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Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

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Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#91

Post by enneff »

backn4th4ever wrote: post #89
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #18

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…

At Google, if you don't make it to level 5 sweng within a certain amount of time(2 years from being hired at level 4), you will most likely get fired. After that you can relax more. So the fluff in software engineering(including managers) is minimal. Facebook though... Ask their employees how that build system is working out for them. There's a lot of doing, agreed, but sometimes you need to just take a chill pill, s…

> At Google, if you don't make it to level 5 sweng within a certain amount of time(2 years from being hired at level 4), you will most likely get fired.

Don't know where you get that idea from. I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#92

Post by jarsin »

walterbell wrote: post #69
jarsin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Every layoff i have seen personally or through close friends at other company's the ass kissers survive and those t hat threaten them get laid off. Those that threaten them (the competent ones) are always painted as non team players because generally the competent ones are unhappy when the teams gain so many slick talking ass kissers but few doers.

Competent people need to know the political basics, it's like defensive driving. http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-... http://www.manager-tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-...

This is good stuff. Thanks for the links. I have seen many times and even done the withdraw and become cynical that they talk about. In my case I hated the entire company so it was a bigger issue.

I will say though that when companies lay off competent people one thing I see time and time again the competent people that survived (who probably are better at the politics) always abandon ship. Its very demoralizing watching the kick ass coder you work with go and Joe Slick that never checked in one line of code stay.

So its really not in a companies interest to get rid of those that can do their jobs well even if they are not wise on the politics.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#93

Post by randomfool »

cpeterso wrote: post #72
jarsin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Every layoff i have seen personally or through close friends at other company's the ass kissers survive and those t hat threaten them get laid off. Those that threaten them (the competent ones) are always painted as non team players because generally the competent ones are unhappy when the teams gain so many slick talking ass kissers but few doers.

Companies should lay off products , not people. How can a company expect to support the same products with fewer people? The hoped for efficiencies from laying off the "dead weight" are probably small. The company should kill its loser products and focus on its winners. "More wood behind fewer arrows." Michael O. Church wrote more about this in a recent blog post: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/why-co…

The last layoffs at Microsoft were largely cutting products, it was an utter failure IMHO- there were very few teams who were allowed to hire and so many rockstar devs taking a chance on products which got cut were left in the cold. I saw way too many awesome devs get pushed out of the company because their product was canceled and the project they wanted to work on had no headcount.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#94

Post by dragonwriter »

cpeterso wrote: post #72
jarsin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Every layoff i have seen personally or through close friends at other company's the ass kissers survive and those t hat threaten them get laid off. Those that threaten them (the competent ones) are always painted as non team players because generally the competent ones are unhappy when the teams gain so many slick talking ass kissers but few doers.

Companies should lay off products , not people. How can a company expect to support the same products with fewer people? The hoped for efficiencies from laying off the "dead weight" are probably small. The company should kill its loser products and focus on its winners. "More wood behind fewer arrows." Michael O. Church wrote more about this in a recent blog post: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/11/why-co…

> Companies should lay off products, not people.

Layoffs are generally associated with reduced mission scope, even if its not a reduction in named product lines (it can, e.g., involve reduction in supported platforms for the same area of named products.)

Still, reducing products or otherwise reducing mission scope on its own doesn't save money, you still have to cut people. Especially if the scope reduction doesn't neatly follow organizational lines, there may be no direct mapping between scope reduction and which positions get eliminated, and even if there is, if you have good and meaningful performance metrics and similar skill requirements across the parts of the mission that are preserved and those that are retained, not simply mapping from the functions reduced to the people let go makes sound business sense.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#95

Post by walterbell »

cpeterso wrote: post #65
walterbell wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, organization development literature is sorely lacking in research and discussion of immortality.

I'm not sure if your joking, but there is research into managing a business' longevity, such as the book "Built to Last": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Built_to_Last:_Successful_Habi...

Not joking :) Built to Last is inspirational, a bit like Warren Bennis "Organizing Genius". I was thinking of research topics like these:

1) Financing, staffing and governance of short-lived organizations which perform complex tasks then disband, e.g. film production, election campaigns, bi-annual sporting events, disaster relief, NGO coalitions. How are institutional identity and knowledge preserved when developed within temporary contexts?

2) What organizational scenarios have been proposed by scifi/fantasy writers for worlds where humans or other lifeforms are immortal? Do those scenarios suggest areas for research or innovation in modern corporations? Olaf Stapledon, A. E. Van Vogt, C.S. Lewis, R.A. Lafferty, Walter Jon Williams, etc.

3) Historically, business has been run by families with inter-generational inheritance. Some public and many private companies still operate this way. There is a body of literature on family-based governance and succession planning. Is that literature relevant to public companies like Facebook and Google where the founders have inheritable shares with unique voting rights on corporate futures? Will other corps seek superpowered share classes? Will consumers seek out B corps, public corps, private corps or hybrids?

Garther Morgan's "Images of Organization" provides food for thought: http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/07/13/the-eight-metaphors-of-...

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#96

Post by randomfool »

jarsin wrote: post #53
liveoneggs wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and who selects the ones to fire? The ass-kissers of course.

Exactly. Every layoff i have seen personally or through close friends at other company's the ass kissers survive and those t hat threaten them get laid off. Those that threaten them (the competent ones) are always painted as non team players because generally the competent ones are unhappy when the teams gain so many slick talking ass kissers but few doers.

There needs to be an org change first- flattening the hierarchy and a focus on getting shit done. Put in a process where teams can jettison inefficient members.

In most areas at Microsoft above level 65 it is all politics.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#97

Post by seanmcdirmid »

microarchitect wrote: post #71
cesarbs wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. :(

This is the #1 reason why I won't stay in the US after my phd. I have no interest in being a random CEO whim away from either having to uproot my life and move back home or frantically try to land a new job all in the short period of 15 days. For those curious the #2 reason is that H1Bs make it hard to do even simple extracurricular activities like writing books or do consulting on the side related to an open source…

Well, what if you are in another country working for a company (say Microsoft) on a visa, even though you are American.

> The H1B is fundamentally broken and I'm amazed that so many people put up with it. Credit to the US for being such a desirable destination, I guess.

There are plenty of countries with more broken visa policies (I've lived here for almost 8 years and still don't qualify for permanent residency).

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#98

Post by sirmarksalot »

cpeterso wrote: post #68
JibberMeTimbers wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contractors can be cheaper than employees, despite paying a higher salary. The reason is that they don't need to do so much legal work or pay their insurances and etc, etc. When a project is finished, they can just end the contract and avoid all of the legality. I've known many people that leave their job as employee and get contracted to the same company for those reasons (and more).

And contractors don't get stock options. Microsoft has gotten in trouble before about their use of "permanent contractors".

The stock isn't really a big deal anymore now that the company is stable, more or less. Back in the '90s, however, some preferred stock could mean retiring at age 35. And when the orange-badges started seeing their officemates buying mansions and supercars, despite not having worked all that much harder, they felt the need to get the lawyers involved.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#99

Post by adamnemecek »

Spooky23 wrote: post #82
TallGuyShort wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs are a sign that a company has been struggling, or has been slowing, or has grown disproportionately in personell, but that someone is doing something that probably needs to be done. It is not always the solution, but it is also not a sign of ultimate doom.

From what I've heard, if you're not working on cloud services, you're a dinosaur. They just let go of XP and cloud services are making the need to support office version X for 10 years less relevant. MS must spend a ridiculous amount of time & treasure supporting old crap.

> MS must spend a ridiculous amount of time & treasure supporting old crap.

But backwards compatibility is kind of the reason why a lot of customers buy MS products.

Re: Large Round of Layoffs Expected at Microsoft

#100

Post by sirkneeland »

yulaow wrote: post #26
chc wrote: post #6

I wonder how much of Nokia is going to get rejected. A friend of mine is a former Nokia employee who was really psyched to be working on the Surface team now — that would be pretty rough if that team got laid off just after getting settled into the company.

On zdNet they say that 1/5 of ex-Nokia workers in Finland could be axed [ http://www.zdnet.com/one-in-five-ex-nokia-workers-in-finland... ] Personally I think it will be even more

As a current Nokia employee (didn't transfer to Microsoft) it pains me to hear this.

But on the plus side, Nokia Technologies is hiring...

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