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Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#371

Post by sosodev »

redleggedfrog wrote: post #305

So one 1 out of 20 are getting let go. Looking around near 50 employee company I work for I easily see 2.5 employees I would let go just because they're near useless. Hell, I'd say it's at least 5. I'd say unless you've got a good manager, really good hiring, and are keeping close tabs on the technical people (just to make clear, I'm one of them those technical people) I figure you've at least got 1 our of 20 you sho…

You'll say this until you are the one let go. Companies are irrational and layoffs of this scale are not capable of targeting the poor performers.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#372

Post by [deleted] »

adam_arthur wrote: post #265
anotherman554 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Elon is mismanaging Twitter your post would be a good example of the cognitive bias called the Halo effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect

To say that somebody’s success at tasks that are highly correlated with a separate task is irrelevant is simply wrong. And people who tend to succeed at most things they do, tend to do so for a reason. It’s effectively statistically impossible for it to be sheer coincidence/luck. Or should I just pick random “logical fallacy” links to put in my replies instead?

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#373

Post by marcosdumay »

yCombLinks wrote: post #205
gowld wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Assume a constant need to fire a decent chunk of the company. Why? If you are so good at identifying poor performers, fire them, and reap the profits of being leaner, more effective organization. "The market" is a boogeyman used to rationalized everything.

Because every time you want to build a new product you risk that no one ends up wanting the product, or not enough people to justify keeping it going. Alternately once you have depleted all of your current ideas you don't have anything productive for those people to do.

> Alternately once you have depleted all of your current ideas you don't have anything productive for those people to do.

Ok, that can possibly happen. But if it constantly happens, you have problems.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#374

Post by WalterBright »

akira2501 wrote: post #239
endsync wrote: post #78

Bloat is real, but there's another labor market dynamic in play here. There was a huge run-up in corporate employee compensation in the tech sector over the last few years. (Some called it a "shortage," remember. Some of it is genuine growth in the sector, some of it was definitely "labor hoarding" by large companies that could afford to carry excess staff in a tight market as a hedge against being unable to fill cri…

You're describing a monopolized labor market. Sure, there may not be felonious collusion, but many of the illegal elements of a monopoly are very much present.. as you essentially point out. I'm also not sure why you would be surprised to learn there is collusion, the size and timing of these blocks are certainly curious, and I think further investigation would reveal quite a bit more than you're imagining here. I al…

Or maybe it's just because we're entering a recession which makes it necessary to cut costs.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#375

Post by terminal_d »

endsync wrote: post #78

Bloat is real, but there's another labor market dynamic in play here. There was a huge run-up in corporate employee compensation in the tech sector over the last few years. (Some called it a "shortage," remember. Some of it is genuine growth in the sector, some of it was definitely "labor hoarding" by large companies that could afford to carry excess staff in a tight market as a hedge against being unable to fill cri…

Hey, you're right -- this is a bargaining chip for BigCo, but the "invisible" factor here is that the economy is clearly in freefall and no one is ready to call the emperor naked. Everyone's cutting their losses, and in sectors as important as tech and with companies as big as MSFT, there's always some government support and "insider insight" into these events. If BigTech comes out of this on the other side, I fully expect one big company to be absorbed / dependent upon another. If not, this is prime time for underdogs to really show what they are capable of.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#376

Post by ensignavenger »

samspenc wrote: post #326
shagie wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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://w…

Looks like for the tech companies this is revenue per employee, and not profit per employee right? Then for Tesla, it would be $754K in an apples-to-apples comparison. I can't find any info for SpaceX though. Meta is at $1.64M per employee btw, roughly similar to Google. Didn't realize Apple and Netflix ratios were so much higher. Source for Tesla and Meta: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Microsoft+vs+meta+vs+te…

That is revenue/employee, not profit/employee.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#377

Post by TigeriusKirk »

dragontamer wrote: post #171
adam_arthur wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I were an advertiser (and I have in the past), I would look at the metrics of engagement for my ads to assess their efficacy, not talk to a representative. Either you're happy with the revenue lift or you're not. To say that ad sales has to be a manual, high touch channel is simply wrong. Perhaps you have staff on hand for large accounts, but why would e-commerce drop shipping headphone company #7 need to talk to…

I'm talking about the $100+ Million advertisers, not small ones like you. Disney is most interested in making sure that Mickey Mouse / Winnie the Pooh / Zootopia is not accidentally shown next to furry porn. Southwest doesn't want its ads shown next to airplane disasters. Kellogs doesn't want "Itsssss GREAT" being shown next to the Ukrainian War. As I said before: you can't predict the "X is being shown next to Y, pl…

Southwest and Disney continue to advertise on Twitter, so I assume they're satisfied with the tools in place.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#378

Post by yevpats »

That's just the first wave out of three. The first one are with the most severance usually as there is still more cash in the bank, so even though it sucks to get laid off you can look at the glass half full. Be strong everyone there!

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#379

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sleepybrett wrote: post #345
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter has functioned fine after massive layoffs, and feature velocity has only accelerated Feature velocity for users . Not customers. Also, the deprecation of APIs strongly intimates Twitter Blue was a failure.

> Also, the deprecation of APIs ... and has driven away, or may drive away, many of the core content providers for their network effects. People who buy a third party client for twitter are generally not casual users. I reached out to a few friends I would consider 'posters' a couple of journos, a couple of 'personal brand' advertiser types... all of their twitter engagement is way down .. from both sides of the conv…

Why isn’t there a Tweetbot for Mastodon?

Onboarding is a PITA. With Twitter ceding the ground, this could be a real differentiator. Hell, you could build a licensing component paid to the servers.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#380

Post by kristopolous »

mythhouse wrote: post #299
kristopolous wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen a cold and calculated layoff. It's always been exasperated irrational arm-waving risk mitigation. The "good" people aren't kept - instead it's the ones that can navigate the political waters. For every one competent executive there seems to be 3 deluded narcissistic idiots who will slash and burn people who are overqualified and under-utilized for the positions they've been incompetently assigned. Now…

you should write a substack or a podcast. Lots of ppl are oblivious to this stuff.

Most of the tricks are easily discoverable hacks. It's best not to advertise it too loudly
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