Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 481 posts

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#391

Post by zerohp »

berz01 wrote: post #231

1. Too many humans - decision-making is slowed down & and it's expensive Cut half - faster decisions, more money. Will you have more problems, Yes. But you'll never know how bloated you were till you get lean again. 2. Too expensive humans Most developers at FANGS can be replaced with mediocre devs in iowa or India. They will cut high-priced salaries soon and replace them with entry-level talent.

> Most developers at FANGS can be replaced with mediocre devs in iowa or India. They will cut high-priced salaries soon and replace them with entry-level talent.

Software companies have been trying this for 30 years and it has never worked.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#393

Post by shagie »

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…

Good catch.

Tesla:

number of employees: 99,290 ( https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/number-... )

revenue: $74.863B https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/revenue

And that gives us $753k/employee - in agreement with your number.

---

SpaceX:

Number of employees: 12,000 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX )

Revenue: $2 billion ( https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/spacex-revenue-2-billion-fro... (estimate) )

And that brings us: $166k/employee.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#394

Post by berniedurfee »

marcosdumay wrote: post #365
akira2501 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the size and timing of these blocks are certainly curious The timing of the layoffs was exactly "as soon as all investors decided to stop their long-term deals". It's really not an evidence of collusion, except maybe of the investors. (But they too had an explanation.) People are confused here because MS doesn't care about investors timing, but they had a clear trend to jump into. That said, other evidence may be m…

I think you're right in that this is MS jumping on a trend.

Most big companies need to purge workers on occasion, but don't because it sets off alarm bells.

Unfortunately, this is an opportunity for companies to make big cuts without standing out.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#395

Post by hattmall »

KerrAvon wrote: post #270
tensor wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, it means that they didn't forsee the economy going down to the extent it has. Corporate finances work like any large investment company. How much cash do you have on hand, how much is it earning per year, what is your revenue. If you suddenly are getting 10% less from investments and possibly less from revenue due to a severe economic downturn, then you need to save 10% in costs somewhere, and for tech companies…

There's no recession, though. There may be one this year, but it didn't exist before all of these layoffs. It may not be a conspiracy, but it seems questionable to believe these companies are not willing a recession into existence through, charitably, pessimism.

There's definitely a recession, however it's hiding behind inflation and rising interest rates. The two trillion in reverse repos are why the recession is having a softer introduction than you may be used to seeing. Companies are both responding too and getting ahead of the equities crunch. The economy crashed and the recession started in full form in March of 2021. But reverse repos have allowed the fed to inject two trillion into equity markets behind the scenes and without the directed action that requires fund managers to rebalance.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#396

Post by ryanSrich »

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…

These layoffs are precisely intended to suppress tech employee wages, which like any other sector, have remained fairly stagnant for the last 5 years.

> collusion is not needed

It's not explicitly needed. However, rest assured there's a mutual understanding among all big tech executives that the next few years are going to be incredibly profitable for them.

Think about it. They can do layoffs as many times as they want. This forces lower wages. They can still use inflation, the pandemic, the recession, and war as an excuse to keep raises low (or non existent). They can keep current employees in fear for several years.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#397

Post by datavirtue »

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…

As soon as the dust clears the hiring spree will ramp up again. This is a colluded (public collusion, probably a better term for it that I don't know) wage reset.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#398

Post by datavirtue »

kika wrote: post #358
akira2501 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The war on wages is being waged (? is that the same word?) by the Fed. Companies just follow.

Winner.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#399

Post by testrun »

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…

This is one of the worst things you can do in a company. GE did it starting with Jack Welch and since then the company is not the same.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#400

Post by datavirtue »

terminal_d wrote: post #375
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…

Free fall? That is some ripe hyperbole.
Post reply on HN