that decline was given nitro fuel by the influx of uneducated kids who are misogynists due to psychological problems and total lack of contact with women. Since these groups are dominant ~and~ the stories themselves are barely more than clickbait, it is absolutely fair to say Slashdot is not only sick but it is dead and buried in the graveyard. The point of Slashdot was always the social impact of technology even when reporting on the “new” Linux Kernel 2.4. the better part was mixed installation tricks and experience-driven talk about how it might replace windows someday. That character is now gone and replaced with a cross of Gizmodo and the tabloid Gawker itself. RIP Slashdot, you've been dead for years but all original users still miss what you were!
'jobs to be impacted'
Slashdot's use of English gets worse by the day. Are there no proofreaders available?
"all original users still miss what you were!"
Having one ID digit less than you, I have added the OT to the subject simply out of netiquette nostalgia.
"And the meaning of words; when they cease to function; when will it start worrying you?"