Microsoft To Lay Off 700 Employees Next Week, Report Says (geekwire.com)

According to a report by Business Insider (Warning: may be paywalled), Microsoft will cut about 700 jobs in conjunction with its quarterly earnings release next week. GeekWire reports: The latest layoffs are part of the company's previously announced plan to cut about 2,850 roles globally during its current fiscal year, according to the Business Insider report. The company declined to comment this afternoon, but we understand the report to be accurate, based on our own sources. Next week's cuts will be spread across a variety of job functions inside the company. The company's previous job cuts have come in areas including its smartphone business and global sales team. Microsoft announced its largest cuts in July 2014, eliminating 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of the company at the time.

Comments

America is Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump Trump Trump

captcha: soviets

Re:America is Great

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^ confirmed.

Microsoft is firing 700 H1B workers.

Re: America is Great

[dougdonovan]

forget trump...its called the corporate shareholders...this happens every year way...before trump...

Windows 10 downgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

700 employees reach end of life. Support terminated.

Re:Windows 10 downgrade

[hcs_$reboot]

It's more likely to be Windows < 10 downgrade...

Re: Windows 10 downgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

To be repla ed with H1-B workers within a year.

Re:Windows 10 downgrade

[BarbaraHudson]

Nah - every time they boot employees the stock goes up - it's been that way in corporate America for a couple of decades now. Maybe they should bring back Balmer so they can fire him again and send it TO TEH MOONZ!"

After all, employees are now seen as a cost center, not an asset. "You will continue to be beaten until morale improves" was supposed to be satire.

The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the way of big companies. The same thing happened in IBM and Nokia. The management gets bonuses based on short term goals. They start to cut the long term investment. They fail to do the research needed to deliver good products their customers need. They start to cheat their customers. After some years the business sufffers from loss of revenue. Only by cutting costs can they keep the profits. The management gets bonuses based on short term goals.

Quite early in the cycle you start filtering out so that the best people who can leave do leave and the worst people who can't leave but don't mind sacrificing their friends fight their way to the top. Microsoft ceased being critical years ago. It ceased being important recently. Soon it will cease being relevant. Speaking as a veteran of such a spiral (which is why I have to post anon), if you are good and you are working there get out now whilst having Microsoft on your CV still won't block your possibility to work elsewhere.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

This is some seriously delusional thinking. Microsoft not critical or relevant? What are you smoking?

First off, IBM is still here if you haven't noticed. They got out of PCs, but they still do lots of other stuff and are a huge and profitable company.

But back to MS: they absolutely are critical and relevant, because everyone's PC runs on their software. That isn't going to change, probably ever. If Windows 10 couldn't convince people to dump them, nothing will. They might not have gotten anywhere in mobile devices, but that doesn't matter because they still have their Windows and Office cash cows, and those aren't going anywhere, and there's no threats to them (do you see businesses switching all their workstations to OSX or Linux? Nope).

MS is doing the right thing: cut employees, and cut all long-term investment, and just keep slapping some new lipstick on the Windows and Office pigs. Corporations in particular will happily continue to pay through the nose for MS's enterprise products, and consumers are happy to use Windows 10 with its built-in spyware and advertising which MS makes money from indirectly. MS doesn't need to invest long-term, they just need to keep milking their cash cows. They can do this indefinitely, because the whole Windows 10 experience has proven, without a doubt, that customers simply will not leave that platform no matter what, and no matter how much it costs them.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed on IBM. I work there, and we made a fuck load of money last year.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[ClaraBow]

But back to MS: they absolutely are critical and relevant, because everyone's PC runs on their software. .

Seriously, when you use hyperbole and straight-out lie, I stop listening. There are a lot of PCs that don't run on Windows. Millions run Mac OS, Various Linux distros, and Chrome Os is making a huge dent in the educational market. Windows and MS Office isn't as important and prevalent as they used to be. They are a hugely important company, but they are not as influential on the PC market as they used to be.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[cyber-vandal]

What percentage of PCs don't run Windows?

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh please! Linux zealots live and breath hyperbole and lies. Granted, he should have said "an overwhelming majority" instead of "everyone", but his point still stands.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

They can do this indefinitely, because the whole Windows 10 experience has proven, without a doubt, that customers simply will not leave that platform no matter what, and no matter how much it costs them.

People are staying with Windows, despite the horrendous shittiness of Windows 10, for one simple reason - they have nowhere else to go.

Microsoft is irrelevant in phones and tablets. Doesn't matter. There are a few hundred million people who need to do actual work that can't be done on a phone or tablet.

Mac? LOL. Horrendously overpriced with extremely limited options for hardware and software.

Linux? LOL LOL. Great for servers. Great for supercomputers. Amateur crap for desktop users.

Open Office? Libre Office? LOL LOL LOL. Amateur crap.

Disagree all you want but if I was wrong, the alternatives to Windows/Office wouldn't have single digit market share, and people wouldn't still be running 8 year old Windows 7 and 15 year old Windows XP.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed on IBM. I work there, and we made a fuck load of money last year.

And lots of patents. And even some mainframes. But little that could be seen to change the computing market. Nothing nearly as powerful as Microsoft's move into telemetry and user data and certainly nothing like Amazon's Alexa or Lambda environment or Google's mass scale delivery of hardware security. If you work in computing then you have to know what Amazon and Google are doing. If you work in building advertising systems for desktop users then Microsoft is still, at present, important to learn about and follow. Why should I care what IBM does? If they need my interest, what can they do to capture it?

Nokia still exists, they make lots of money on building the networks which make phones work and may even come back into phones soon. However at one time, as with IBM, they effectively controlled the entire direction of their market. They could just decide whether a category of phone came to exist or not. The Hubris of the phone division management, who believed that their brand was enough to keep them in place killed them as surely as IBMs belief, until too late, that they had no need to develop their own PC operating system.

In a thirty years, there will probably be Windows installs of companies that were never able to move off and are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to keep some critical application running in exactly the same way it ran in 2025. Microsoft will still be raking in the profits at their expense. However in a few years time no serious new application will even consider using Microsoft software elements and shortly after that Azure will be seen to have been the temporary stepping stone it is on the move towards the cloud.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems to happen a lot. Companies at times end up having more staff than projects or even staff on one project. Then it becomes a fight for the interesting work. That leads to some staff leaving. Then as the work is redistributed others leave too. Management can accelerate this by deciding that "whoever knows the most about the project will do the maintenance". That starts a firecracker reaction until there is virtually no one left on that project. As one project implodes that decreases the relevance of other projects, then the company is sold off.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are staying with Windows, despite the horrendous shittiness of Windows 10, for one simple reason - they have nowhere else to go.....

The interesting thing about your post is that you don't mention Chromebooks or Google office. I'm guessing that the Microsoft feels the breath at the back of their necks and instructs their astro-turfers never to mention them.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nineteen straight quarters of declining revenue doesn't look at all like a death spiral. Nope, not one bit.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Counting only those PCs used for web browsing, an good 10%, strongly reinforcing what GP said: not everyone is using Microsoft software on their PC; and Microsoft is a hugely important company, but not as influential on the PC market as it used to be.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[c]

But back to MS: they absolutely are critical and relevant, because everyone's PC runs on their software.

Their problem, though, is that everyone's PC runs on their old software just as well (if not better) than their new software.

What the Windows 10 debacle has shown is that the old stuff is good enough that the only way they can push the new stuff to a reasonable fraction of their users is to essentially force it on them, for free.

At the same time, efforts to diversify into other areas have not been, to put it charitably, as successful as they would have liked.

I'll agree that they're still critical and relevant, but at the same time, they're the least critical and most irrelevant than any other time in the history of the PC.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

People are staying with Windows, despite the horrendous shittiness of Windows 10, for one simple reason - they have nowhere else to go.....

The interesting thing about your post is that you don't mention Chromebooks or Google office. I'm guessing that the Microsoft feels the breath at the back of their necks and instructs their astro-turfers never to mention them.

Chromebooks?!?! Google office??!

Bwaa haa haaa

How many of those are showing up on corporate or government desks?

Yeah, zero.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

More money than you make

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Kergan]

What proportion of internet users use a PC to begin with?

Hint: http://marketingland.com/digit...

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[DogDude]

Millions run Mac OS, Various Linux distros, and Chrome Os is making a huge dent in the educational market.

Uh, no, that's not true. You're lying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Ol Olsoc]

At the same time, efforts to diversify into other areas have not been, to put it charitably, as successful as they would have liked.

I'll agree that they're still critical and relevant, but at the same time, they're the least critical and most irrelevant than any other time in the history of the PC.

Relevant quote:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Because for some strange reason, humans need to believe that what is, is always how it will be.

Microsoft is on most business computers (with some very notable and important exceptions) so Microsoft will always be number one, world without end, amen.

But that isn't how it works, no matter how much some of us demand stasis.

I don't have a dog in this pissing contest, as I use and enjoy OSX (now MacOS) Linux, iOS, Android, ChromeOS and Windows. I mainly enjoy pointing out that the belief that because it was Microsoft uber alles, that it shall be Microsoft uber alles, forever. Even the National Football League, once considered firmly cemented as the king of sports forever, is doing a bit of a decline. Trying to look at it with a non-prejudiced eye - with a disclaimer that my least favorite OS is Windows, if I google "Microsoft moving to subscription OS", we get a lot of NO THEY ARE NOT! and a couple announcements that say "oh, we are", as Enterprise and Surface serve as the test bed.

IOW, the faithful will in the not too distant future will be able to prove their loyalty with their wallets, forever and ever, world without end, amen. We'll see how that works out. It won't take all that long until you have paid much more for your Windows machine than that stupid hipster and his "overpriced" Mac.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You could try this . All up about 12.33% is not Microsoft Windows of that 2.21% in Linux, 4.14% is Mac OS and 5.98% is other. What is particularly interesting is that 48.34% still use Windows 7 and 9.07% Windows XP compared to 24.36% for Windows 10.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of my family members have ditched their PCs for smartphones and if anyone has a computer its an old Mac or raspberry pi.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[BarbaraHudson]

In a thirty years, there will probably be Windows installs of companies that were never able to move off and are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars per month to keep some critical application running in exactly the same way it ran in 2025

Most of those companies will have died long before then.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The same thing happened in IBM and Nokia. The management gets bonuses based on short term goals. They start to cut the long term investment.

IBM is global company. They are hiring, in R&D but it is in Czech Republic, Poland ... where nobody complains about diversity, H1B and such.
it is much easier work with office in India with office in Central Europe than with US office.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[BarbaraHudson]

What is true is that Chrome HAS made a huge dent in the school market (particularly the university market - I was surprised about that). Uni students who run Windows are mostly doing it from home, for things like games.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[freeze128]

The company's previous job cuts have come in areas including its smartphone business and global sales team.

Microsoft makes smartphones? Who knew?

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[TheFakeTimCook]

do you see businesses switching all their workstations to OSX or Linux? Nope.

Um, that's not entirely correct.

Remember that little corporation, IBM, you were talking about? They are busily deploying Macs (running MacOS, in case you wondered) at the rate of 1,300 new installs per week (now actually 1,900), and to the tune of 90,000 as of October, 2016, and projected to be 100,000 units by the end of last year (now actually 130,000).

And if you read the second linked-to article, you will note that it is the employees that decide whether they want a Mac, and if so, they receive a new, shrink-wrapped Mac and a URL, and with that, and only that, are able to do 100% of the setup entirely without involving IBM's IT department. This is one of the many reasons that IBM has stated that every Mac they deploy, regardless of the higher price of the Mac hardware, actually saves IBM money .

There are dozens of similar articles regarding IBM's highly successful Mac program. Just Google "IBM deploying macs" and you'll soon see what the corporate desktop is soon going to look like, at least for forward-thinking companies like IBM.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

But little that could be seen to change the computing market.

Why should I care what IBM does? If they need my interest, what can they do to capture it?

What makes you think they care about changing the computing market, or your interest? You seem to think that the role of companies is to change or improve the world. It isn't. The only reason companies exist is to make money. If IBM is doing that, then it's successful in its mission.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

Good luck editing a document or spreadsheet on a smartphone. Obviously, your family members don't do any real work.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[phantomfive]

At the same time, efforts to diversify into other areas have not been, to put it charitably, as successful as they would have liked.

No, they making money by the bucket-load. Check it out, the new face of Microsoft. They missed mobile, but they've managed to diversify sufficiently into other areas that they are now more profitable than any time in the company's history.

Good riddance to Windows, though. May it die a quick death.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

IOW, the faithful will in the not too distant future will be able to prove their loyalty with their wallets, forever and ever, world without end, amen. We'll see how that works out. It won't take all that long until you have paid much more for your Windows machine than that stupid hipster and his "overpriced" Mac.

I'm quite sure Windows isn't going anywhere for at least the next quarter-century, especially in business computing. We've had alternatives now for ages, but they just don't get any adoption. Customers have proven, over and over, that they simply will not abandon MS Windows and Office, no matter what, even when they're forced into using a horrible, tablet-ified, spyware and ad-laden version of it.

This isn't like the NFL; no one *needs* to watch sports, it's purely entertainment, and tastes change. Computing is different; businesses aren't going to go back to doing everything on paper, or back to 1970s mainframes. At this point, MS would really have to shoot themselves in the head (not the foot) to get businesses to abandon them. It's just too easy for them to pay the licensing costs and deal with the problems and stick with Windows than to explore alternatives.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft on your CV is already a black mark in the Seattle area. Took me 5 years to execute my exit strategy.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone's PC is running their software. Mine isn't (well other than UEFI boot keys that ONLY Microsuck can seem to sign).

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of the 12.33% is still using Microsoft products via Office365, or various other "Live" services?

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

The pedantry here is ridiculous. "Everyone" in my prior post is obviously slightly hyperbolic in the context in which it was used, and a normal colloquial usage. The reality is that over 90% of everyone's PCs are running their software, and if you isolate that to business/government PCs it's almost 100%.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[thegarbz]

What the Windows 10 debacle has shown is that the old stuff is good enough that the only way they can push the new stuff to a reasonable fraction of their users is to essentially force it on them, for free.

That doesn't make them any less relevant. If they just up and disappeared who will patch the many thousands of holes that remain in the system? If anything Microsoft is more relevant than ever, and the entire world should be paying attention to them around about the time that Windows 7 reaches end of life. The way they approach that problem will have more affect on the world than anything Apple or other "flavour of the modern mobile world" could do.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[ranton]

There is no sign of a death spiral in these layoffs. The article cites 1600 job openings Microsoft currently has posted on LinkedIn alone, so they are still growing. And each of these employees has 60 days to find new internal positions at Microsoft, so if their skills are still relevant they don't necessarily even need to leave Microsoft.

This is simply sign of a transitioning company that knows it cannot be successful simply sticking to the status quo.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Right now their plan is to get everyone to ditch their PC desktop box for a Surface which is just as powerful, can be used as a desktop by plugging in a monitor and keyboard, for which costs somewhere in the ballpark of acceptable. It is working.

The good news for MS haters is that their pricing matches Apple. $900 for a base model. Add another $450 for the epen. Add 1k for a pen and 4GB more RAM (wtf). They want $2300 for a machine with an i7 and 8GB ram. Based on that, not everyone will replace their PC any time soon. But businesses might.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because for some strange reason, humans need to believe that what is, is always how it will be."

That's not the point of the quote at all. It's a commentary on ambitious rulers and past civilizations. You should also give Shelley proper credit for writing it.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[lgw]

What percentage of PCs don't run Windows?

Where I work, one of the "big 5" tech companies, about 5% do run Windows. That's a higher percent then you'll find at Google or (obviously) Apple. Windows is vanishing from tech companies. That's a good sign that in a generation it will be vanishing everywhere else.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[lgw]

Obviously, your family members don't do any real work.

You'll find that's common for kids and retirees.

Meanwhile, in the office, Apple laptops are the norm in the tech industry. Boggles my mind, since they don't even have docking stations, and the battery life is about half of what I get, but there it is. What I've been seeing for years is 90% Apple, 5% Windows, 5% Ubuntu.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

> because everyone's PC runs on their software

Actually, the majority (~60%) of personal computers, the most personal, those that are carried in the pocket, run Linux based Android. Windows on all personal computing devices is down to about 30% now, and falling.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

But you've basically explain about they are "critical" rather than critical. Microsoft could continue providing their legacy licensing business with a staff of half a dozen people. They don't need to develop anything; the required dependency product already exists. They don't need to do anything other than collect money.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Darinbob]

Microsoft in the last few years seems out of touch, is hostile to its own customers, is playing catcup and desparately trying to figure out what the next big thing is, and copies its competitors. With Satya at the helm they just seem... confused. Meanwhile PC use is dropping in the home, but still strong in the office, while Microsoft keeps focusing on the home while ignoring the office. The only place they are critical is the office, but the office is finding ways to work around Microsoft, like staying on Windows 7 and xp, linux and osx are more popular in the office than I've ever seen before, and so on. Honest, if it weren't for MS Exchange I think half of companies would just ditch MS altogether.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[ayesnymous]

Death spiral continuing? LOL. Why is MSFT stock at all time highs?

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Ol Olsoc]

"Because for some strange reason, humans need to believe that what is, is always how it will be."

That's not the point of the quote at all. It's a commentary on ambitious rulers and past civilizations. You should also give Shelley proper credit for writing it.

Perhaps that is your personal interpretation.

A whole lot of us note tht it is a poem about the hubris of people, believing that th etop dog will always be that way, and anyone else should just give up, because there is no point.

Many leaders believe that their government or ideals will last forever, or near enough. Like Microsoft sycophants, who believe that Microsoft will be number one forever. That would be a first. Look upon their Microsoft's works and despair, oh every other software company.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[gravewax]

People are staying with Windows, despite the horrendous shittiness of Windows 10, for one simple reason - they have nowhere else to go.....

The interesting thing about your post is that you don't mention Chromebooks or Google office. I'm guessing that the Microsoft feels the breath at the back of their necks and instructs their astro-turfers never to mention them.

because crhomebooks and google office are a bad joke when it comes to actually being productive.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Death spiral continuing? LOL. Why is MSFT stock at all time highs?

The management gets bonuses based on short term goals.

This also applies to the management of the stock exchange companies that buy Microsoft. They don't care what will be in 5 years, by which time they will be cashed out and sitting on their Pacific island. 15 years is beyond their comprehension.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to be confusing quality with popularity. They aren't remotely the same thing.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Anonymous Coward]

The management gets bonuses based on short term goals.

Read up on a company and their corporate governance / executive compensation policies. IBM and Nokia both reward both short and long term goals - and each describe it in extensive detail:
https://www.ibm.com/investor/s...
https://www.nokia.com/sites/de...

I'm a long-term investor in IBM, so I'll focus on them in some detail. IBM has a policy to spend 6% of their annual revenue on research & development. Most long investors (myself included) would rather see IBM increase that number to match their peers in the industry (~10-15%) vs. using that same money to pay out dividends every quarter. Additional concerns include the constant turrnover of talent - both voluntary and involuntary - which most long investors agree has lead to the demise of what was once a world class consulting organization. Some argue that the Indian IT firms (Tata, Wipro, Infosys, etc.) with their inherent lower cost structure was the root cause - but I disagree, IBM dropped the ball on this and is now quietly trying to become a "cloud" company to hide their mistake. A third concern within the past few years is their company reorganization. You cannot compare an annual report from 2012 to the one that will be released in 2017 and attempt to determine how well the company has done. Why? All business segments of the company that existed in 2012 no longer exist due to IBM reorganization. I'm keeping an eye on how well they perform over the next few years post reorganization with the new businesses they are diving into. May well sell my stake if their key financial metrics do not pick up by 2020.

Long post to say - you can criticize a company all you want for the way they do business - but please do not try to simplify it down to "its because of the evil management doing cost cutting to make fat bonuses!". Its a bit more complex than that.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

Exactly!!! I'm not sure why they even try, except for two ideas: 1) they're hoping to get lucky and find another extremely profitable cash cow somewhere, with the reasoning that if they throw enough shit at the wall something will stick, and/or 2) their executives would get really bored if they just pared themselves back to a minimal staff and collected licensing fees, so they might as well keep busy doing something.

Besides, you have to be realistic: if they really did eliminate all their developers, their product would before long have security holes found which would make it nearly impossible for their customers to keep using them, no matter how much they wanted to, so they at least have to keep on top of that stuff. It's not completely impossible for businesses to dump MS, it's just more trouble than they want to go to at this point in time, so they don't, so as long as the MS-ware works, sorta, they'll keep using it.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

You'll find that's common for kids and retirees.

Kids and retirees really don't matter much in the computing market. It's the business/enterprise customers that make MS a ton of money.

What I've been seeing for years is 90% Apple, 5% Windows, 5% Ubuntu.

Where do you live? I've never seen anything like that. I did phone-interview with some very small company a couple years ago that said they used Macs, but that's the only one I've ever even heard of, except for that article I read about IBM. Before that, I worked at one place where engineers could basically choose whatever laptop they wanted to use, and a few of them got Macs. but it wasn't a standard. "The norm"? Things must have really changed in the last few years if that's really the case, because I haven't even heard of such a thing (except for IBM again), let alone seen it. The norm I've seen, for many many years, is dockable business laptops: Thinkpads, Latitudes, and whatever POS that HP is making these days. The government currently uses HP AFAICT. Of course, those are all running Windows. I've never even heard of a company of any size running Ubuntu, except within a VM for devs that need it.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[lgw]

Left coast. You'll find it's that way at Amazon, Apple (obviously), Facebook, and Google. Naturally Microsoft is the exception out of the Big 5. They in turn set the trends for startups.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

That explains it; the places I've seen are more conservative and more east-coast. Intel was all Thinkpads when I was there, and other companies I've seen used Dells and HPs.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[tehcyder]

Counting only those PCs used for web browsing, an good 10%, strongly reinforcing what GP said: not everyone is using Microsoft software on their PC; and Microsoft is a hugely important company, but not as influential on the PC market as it used to be.

In the real world outside slashdot, a company with 90% share of a market would be considered pretty influential.

Re:The death spiral is continuing.

[tehcyder]

Ozymandias is (at least on face value) a poem about the stupid vanity of those in power, not a comment on the general idiocy of human nature.

Shelley was a romantic anarchist, not a reactionary satirist.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[tehcyder]

Apple laptops are the norm in the tech industry

Because you work in the tech industry you are assuming that the tech industry is the bellwether of industry in general. People in other industries such as banking or car manufacturing would probably disagree.

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[erapert]

What makes you think they care about changing the computing market, or your interest? You seem to think that the role of companies is to change or improve the world. It isn't. The only reason companies exist is to make money. If IBM is doing that, then it's successful in its mission.

What you say is true.
But the genius of the free market is that in order for IBM to make money they must offer value that someone else wants and will trade for (buy it with money).
So, almost by definition, if IBM or any other company is making money they're also making the world a better place one computer or pot or pan or refrigerator or jet airplane at a time.

Of course there's more to "a better place" than just material goods and wealth. But those aren't issues that the free market system can address because they're issues about human rights, violence, politics, religion etc.

These things are all up to us to figure out-- and almost all of it boils down to the Golden Rule (don't be an asshole) and using the justice system to enforce it (i.e. preventing assholes from being assholes).

Re: The death spiral is continuing.

[Grishnakh]

So, almost by definition, if IBM or any other company is making money they're also making the world a better place one computer or pot or pan or refrigerator or jet airplane at a time.

That's demonstrably untrue. There's entire industries that actually make the world a worse place, while making money doing so. Telemarketing is one good example here, payday loan stores are another (plus actual loan sharks), Nigerian scammers are another, and patent trolls are yet another. I'd also argue that there's many other industries that are really bad for the world too and only exist because of bad government regulation: tax preparers and car dealerships come to mind here. Both of these are just parasites, though the tax preparers are frequently necessary for many people because the US tax code is such a complicated mess. The real estate bubble in the previous decade is another great example of people and businesses making lots of money while making the world a worse place, driving up the cost of real estate while not providing any actual value.

Now back to IBM, because this is really tangential: my argument there was that IBM doesn't need to be changing the computing market. Just because they did that in the past in a big way doesn't mean that needs to remain their mission forevermore. After the whole PS/2 debacle, it should have been pretty obvious that IBM was a has-been, and was never going to be the pioneer and world-changer in personal computing that they once were (entirely by accident I might add; they thought their PC would be a small thing and just help sell more mainframes). So they've moved their business into other areas, which is fine. To my knowledge, they still do a lot of mainframe stuff, along with professional services, along with research and patents (for instance, I believe they invented the copper-on-silicon process back in the 90s which is now critical to chipmaking). The OP seems to think they're somehow "failing" because they aren't trying to be a big force in the computing market (outside of mainframes), and that's simply silly. Lots of very old businesses no longer do the same stuff they started out in, yet remain highly successful. Nokia, for a while, was the leading mobile phone maker, but they started out making tires IIRC. There's a bunch of Asian companies that do entirely different things now than what they started out doing.

Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

Firing the UI designers would be a huge step forward, but it'll probably be people like the guy who added the address bar to the registry editor. Microsoft don't want the likes of him in their company adding useful features and customisation options! The user's ability to control their PC should be limited wherever possible!

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[jellomizer]

I would fire the guy who made the registry to begin with. It was always a bad idea.
Needlessly cryptic to figure out what does what. A single point of failure for the entire is.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly, we should only use flat files for configuration, and the /etc directory is not a single point of failure because reasons, and the file system is not a single point of failure because reasons.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair. a corrupt registry takes out the entire portion of the registry that is corrupted. A corrupt flat file, no.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what registry logging and automatic rollback are for. When was the last time your elite linux rig rolled back a corrupt configuration file automatically?

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

Never, it just doesn't get corrupted anyhow. And if it ever did, you don't have to reinstall the system, just reconfigure. You see, the reason why you windows users fail at using other OSes is that you expect everything to work like microsoft has told you.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux just works! Your files never just disappear after a crash when the directory entries get pruned, and when that never happens, you just rewrite the configuration because you memorized it. Linux! Bestest ever. You heard it here on slashdot, home of rabid linux zealotry!

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

uhh...it is ".config." It sits in home, so not extremely relevant. You can pretty much just delete it, root will replace, go on with your day. Maybe put up another wallpaper. If root is the issue, install another OS, keep your home separate. Amateur, as was alluded to earlier, but not so dependent on ridiculousness as with Windows.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what registry logging and automatic rollback are for. When was the last time your elite linux rig rolled back a corrupt configuration file automatically?

IT NEVER HAS TO

Things like "registry logging" and "automatic rollback" are bandages for bleeding bullet holes caused by a crappy implementation. They're the perfect symptom of inmates running the asylum: incompetent developers see a problem and the only solution that they can come up with is to write even more code.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux doesn't even try to keep your config consistent, and when it fucks up, you just delete that shit.

Thanks, moron. I love Linux now. So reliable. Such perfect.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want Linux to ever do anything automatically, such as restore core configuration files, ever. If I do need to recover a file, I just locate the one in question from backup, and restore just that single one, manually. It has to occur once every other never or so, and we need not do some clickity click click, special button press, "restore last known good configuration" bullshit for the entire system that you not only have no fucking clue what it is that it's actually doing, but which never works. Automatic is for clueless fools that don't understand how the underlying environment functions.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

MY RIG NEVER CRASHES BECAUSE LINUX

Transaction logging is a bandage caused by a crappy implementation? Not only is your filesystem metadata maintained by transaction logging, your entire fucking blockchain concept is based on transaction logging.

BITCOIN IS SHIT BASED ON BANDAID TECHNOLOGY

LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want my file system to be crashproof because that's too much automation for me. I never use journaled file systems, I don't want transaction logging in my configuration, I don't do revision control, and whenever the battery dies on my laptop, I want to recover the entire contents of the hard drive from backup every time.

Because Linux!

So tell me, elitist idiot, is your root partition on ext2? Not ext4, not ext3, only ext2. Because if it isn't ext2, you're a liar.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Ol Olsoc]

Never, it just doesn't get corrupted anyhow. And if it ever did, you don't have to reinstall the system, just reconfigure. You see, the reason why you windows users fail at using other OSes is that you expect everything to work like microsoft has told you.

There you have it! From cancelling installs when they see a warning, to trying to install off the internet to trying to impose Windows on a Unixy machine, Windows users tend to make their own problems when trying to use Linux.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Ol Olsoc]

Linux just works! Your files never just disappear after a crash when the directory entries get pruned, and when that never happens, you just rewrite the configuration because you memorized it. Linux! Bestest ever. You heard it here on slashdot, home of rabid linux zealotry!

Sarcasm only works when you don't sound like a meth head when you use it. Now go get a good nights sleep, dear.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[BarbaraHudson]

Exactly, we should only use flat files for configuration, and the /etc directory is not a single point of failure because reasons, and the file system is not a single point of failure because reasons.

And the cpu is not a single point of failure because reasons ...

You can always boot linux or bsd off another media and fix the problem - usually quite quickly, with nothing more than vim. Or in the case where the complete file system, or even the hard drive itself, are toast, just reinstall. Or even just use the computer for the next year or two without a hard drive - KNOPPIX is great for not needing a hard drive. A reinstall of windows is a real PITA in comparison.

Windows is a single point of failure. Product activation failed because you changed some hardware that died? Sux 2 B U. Can't activate the OS because it's no longer supported? Either find a crack or again, Sux 2 B U. Doesn't matter that you have a fully paid up license, and that in the case of XP, Microsoft promised to release the activation keys once they stopped supporting it. They lied.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[BarbaraHudson]

I've routinely pulled the power cord out of a local server just to demonstrate to a coworker that it's more robust than Windows. I had to because they refused to turn the power off. They were too afraid. Properly set up, you will NOT get an unbootable machine. And it only takes seconds to check and restore a journaling file system and be up and running again.

Those who claim Windows is better really need to, as you say, stop with the meth.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[mikael]

The idea of the registry was to place all critical information about the system in a location that would be inaccessible to hackers and spyware. This file could then be easily backed up and restored rather than having all the information scattered all over the place.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

And the cpu is not a single point of failure because reasons ...

Yes, that is true. Look at a modern CPU, they're designed so you can shut off bad parts, in fact, both Intel and AMD routinely do this with parts that don't meet spec for higher end sales, but are still useful.

More robust systems even have multiple CPU units in them.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[BarbaraHudson]

You're mistaking the cpu with individual cores in that cpu. Nice try, though. Your cpu executes the HCF instruction, it's taking all the cores with it.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[mmell]

Al, is that you?

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you insult DFS like that!

If I still had my personal directory contents I would pull out spreadsheets and documents to prove you wrong! And I will! After my files are recovered.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[lgw]

I would fire the guy who made the registry to begin with. It was always a bad idea.

The registry as originally created was actually a great idea. Every program still used ini files for it's own settings, but you had the registry, very small at the time, as a sort of "global ini file" for things like file associations that needed to be centralized. A lightweight DB-style approach was safer for third parties to edit than a tree of text files - it actually limited the damage of an installer bug.

Then some asshole got the idea to move all program settings into the registry, and a ton of OS settings that could have stayed in ini files, and the downhill slide began. By the era of Win95 it had gone to a very bad place, and never really recovered.

Re:Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Darinbob]

A lot of stuff like that starts life as a good idea, but then gets totally and completely perverted in practice due to higher ups not understanding things. The registry probably fits in that category. XML as well.

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Teams

[Ol Olsoc]

I've routinely pulled the power cord out of a local server just to demonstrate to a coworker that it's more robust than Windows. I had to because they refused to turn the power off. They were too afraid.

Which, by the way, is why a lot of people would not update. Having to reboot after updates is anathema to people who have spent so much time just getting the computer to run that they become superstitious and afraid to restart it once they get it running. I've worked with several people who are deathly afraid of a reboot.

Properly set up, you will NOT get an unbootable machine. And it only takes seconds to check and restore a journaling file system and be up and running again.

Those who claim Windows is better really need to, as you say, stop with the meth.

Years ago, setting up a Linux computer took a bit of effort, admittedly. So if someone here wants to complain about 20 year old problems, I'll happily discuss Windows 95 with them. But as long as a person can follow some simple instructions, present day Linux works about as good as you can get.

And if a person has any doubts, just use a live distro to check the computer out.

Microsoft is leaning itself out

[Anonymous Coward]

I think Microsoft is saying one thing in public and doing just the opposite. It has not improved its mobile position in the least with Windows 10. Universal Apps is a flop on the desktop and even Xbox is selling half of what Playstation is for Sony. Windows 10 probably can't be considered a flop, but it certainly shows much in value to its users as sales flat lined after the free upgrade period. Even the Surface line appears to be struggling to expand in a market where cheap PC's are the only thing propping up sales. Office and cloud seem to be the only bright spot for Microsoft these days.

Re:Microsoft is leaning itself out

[jellomizer]

There is the business services unit that I still see very active.
I expect Microsoft is going to be like IBM dropping its consumer products and focus more on B2B products and relationships.
End use technology is really too cheap to focus software for.
Back when a good PC cost 2k. Putting an extra couple hundred bucks for OS and software was normal.
Today with PCs under $500 and will last you 6-10 years before going out of date means conserned are not willing to invest software on such a cheap system.

Re:Microsoft is leaning itself out

[JustNiz]

>> I expect Microsoft is going to be like IBM dropping its consumer products

We can only hope. The moment that AAA games developers finally end their windows exclusivity and take Linux seriously I'll be formatting my Windows partition, since I only use it for gaming and already do everything else under Linux. Been saying that for decades now though.

Ufamism

[Anonymous Coward]

Just say they're getting FUCKED OFF! Laid off is too gentle.

Re: Ufamism

[Anonymous Coward]

Who they should *really* thank? Stallman and Torvalds, that's who.

Re: Ufamism

[Anonymous Coward]

Free, freee, freeeeeee! Fly my winged creatures, the sky is your playground! (Tosses dead birds from inside cage onto ground outside Windows.)

Re: Ufamism

[BarbaraHudson]

If it hadn't been for the BSD lawsuits, we'd all be running variants of FreeBSD and Linux would have remained a toy. And all the effort into improving linux would have gone into FreeBSD, an OS with a truly free license, unlike the GPL.

Re: Ufamism

[unixisc]

You still can. Order a TrueOS DVD or USB stick from OSdisc.com, and you're good to go

Re: Ufamism

[Anonymous Coward]

I *do* run FreeBSD, and I'm to some extent glad that it remained somewhat in the background. It still is a proper unix that I learned to know and love. Linuxen nowadays include a way too much modernism (as dictated by apple and ms) bullshit.

Re: Ufamism

[BarbaraHudson]

Of course you still can. Just download it directly from the FreeBSD site. The point I was making is that the lawsuit delayed general adoption of FreeBSD just enough to allow linux to get some traction.

Re: Ufamism

[BarbaraHudson]

You wouldn't be referring to Leonart Poettering and the whole "we need a new init system that we can force on everyone" care of RedHat, would you?

After all, what better way to get more customers for support than to create a new standard and force it on everyone ...

Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Futurepower(R)]

Microsoft top managers decided to try to force everyone who isn't technically knowledgeable to move to the Windows 10 operating system so that Microsoft could offer "Apps", like the Android and Apple cell phone systems.

Microsoft ignored the fact that trying to sell "Apps" when people have work to do on their computers is not appropriate.

Windows 10 tries to force Microsoft's control, imitating the cell phone companies that, more and more, take control away from the customer and user.

That acted as extremely effective negative advertising. Almost every technically knowledgeable person is now aware of what they consider extreme abuse.

In my opinion, the negative advertising damages Microsoft and indicates that Microsoft top managers are not competent.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, and they are going to make new signs for the interior MICROSOFT...where we're too big to worry about your employment

But I hope those people will be able to find decent re-employment, having "Microsoft" on their cv ought to account for something.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

But I hope those people will be able to find decent re-employment, having "Microsoft" on their cv ought to account for something.

Microsoft is not Amazon, so they're fucked.
Microsoft is not Facebook, so they're fucked.
Microsoft is not Google, so they're fucked.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Gravis Zero]

Microsoft ignored the fact that trying to sell "Apps" when people have work to do on their computers is not appropriate.

The funny thing is that after all the abuse that you still don't realize that you don't own Windows, it's owns you and it always has. Only lately have they have chosen to blatantly exert their will.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[hcs_$reboot]

On the other hand, MS is a rather old company in the IT world. Most of people who were pioneers of Windows are now in their 50s or 60s. Those could have been the best candidates in this newer redundancy plan.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[hairyfeet]

"Almost every person who has used Win 10 for any length of time is now aware of what they consider extreme abuse."....FTFY.

I thought I got a lot of work wiping Win 8 for 7 but damned people HATE Windows 10 and for good reason, all it takes is MSFT forcing a shit driver that locks the PC into endless rebooot or having it just decide to install updates and shut down in the middle of them actually doing something for people to say "fuck this POS!" and demand any other Windows than 10. I've even had people bring by brand new in box Win 10 lappys just to have me wipe the thing before its ever even turned on, its gotten THAT bad a rep.

If they thought they had a shitload still running XP at its EOL I have a feeling when Win 7 hits EOL the numbers running 7/8/8.1 will still be crazy high.

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried Windows 10. At one point I wanted to throw the machine out a window. It is MY machine dammit. I found it lying to me. The UI said one things, the logs another, the network packets another. So frustrating

Re:Microsoft's effective negative advertising

[Anonymous Coward]

RMS was right all along.
Use free software. It's cheap and free and respects your freedom and rights.

Fucking trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Killing those jobs, many of them good american jobs, and he killed them. Fucking trump the job killer.

Re:Fucking trump

[Anonymous Coward]

Plenty of golden jobs for porn showers!

Re:Fucking trump

[Ol Olsoc]

Its jerbs, dammit Jerbs!

Probably wha tthe new administration will do is pay Microsoft a billion dollars in return for only laying off 600 of them, showing that they are bringing jerbs back, making us great again.

It's all Trump's fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, if he's going to take credit for hirings that were announced months before the election, he can take the blame for this.

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

If he bothers you that much, I have a deal for ye. I offer you german citizenship in exchange for american. You'll fit right in and vote for Merkel this year. What do you say?

If you're gonna fire someone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Fire the teams of developers that were responsible for Windows 8 and 10. Thanks to these guys, the Windows codebase is forever screwed. By far and large, the Windows 7 operating system is/was the BEST version ever released by Microsoft. It's a bit ironic, considering how "bad" we thought Windows Vista was at the time; in comparison to 8 and 10, even Vista seems like it's gold. The user interface was very functional, and pleasant to use. Microsoft wasn't hell bent on combining the PC and tablet worlds, this would be akin to inter-species breeding, where the offspring is dead at birth. Both of the latest versions of Windows are outright disgusting, they're abominations, the user interface is a horrible nightmare. Last but not least, the complete loss of any privacy, especially pertaining to 10.
For 20 years, Microsoft has been pushing WGA and all of its anti-piracy shenanigans, how is it then, that the "latest and greatest, best" version is given away for "free?" Microsoft has billions of dollars, rather than squeezing the money out of people, this time they determined the *information* ("Telemetry") data of all users running the OS, would be worth more to them.
Before the counter-argument is given regarding Windows 7 also containing telemetry, Windows 7 Enterprise, has been completely immune to every single one of their repulsive force upgrade techniques. Not one single nag, even when then they offered users of pirated copies of other versions to acquire a "free" license for 10, I sat behind my Enterprise box while more and more people got screwed and one day woke up to a different OS than when they went to bed. Theres no denying how _desperate_ Microsoft has been to get every user on the planet to dump previous versions.
So no, it's not actually free. Those running it do pay, every single time they use their PC and send back data on all their habits.
Fire every single developer responsible for Windows 8 and 10, revert to the Windows 7 codebase completely, and try again, this time without HIV preferably.

Re:If you're gonna fire someone...

[Anonymous Coward]

Start menu where's my Start menu! Uck you Microsoft where the fuckimg fuck is my fuckinv start fucking menu! START. MENU.

Re:If you're gonna fire someone...

[tehcyder]

Start menu where's my Start menu! Uck you Microsoft where the fuckimg fuck is my fuckinv start fucking menu! START. MENU.

Yeah, you have to have a Start button for when you want to stop your computer. Anything else is just unintuitive.

They're moving to the cloud at all cost

[Anonymous Coward]

And eventually can survive with a lot less people making the same amount of money as now on a monthly basis - on top of that they don't need to depend or work with their VARs or ISVs since they will be providing everything in the cloud and can do that with their own marketing machine.

This is happening already - no more Dynamics AX, Dynamics NAV its already up there with no on premise option.

They don't care whether people run Windows, Linux or anything else - as long as its run in the cloud on their hardware then its fine.

Breaking News

[Anonymous Coward]

Satya Nadella has sold some of his stock options, so that Microsoft can afford to keep their 700 employees.

Re:Breaking News

[Anonymous Coward]

He really does look like a dick with ears. Uncanny.

Microsoft doesn't care what trump thinks

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been forked tongue for so long: we need trained techs here, grabbing all the h1b it can...

Re:Microsoft doesn't care what trump thinks

[unixisc]

They are better off moving their headquarters from Seattle to Hydrabad

Faking News

[Anonymous Coward]

lol

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[unixisc]

Can J1 visas work that way?

Probably less than 10% don't use Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if we can trust Slashdot's recent reporting then about 6% run OS X or macOS, and a measly 2% run Linux. Of course, they're both totally irrelevant compared to Windows 10 with 24%, Windows 7 with 48%, Windows 8.1 with 7%, and Windows XP with 9%.

So probably less than 10% of PCs don't run Windows, which obviously means about 90% or more do.

I don't know where the hell this ClaraBow is coming from, and why that awful comment got modded up. It's not "hyperbole" or a "straight-out lie" to say that nearly every PC uses Windows, when it turns out that 90% or more do.

Speaking of hyperbole, the only hyperbole I see are statements like "There are a lot of PCs that don't run on Windows.", and "Chrome Os is making a huge dent", and "MS Office isn't as important and prevalent as they used to be.", and "they [Microsoft] are not as influential on the PC market as they used to be.".

Re:Probably less than 10% don't use Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know where the hell this ClaraBow is coming from

Accuracy. Your own numbers confirm it.

It's not "hyperbole" or a "straight-out lie" to say that nearly every PC uses Windows, when it turns out that 90% or more do.

It's not "hyperbole" or a "straight-out lie" to say that NEARLY every PC uses Windows, when it turns out that 90% or more (or less) do.
It's hyperbole and a "straight-out lie" to say that EVERY PC uses Windows, when it turns out that around 10% don't.

Re:Probably less than 10% don't use Windows.

[Darinbob]

Hyperbole is saying "everyone's PC", whereas you tweaked that to say "nearly every PC". The original unedited statement stands as hyperbole.

Re:Probably less than 10% don't use Windows.

[Anonymous Coward]

So, since when isn't 10% of all PC's not "millions", which was exactly what clara claimed?

I can clearly understand why you'd think clarabow's comment is "awful", because it's 100% true, and it means there are millions, or even tens of millions of people who do not give a flying fuck about you and your favourite company. What a disaster.

Does not matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the advent and maturation of the virtual machine, the base OS ju7st has not mattered. You can change OS as easily as drinking a coke - unless you are using the MS hypervisor Hyper V. What will keep MS in the running is Adobe products. There are no near Linux/OSX/Chrome equivalents. Eventually Adobe will port to Linux; but the market is not there yet.

As far as MS cutting employees, one question that intrudes on my mind is how many of those soon to be dismissed employees are H-1B's. I put my money on none/zero/zilch. This becomes important because every year MS is screaming for more H-1B's; yet in this round of cut employees there are up to 700 qualified employees.

Re:Does not matter.

[ColdWetDog]

Since the advent and maturation of the virtual machine, the base OS ju7st has not mattered. You can change OS as easily as drinking a coke - unless you are using the MS hypervisor Hyper V. What will keep MS in the running is Adobe products. There are no near Linux/OSX/Chrome equivalents. Eventually Adobe will port to Linux; but the market is not there yet.

As far as MS cutting employees, one question that intrudes on my mind is how many of those soon to be dismissed employees are H-1B's. I put my money on none/zero/zilch. This becomes important because every year MS is screaming for more H-1B's; yet in this round of cut employees there are up to 700 qualified employees.

What? Where are you?

The lovely and always happy-to-phone-home 'Creative Suite' runs just as poorly on OS X as it does on Windows.

Further, you might be surprised about all of the high end creative software that runs on Linux. Interestingly, that stuff is so high end that if you have to ask the price, you can't afford it.

Really? In New Amerika?

[Anonymous Coward]

Roll out the Donnie T khmer rouge strategy to MAGA and get these hand-models working a real man's job in coal!

Eeeeeeexcellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the heads continue to roll, can't wait until we're rid of them. No other company in the history of mankind have been so detrimental to society in all kinds of ways, ranging from lost opportunities from market abuse to lost productivity thanks to their shoddy products. Die, mofos.

Windows XP === coordinated Inside Job

[Anonymous Coward]

setting the precedent

Not a problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They can become asteroid miners, or 3D printer repairmen!

Re:Not a problem

[BarbaraHudson]

Or they can join Mini Microsoft (remember him) - whose last post was about Microsoft laying off 18,000 exactly 2-1/2 years ago this week. The guy with all the interesting dirt on the internal politics governing Microsoft's decisions looks to have been given a red shirt - or more likely moved on.

I have a better solution....

[Lumpy]

They need to lay off 700 executives.

Saves more money and fixes a big problem with Microsoft... They are top heavy as hell

Re:I have a better solution....

[Anonymous Coward]

Second this. Still amazes me that tech outlets with a reach never comment on the fact that the reason quarterly earnings were missed was because of the EXECUTIVES, not the 700 people being laid off. Get rid of the corporate welfare at the top who screwed up, not the 700 people just doing what they were asked to do.

Re:I have a better solution....

[Anonymous Coward]

But we're doing the opposite. In my group, we cut about 20% of the developers and added three new program managers. So now we're expected to do more with less.

Re:I have a better solution....

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the correct response. When you have managers that made their job to manage contractors & attend meetings, you've gotten top heavy.

Re:I have a better solution....

[Darinbob]

Don't worry, Donald Trump will save all those jobs, personally. Just like he's going to make coal relevant again and remove all factory automation.

Microsoft Smartphone?

[Anonymous Coward]

...areas including its smartphone business...

Microsoft has a smartphone? I thought it ran Windows?

Trump will fix this

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will tweet Nutella that he has to make Windows in the US and save the 700 jobs or all Microsoft products will get a 35% tax slapped on them and be banned from federal computer systems.

Re:Trump will fix this

[unixisc]

Rudy can in his new cyber role spin out a new FreeBSD distro and then have that made the official OS of the federal government

Thanks Obama!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just Obama's parting shot at Trump.
He can't stop the Trump Train from making america great.
But Obama hates america so much that he would still do anything to try

Don't worry though. Those beautiful people are going to be fine!
Trump already has tremendous coal mining jobs lined up for them.

Nokia Employees

[stooo]

It seems there still were some former Nokia employees left after all :)
Now it's time to end this strange story.

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I'm certainly interested. It would be nice to live in a country whose citizens understand how unacceptable it is to allow a charismatic fascist dictator to seize power.

They're just bumping their stock price

[rsilvergun]

with layoffs. Believe it or not this is the result of deregulation of stock trading. It used to be companies couldn't buy their own stock (what with it being stock manipulation and all).That got changed during Reagan and when it did it started the trend to compensate executives with stocks; which in turn created all these perverse incentives for short term stock gains so the CEOs could boost their salaries. This is one effect of that. The constant mergers & acquisitions are another. It's one of those things like repealing Glass-Steagall that pretty much warped our entire economy.

The lesson? If you find that the behavior the regulation was meant to stop has stopped; well, maybe, just maybe the reason is there was a regulation to stop it.

Re:They're just bumping their stock price

[Darinbob]

Except now we're going to be 4 or 8 years with the executive and legislature convinced that all regulation is evil. Possibly the judicial will go that way too. Time for return of the robber barons.

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're fine with an uncharismatic and ugly fachist dictator... Where do we meet?

PS: sorry, can't pay for the drinks, meine Pflichtversicherungen, Kraftfahrzeugsteuer- und Gebühreneinzugszentralle already took all the money.

Actual news from BeauHD

[Anonymous Coward]

Congrats!

I bet they are still recruiting H1B visa holders!

[Anonymous Coward]

In spirit H1B visas are a good program, but it has been exploited for a long time.

QA RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's the last of that pesky QA Dept.

Re:QA RIP

[Anonymous Coward]

Those QA people are just a blockage for achievements of great management. The management has already set the dates and content of the delivery, why is there any need for testing? The QA people are just delaying the bonuses of MBA team who do all the hard work.

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[Applehu Akbar]

": sorry, can't pay for the drinks, meine Pflichtversicherungen, Kraftfahrzeugsteuer- und Gebühreneinzugszentralle already took all the money."

And Slashdot's crappy character encoding has made off with your umlauts.

Someone Call President Trump!

[Maxo-Texas]

He can save 175 of those jobs by paying Microsoft $7000 per job!

#ThanksDrumpf

[Anonymous Coward]

#ThanksDrumpf

Only 700?

[woboyle]

I was working at Nokia Mobile Phones when MS took us over. One week before the deal closed they were saying "Don't worry. Your jobs are secure!". Two weeks after, they laid off something like 20,000 of us... I believe MS like I believe Donald Drumph - not at all! 700 is probably just the start.

Re:Only 700?

[Darinbob]

Companies sometimes lie to the managers in order to do this, they don't want the workers to see worry in their boss' face and ruin morale before it's time to crush it. It also causes the workers to be furious at their bottom line managers instead of directing the anger at the board and executives.

Where is "Who Da Punk" when you need him?

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss the minimicrosoft blog. Told us a lot about what was going on in that place.

Drumpf

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Trump going to take credit for this one too?

Re: Hopefully It's The UI Design and Privacy Team

[Anonymous Coward]

Your trying to compare completely separate things to try making a weak argument. Try again, and stop being an idiot.

They're laying off customer support hotline folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The MS executives feel that Clippy and Bob are now good enough to take over their jobs!

Mid terms

[rsilvergun]

if the young folks, blacks and latinos who stayed home for Hilary show up for the Mid Terms then we'll get gridlock. There's a ton of voters who just want congress doing nothing and vote for whatever side doesn't have the presidency. The real question is will they show?

Re: Thanks, Trump!

[Anonymous Coward]

If only it worked that way. I'd trade you my US citizenship in a heartbeat.

Next up: A new round of congressional testimony...

[Anonymous Coward]

that Microsoft needs another 700+ H1-B visas to bring in skilled workers for high tech jobs that Americans cannot or will not do.

We will be told that there are no unemployed Americans with STEM skills and that Indian schools are doing a far better job of educating workers than the American schools (the primary skill required apparently being: willingness to work like an indentured servant for low wages and being held hostage by an employer holding your visa)