41–50 of 251 posts
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
Isn't the key reason for these layoffs the recent acquisition of Nokia operations ? If that is, the layoff is just about eliminating redundancy post acquisition, and not addressing the deadweight problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The military is especially prone to this problem. I’d hesitate to refer to people as dead weight, but the retirement structure encourages mid-level management to hang-on for twenty. Even if people are burnt out after 10 years, which the military is very capable of doing, many stay even when they and the Service would be better off if they moved on.
The problem with the military is how benefits are set up. There is a big jump in benefits at twenty years. If you put in 10-12 years your benefits aren't significantly better than someone who just did minimal time. If there was a small jump around the ten year point they'd probably see people willing to stop there instead of holding out 8-10 more years.
As it stands the military actually has great difficulty retaining people past 10 years. Many military communities are chronically undermanned at the senior enlisted and officer leadership levels.
So while it's fair to say that the military has held onto lower-skilled workers, it's not exactly the case that it's leading to a glut of excess deadweight just hanging on. Rather, we use the "idiots" to fill the desks that would simply be left empty were it not for these guys biding their time to 20 years.
Whether that's a net positive or not depends on the given billet being filled, but we'd have to do away with billet-based manpower and fine-tuned "year group" tracking entirely in order to truly see benefit from dropping deadweight in the 10-18 YOS ranks. But the way it stands now, many billets require a certain rank or grade to fill them, no matter what the skill level might be of excess junior (or senior) personnel.
Interesting how this will impact the job market on the West Coast. You'd think that 5-10k people in IT would quickly fill a lot of the currently open positions.
Never good news to hear about layoffs, but for those that are affected I can say there is life beyond Microsoft. (it might even be better!)
Why can't it be good news? And good news to whom? To me, who cares about this company, this is good news because I think that MS needs to get much more nimble. I'm saying this as someone who can receive very bad news tomorrow.
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
> Microsoft has been picking up useless deadbeats for nigh on 25 years now. They really need to shed these people. Isn't the key reason for these layoffs the recent acquisition of Nokia operations ? If that is, the layoff is just about eliminating redundancy post acquisition, and not addressing the deadweight problem.
Any company that has been around for as long as Microsoft, has a huge amount of dead weight in its mid-level management. I mean people whose main skill is mastery of the internal political process. Lest people think I'm singling out Microsoft specifically, this same problem is present at Google as well, but is less of a problem because Google has not been around long enough to pick up the same amount of dead weight p…
In the last layoffs, many of the people who were let go were back working for Microsoft again in a year or so (often as full-time employees, more often as contractors). I believe that Microsoft has more contractors than it does employees. That is just crazy. Also, it's nearly impossible to fire even the most grossly incompetent people. One person I worked with was a utter flatline and doing negative work (very bad Q/…
Never good news to hear about layoffs, but for those that are affected I can say there is life beyond Microsoft. (it might even be better!)
Microsoft employee here. My main concern is the fact that I'm the US on an H-1B visa. I really, really, really don't want to go back to my country, but that will be the case if I'm laid off and unable to find another H-1B sponsor in a very short time. :(
I guess this means between 7000-9000 layoffs based on the crude calculation 600M/(60,000 ~ 75,000)~ approximately
USA Today ran with a prediction of 5-10% of Nokia staff, around 12,000 to 25,000 employees.
Interesting how this will impact the job market on the West Coast. You'd think that 5-10k people in IT would quickly fill a lot of the currently open positions.
I work in silicon valley and it seems like there is a huge shortage of people with software development skills. I am not talking about geniuses, just people with skills. I work at a company that isn't the sexiest (but a good stable employer) and man, it is hard to find people.