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Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#151

Post by deltree7 »

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 '…

I hope you keep your Uber drivers, Landscapers and Cleaning Ladies on retainers because you have so much cash in your brokerage/bank account

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#152

Post by bentcorner »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85
estebank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Twitter stopped working entirely for some 3rd party apps late last week. Dev communication looks extremely slim and the only comms has been a very vague tweet: "Twitter is enforcing its long-standing API rules. That may result in some apps not working."

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#153

Post by obert »

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 can double those numbers if you consider all additional costs.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#154

Post by morelisp »

adam_arthur wrote: post #123
dragontamer wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But not the features that retain advertisers. Which were the silent issues that no one talked about before. And indeed, advertisers aren't talking about it now. They're just leaving the platform in droves. There's no one _to_ talk about it with. Entire teams (including high ranking executives) that kept relationships with advertisers have been fired. Twitter doesn't even have anyone answering / categorizing the compl…

Advertisers dropped spending because they don't like Elon/his behavior. Not because sales staff were laid off. It's quite obvious to anybody looking at the situation objectively. Twitter has functioned fine after massive layoffs, and feature velocity has only accelerated. Too many developers have an inflated sense of self importance

> Advertisers dropped spending because they don't like Elon/his behavior.

I mean, yeah? If someone fired all my contacts at a company and didn’t return my emails as my revenue dropped as a result of their changes I would also stop paying them?

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#155

Post by tensor »

jstummbillig wrote: post #99
rufusroflpunch wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

What I took from it – and I think they might be on to something – is that it's opportunistic firing. Firing people at this scale would have been pretty expensive just a few month back, PR wise. Right now, a lot less so. So you might be tempted to think of the current climate as a good opportunity to shed some fat, to the point where you go into it with the idea of hiring back right away and being able to do so at bet…

PR wise to who though? I don't think any of Microsoft's customers actually care. For developer hiring yeah it will hurt their PR, but at the end of the day sorry to say devs tend to go where the pay is highest irrespective of PR.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#156

Post by Apocryphon »

hbn wrote: post #84
estebank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 is…

Getting rid of their API so third party Twitter clients break was pretty big.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#157

Post by bilsbie »

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…

I assumed this was obvious.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#158

Post by KptMarchewa »

KallDrexx wrote: post #88
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 th…

I really, really doubt that acquisition is 100% cash.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#159

Post by throwaway29812 »

deltree7 wrote: post #151
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 '…

I hope you keep your Uber drivers, Landscapers and Cleaning Ladies on retainers because you have so much cash in your brokerage/bank account

This is..not a bad idea? I know several people that kept paying their cleaning people during COVID despite them not being able to come, because they were remote workers and could easily afford it.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#160

Post by adam_arthur »

morelisp wrote: post #154
adam_arthur wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Advertisers dropped spending because they don't like Elon/his behavior. Not because sales staff were laid off. It's quite obvious to anybody looking at the situation objectively. Twitter has functioned fine after massive layoffs, and feature velocity has only accelerated. Too many developers have an inflated sense of self importance

> Advertisers dropped spending because they don't like Elon/his behavior. I mean, yeah? If someone fired all my contacts at a company and didn’t return my emails as my revenue dropped as a result of their changes I would also stop paying them?

Thanks for confirming
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