Microsoft to lay off 11k employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#81

Post by ProAm » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

bink wrote: post #53

qeternity wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!".

> Normally, hiring 11,000 people you "didn't need" would be a warning sign that management was incompetent

Not really, Big Tech was in an 'arms' race the last decade where they felt if they did not hire people the competition would and they would be worse off in the long run. They all did this. Hence why everyone is trimming the fat as soon as the bubble showed an inkling of popping.

Everyone over hired, over paid, and didn't innovate with it enough to make up for the spending.

There are tons of people at these companies that can be let go.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#82

Post by bagacrap » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

reverius42 wrote: post #17

squokko wrote: post #7

Every Big Tech collects bad hires and these are the best times to get rid of them.

Why isn't "as soon as you know they are a bad hire" the best time to get rid of them?

Sometimes you can have an employee that just lacks motivation, and keeping them around while hoping to motivate them one day is cheaper/easier than finding a new hire, when hiring is super competitive.

MS may have less time/patience for these people right now.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#83

Post by munificent » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #59

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…

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.

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

Layoffs have a huge psychological impact on the people who didn't get cut. If you do layoffs at a time when the economy is booming and jobs are easy to find, you risk losing your best performers who don't want to be at a company that fires friends of theirs.

It's easier to fire people when jobs are scarce and people are already spooked and disinclined to try to switch jobs.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#84

Post by hbn » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

estebank wrote: post #58

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".

I've continued to use twitter daily since the Elon takeover. If I wasn't in the loop about that I wouldn't have noticed anything.

I think early on I heard there was a 2FA outage? That was resolved fairly quickly.

The only issue is dumb changes, like the "no linking to other platforms" rule that was announced and then rolled back within the day, or adding view counts that add no value. But none of that is technical issues.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#85

Post by BitwiseFool » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

estebank wrote: post #58

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".

Call me ignorant but Twitter seems no different from what it was a year ago. There has been way more media attention and pearl clutching since Elon's takeover, but that hasn't translated to noticeable a difference in terms of usability and product.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#86

Post by drchopchop » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:28 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #59

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…

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.

Firing IC's at large corporations usually involves some sort of a individual coaching/PIP plan. This takes time for managers and HR to write and implement, takes N weeks of observation, and creates nervousness in coworkers who think they might be next.

Much easier to do a Thanos-style snap and get rid of X% all at once, with no pre-warning or reasons required besides "challenging economic conditions".

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#87

Post by shagie » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #47

lazypenguin wrote: post #2

> The company had 221,000 full-time employees, including 122,000 in the United States and 99,000 internationally, as of June 30, according to filings. The size of these organizations always catch me off guard. 11,000 is a huge number but 221,000 is even more staggering!

Historically (not sure if still true), Microsoft had top tier profit:employee.

They're likely still up there.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Microsoft+vs+Apple+vs+G...

They're not the best best, but $919k/employee/year is impressive. Google is at $1.5M/employee. Apple is $2.4M/employee and Netflix is $2.7M/employee.

(and to the dead comment reply claiming $10M/employee for Musk companies)

Tesla: $158,613 https://csimarket.com/stocks/TSLA-Income-per-Employee.html

SpaceX: $210,526 https://www.zippia.com/space-exploration-technologies-career... (though https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX would put it even lower)

Starlink: (I can't find any reliable 'how many employees'; crunchbase has it at "1-10")

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#88

Post by KallDrexx » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

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 '…

> MSFT currently have $100b cash on hand.

Fwiw, unless cash on hand already accounts for it (I don't think it does), then $70B of that is tied up in the Activision acquisition. Thus we really only have $30B cash on hand, which in a higher than previous interest rate environment is probably not great (though afaict Apple has $48B). Likewise, our cash on hand has been drastically dwindling the last few years, making the $30B total seem a bit more precarious.

I have suspicions that the Activision acquisition is a huge part of the hiring freeze at Microsoft and the source of a lot of budget concerns and constraints. It's pretty frustrating watching all the freezes seemingly because of this one acquisition (as an employee without any inside knowledge about this).

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#89

Post by runjake » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

aliljet wrote: post #21

This is a curious decision. Microsoft shows a ~73 billion dollar net income [0] and it's probably reasonable to assume their shareholders are enjoying a robust, growing business. I wonder what they believe this reduction in staff is meant to provide? Will this really and meaningfully move their bottom line or will it better tighten the performance characteristics of the staff? [0] https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives…

It means more profit, even as the world undergoes "challenging times".

The execs must be doing a great job to have accomplished this. Let's give them some sort of bonus or promotion, when the time is right.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#90

Post by flashgordon » Tue, Jan 17, 2023, 8:29 PM UTC

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 '…

You are also forgetting these people arent sitting on their asses! On average they are at least making the company that much in revenue no? Being unable to deploy them to good use is truly a leadership incompetence!