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Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

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Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#41

Post by Anderkent »

shaydoc wrote: post #29
Infinitesimus wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Layoffs aren't always about profit though. In this case, it is more about streamlining and making MS more agile

How does laying off 18,000 people make you more "agile" ? Products that sell make you more "agile"... Its more a case of, we bought Nokia for their market, but we don't need their staff!

> Products that sell make you more "agile"

Uh, no, being capable of designing things cooperatively rather than playing political games and supporting status-quo is what makes you agile. Products that sell are the effect, not the cause.

It's much easier with a smaller company, though I doubt that's the primary motivation for the layoffs. More likely, they want to re-evaluate their internal culture, fire people most out of sync with what they'd like the culture to be and hire people that are more similar.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#42

Post by suls »

"[..] In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. [..]"

At least on concrete and positive note in his email. Wondering if that tripled the initial estimate of 6k cuts.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#44

Post by worldpeace »

Infinitesimus wrote: post #30
Systemic33 wrote: post #10

I'm not very impressed with the choice of Nadella so far, he seems too deep into MS culture to be able to see clearly. But only time will tell, it's still to early to give a verdict.

Do you care to explain more why you think he can't see clearly? I'm curious about your reasons for the statement. From my limited outside perspective, these layoffs are a good idea since there's bound to be a lot of redundancy and inefficiently in a company of this size

His writing is shit. Compare his writing to anything from Bezos or Cook.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#45

Post by dasil003 »

k2enemy wrote: post #3

And now, every day for a year, everyone gets to wake up and wonder if this is the day that they will get laid off. Why can't they wait and make the announcement once they know who they will eliminate and do it in one swift action? Why put people in limbo for a year?

How do you propose a corporation the size of Microsoft decide who to fire without it leaking internally that layoffs are coming? It would have to be an incredibly coarse-grained and thus terrible decision.

Besides, I fail to the see the logic that advance warning isn't objectively good. If you're going to be laid off it's better to have some additional time on the job before your severance, even if there's uncertainty. And besides, how much peace of mind did employees at Microsoft have anyway? If they were paying any attention at all to how the company is doing everyone at the company had to see that layoffs and restructuring were inevitable sooner or later anyway.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#46

Post by tgeorge »

k2enemy wrote: post #3

And now, every day for a year, everyone gets to wake up and wonder if this is the day that they will get laid off. Why can't they wait and make the announcement once they know who they will eliminate and do it in one swift action? Why put people in limbo for a year?

This is where the Bob's come in...

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#47

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

Looks like about 15% of their employees, although 10% will be former Nokia folks.

This has to be part of a multi-year effort to reformat the company. I would expect that there are going to be soft costs that have multi-year impacts. People left behind having to take on more work without necessarily any incentive.

With numbers this high, there will be some degree of randomness in the people selected for the layoff. This will have long-term impacts on morale.

Microsoft has a ton of cash, right? Wouldn't it be smart for them to, once the layoffs are over, incent people to perform in the "new culture"? Give their key people more $, more responsibility, etc.?

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#48

Post by [deleted] »

smackfu wrote: post #39
sz4kerto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's plausible, but if I were at Microsoft I'd be sending out my resume right now. No -- most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not. We're speaking about 5% of the original (pre-Nokia acquisition) workforce. You must know whether you're in the bottom 5%, or if your product is in the least critical 5%. Of course there are surprises and some good/productive guys will be la…

Yes, employees can tell when their project is not a high priority. I don't think they have any visibility to whether they are in the bottom 25% or the bottom 5% though. So that's a quarter of the work force feeling the threat of layoffs.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#49

Post by weavie »

frou_dh wrote: post #5

Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture Body: Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction ... Christ.

It's the sort of management email that I would read with my internal management spam filter fully engaged. I would probably get to the end and delete it without even taking in what he was saying.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#50

Post by untog »

bshimmin wrote: post #37
worldpeace wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone talks like 'Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction'? This guy is trying too hard to sound smart. Everything that's written by him reads like a try-hard freshman English major.

It's just typical big-company-CEO babble, which I think they must teach you when you do an MBA. (And yes, Satya Nadella has an MBA.)

Can HN lay off the MBA hate? It's getting really old. It's abundantly clear that no-one even knows what an MBA is.
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