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Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#51

Post by jesuscript »

mgkimsal wrote: post #34

11,000 people - let's say an average loaded cost of $250k/yr. That's... ~$3b/yr these folks cost MSFT. Granted, it's per year, but ... keeping these people on for another 3 years would cost ~$10b. MSFT currently have $100b cash on hand. It's gotta be a little... frustrating to get be part of a 5% cut when there's so much free cash sitting around. I know, it's a narrow view of corporate finance, and I don't have the '…

It makes me wonder if they ever allocated money on a as-needed basis. Are they hiring across the board the way they are laying off across the board? Because then their hiring practice makes about as much sense as their firing practice.

They must be looking at the recruitment cycle as a cyclical process.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#52

Post by anonporridge »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #41
anonporridge wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. There's also an effect of wanting to do smaller, pulsating layoffs over the course of many months or even years rather than one massive layoff of the size you actually need, because ultimately no one knows ex…

What % of their work force is 11k employees? Article says 5%. Would also be curious to know what % of the 11k are engineers/breakdown by department/org, etc.

Yeah, 5% is a small, manageable number. Small enough that if you find you accidentally cut important people or roles, you can quickly get them back.

The point in my second paragraph is that if the company actually needs a 15% layoff to maintain itself long term, it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop. After each layoff, you let the system settle and recover, making sure that the body is still generally healthy before continuing with the next operation.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#53

Post by bink »

qeternity wrote: post #44
mgkimsal wrote: post #34

11,000 people - let's say an average loaded cost of $250k/yr. That's... ~$3b/yr these folks cost MSFT. Granted, it's per year, but ... keeping these people on for another 3 years would cost ~$10b. MSFT currently have $100b cash on hand. It's gotta be a little... frustrating to get be part of a 5% cut when there's so much free cash sitting around. I know, it's a narrow view of corporate finance, and I don't have the '…

Why would they spend any amount much less $3b or $10b to keep people they don’t need/want?

Normally, hiring 11,000 people you "didn't need" would be a warning sign that management was incompetent and require much more than just laying off the unneeded workers. It would suggest that large reforms are needed in planning and hiring. But these days it's just dismissed as an "oops!".

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#54

Post by morelisp »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #16
rvz wrote: post #3

"Engineers not affected! /s" Like I said before, no-one is safe. not even the FAAMNG companies.

You're the least safe at the companies that have the most money, because those are the ones that overhired.

On a seven person team just merged into a 200 engineer company and we’re responsible for a third of the revenue, I’ve never felt so safe. (Shame that also means everything else about the new company sucks.)

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#55

Post by Yoric »

ChicagoDave wrote: post #13

If you’re laid off from anywhere, are in a position to join a very early startup, love Texas Hold’em, and have technical or design experience, drop me a note. https://mach9poker.com/

If you haven't done so yet, you should post in the monthly "Who's Hiring" thread.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#56

Post by rufusroflpunch »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

What are you getting at, exactly? Are you implying they don't need to fire these people, they just want to? Or are you saying they think they need it, but they really don't?

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#57

Post by ejb999 »

I have a feeling Apple will be next - CEO announces he will be taking a huge pay cut in compensation was maybe an effort for him to preemptively show he is 'sharing the pain' (though 'only' 50M comp is not really much pain)

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#58

Post by estebank »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

> seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product

In both technical and product axes Twitter has already deteriorated massively, possibly beyond repair and the company might not make it to 2024, so I wouldn't call that "negligible".

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#59

Post by gowld »

anonporridge wrote: post #24
Xeoncross wrote: post #4

I'm wondering what data really drives the back-and-forth at big tech. We've seen google, amazon, microsoft, meta, etc.. do hiring freezes, then layoffs. Hiring freeze, then back open, or layoffs then more layoffs later. I would expect a longer term plan than just looking forward or backwards one quarter which seems like what has been happening the last year. I would assume they had better information and insights tha…

Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. There's also an effect of wanting to do smaller, pulsating layoffs over the course of many months or even years rather than one massive layoff of the size you actually need, because ultimately no one knows ex…

Why? What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions?

Why would the paperwork be any different, whether it's a small layoff or a big payoff? Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V is cheap, Microsoft implemented it many times in many products.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#60

Post by bob1029 »

this_user wrote: post #20
colordrops wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple seems far more stable.

MSFT is more diversified and has a lot of sticky B2B customers while AAPL is mostly B2C. Sure, they are selling to businesses too, but MacBooks can be easily replaced, unlike MS Office and its like.

> has a lot of sticky B2B customers

Indeed. We are all-in on using .NET6+ for building software for our customers. This locks us into VS/Azure/Windows subscriptions as a side-effect. Our clients sign 5+ year contracts, so we aren't leaving this area any time soon.

There are certainly less expensive ways we could run our business and deliver our product, but the amount of risk associated with those options is far beyond what our investors, leadership and customers would tolerate.

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