Microsoft Is Laying off 'Thousands' of Staff in a Major Global Sales Reorganization (techcrunch.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft is poised to layoff thousands of employees worldwide in a move to reorganize its salesforce. A source with knowledge of the planned downsizing told TechCrunch that the U.S. firm would lay off "thousands" of staff across the world. The restructuring is set to include an organizational merger that involves its enterprise customer unit and one or more of its SME-focused divisions. The changes are set to be announced this coming week, we understand. Microsoft declined to comment. Earlier this weekend, the Puget Sound Business Journal, Bloomberg and The Seattle Times all reported 'major' layoffs related to a move to increase the emphasis on cloud services within Microsoft's sales teams worldwide. Bloomberg said the redundancies would be "some of the most significant in the sales force in years."

Comments

QA

[thegreatbob]

Guessing they're sacking the rest of their QA staff, since Windows 10 is clearly coming along so nicely. /snark

Re:QA

[Hognoxious]

Guessing they're sacking the rest of their QA staff

Come on. Surely they won't get rid of both of them.

Re:QA

[Anonymous Coward]

That is such bullshit. Apple's laptops are consistently overpriced "like for like" compared to the closest matching PC laptop hardware available. PC laptops also have the distinct advantage of not being designed to be unrepairable and non-upgradable. In the vast majority of higher-end PC laptops the RAM and PCIe SSD can be upgraded by the end user. In many there is an option to have both a PCIe SSD and a storage hard drive installed. Good luck desoldering your BGA memory chips and SSD from your overpriced Macbook Pro. If you don't buy the obnoxiously expensive spec upgrades at check-out, your computer is obsolete the minute you need more RAM or internal storage and the only solution is to buy a whole new Apple computer.

Oh, and let me know when the 15" MBP with the Core i7 doesn't cost $2399. This Asus UX501VW laptop with a Core i7-6700HQ, 4K IPS touchscreen, 512GB PCIe SSD, 16GB DDR4 RAM, is $1079 and has VASTLY better specs than the $2399 MBP in practically all categories. Also, more expensive comparable PC laptops that are still priced lower than the 15" MBP only get better and make the (still using outdated DDR3 for some reason...) MBP look like a joke.

But please, feel free to find another way to support your baseless assertion that "on a like for like comparison as much as possible, Apple laptops cost about the same or even less than their competition." I just did a like-for-like comparison and a 15" Apple laptop you could buy right now gives you drastically lower specs for more than double the price than a PC laptop you also buy right now.

Re:QA

[__aaclcg7560]

After all the testing got done with Windows 10, the QA testers got laid off and rehired as customer support representatives in the Bangalore call center.

Re:QA

[BronsCon]

but if you're needing Apple hardware specs or better

then you go Apple, unless you need better, in which case you can't go Apple.

Re:Who lays off their Sales people?

[gweihir]

Indeed. I know of at least one large company (~50k employees) that will go all web-terminal before Win7 goes out of support. They looked at Win10 and decided that there was no way they would move to a platform with an ever-changing UI. Of course, all their internal stuff is already all web-apps, they just need to replace MS office with something web-based. But this is a good thing as the MS monopoly has done a huge disservice to the world.

Typical new fiscal year reorg

[StreamingEagle]

Microsoft reorganizes some parts of the company every year at this time. July 1st is the start of their fiscal year.

Re:Who lays off their Sales people?

[nukenerd]

Something ain't right..... mass layoffs in sales?

Yes, it's awful. "Microsoft", "salesforce" and "layoffs" in the same sentence! I never thought I'd see the day, you should see my tears. I'm starting a collection to support those poor guys until they can land a job in some Indian "Windows" support call centre..

Re:Who lays off their Sales people?

[JackieBrown]

The problem is a salesperson needs to do at least 2 things
1) Sale the product
2) Prove the sale would not have happened without them

And this does not even address the quotas and goals that companies set (then change if the goal is obtained.)

Re:Who lays off their Sales people?

[93 Escort Wagon]

... but there's the pesky problem of Outlook, which still lacks an open-source equivalent that duplicates most of its functionality. I would say Outlook is the very last strangle-hold Microsoft has on the corporate market.

What functionality is that, specifically? And I mean that as a serious question.

I don't see anything which Outlook does but other calendar and mail solutions do not - and I work with a lot of Outlook users. When we've talked about moving them off Outlook, there has been significant pushback... but it seems to be all about fear of change. They can't articulate anything Outlook does which other software does not also do.

Re: "Layoff" is not a verb, dammit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckoff.