171–180 of 338 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? Yes, many. Think of the Lenovo-IBM deal -- massive success. The Facebook-Whatsapp deal is 2.5x bigger than this acquisition, we'll see how that works out (financially). Google-Youtube is a big one that can be considered as a big success as well. Ebay-Paypal. FB-Instagram.
Facebook-Whatsapp are you serious?
Is it me or this guy is trying hard the SteveJobs look in that picture? Simple solution to all of microsoft's woes: Drop the WINNT kernel and replace it by a unix based variant. Is there any value in keeping the kernel closed source ? Hasn't that fight been lost a long time ago? Windows is going byzantine fast; there's no value in compilers and in os kernels anymore, the open source ones are better but MS still think…
It prevents forking. MS doesn't want to compete against its own kernel. Even Android doesn't want to compete against itself, hence the manufacturer agreement(s) that make it effectively closed.
So MS Bought Nokia and ~30k employees for ~$7.2 billion last April. 3 months later, MS may now be firing ~half of the Nokia group. The executives who drove that catastrophic deal stay. What a testament to how disastrous big M&A really is. Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? I'd feel sorry if I was a Nokia guy there, they pulled out the best non-Apple phone hardware in the last years. P…
They have almost no marketshare in the US. So is it really the best non-Apple hardware, or does being the best not really even matter?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did MS? Including the cost of the lay off ($1.6b says Recode), Nokia price was actually $8.8b. What was their business case that was so easily scrapped just months into the purchase? It may be successful on a tax/accounting perspective since the purchase was made in € with cash that couldn't be brought to the US. Yet this does look like a gigantic waste of assets. Warren Buffett says that a successful business is all…
Don't underestimate the value of the Nokia brand. Until recently, IIRC, Nokia was the world's largest seller of mobile phones. That brand image is worth a ton to help MS sell its phones.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ok, I don't get it, what am I missing?
Sugarcoating mass layoffs with "evolve", "culture", "synthesized", "strategic direction"...
Innovation investments? That's a new one! Made me laugh, but not for the right reason!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>'So MS Bought Nokia and ~30k employees for ~$7.2 billion last April. 3 months later, MS may now be firing ~half of the Nokia group. The executives who drove that catastrophic deal stay.' My understanding, primarily from friends at Cisco which has its own history of acquisitions and layoffs is that this is roughly standard procedure, catastrophe or not. Basically, there's always going to be a lot of overlap when acqu…
Cisco does buy a lot of companies, but only about as many as google has bought. Though Cisco has has more billion $ or higher deals. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_acquisitions_by_Cisco_S... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...
I would be very surprised to discover that Google has acquired close to as many headcount as Cisco has. But I don't want to do the research work either. :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or, for balance, Obama saying "I am acting alone on the border" and then at the border "Congress does not do its job."
That's not really "being political" since both statements are true. Congress didn't act on the immigration problem, so he acted on his own with the limited power of the Executive. This isn't a good example.
Lies don't have to "sound political" to be untrue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's plausible, but also plausible is that the drawn-out process causes the better performers to leave while they can. It's easy to say from the outside that the layoffs will hit underperformers and people who are just coasting, but the fact is that layoffs of this scale inevitably involve politics. We're talking about an organization that had so much trouble getting the Office people on the same page as the Mobile…
> 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…
I was a Zynga until last June, when the shut down their whole Shared Tech Group (basically the core Tech Support for all Teams / Server Management, Engine Development etc.) overnight, the whole group always had the feeling they would not be in danger because after all, pretty much everyone was dependent upon them. Until management thought otherwise, they announced "some cuts" at the Company Meeting, which was on Friday the next Monday we held the severance agreements in our hands and were instructed to leave the office.
You never really know what management is planning unless you know someone up their or are part of it.