That's another milestone achieved in Elop's grand plan to bring MS and Nokia heads to the throne of Adobe.
Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
211–220 of 338 posts
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#212Is 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…
What's wrong with the NT kernel? How does its closed-source nature affect how useful it is? I note that the closed-source iOS kernel seems to also be quite effective, as does the Mach kernel for Mac OSX (despite the existence of and generally not very useful OpenDarwin availability). The history of NT is quite interesting, as is the NT article on Wikipedia. And despite Mac OSX and iOS being BSD-based, my mum doesn't…
Thanks for the reply! (I also assume you are not my downvoter:-)
I see the value of replacing the NT kernel by a bsd variant as this: you free ride on a lot of work done by other people. Us software heads have decided we wanted the hard core kernel and compiler engineering to be open source, circa 1990. We've won philosophically, albeit we've lost economically, as the 18000 layoffs and the death of SUN, and transformation of IBM into a services company, etc. The best compilers out there are open source. The best language innovations are open source.
I've nothing against C# and VS, which I consider a very good well documented and better alternative to Java (which is itself loosing ground to javascript in terms of a glue language), and a wonderful IDE respectively; but I wont pay for either, as I will not pay or lock myself in MSSQL when postgres is superior and free. Dont get me wrong, I love MS, I've written code on their tools since MS VC++ 5. (circa 1995)
Besides that time when they did not stick to the C++ standard with the STL (was it in VSC++6 or the first .net edition? that one was painful for a while) I've always respected their compilers -- bug free and fast, and producing fast code. It's just that there is not value in keeping that closed source anymore, it's a cost, when the alternatives are all copying each other easily because the underlying kernels are close cousins.
So in my view MS is basically keeping this huge maintenance burden on it's own, with a shrinking overall install base percentage based of computing devices (combination of tablets phones pcs etc)
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
Instead of writing "Christ", you should consider posting an email as if you were the one newly responsible for a $364B company and a reduction in 18,000 jobs. I'd be curious to see other people's management style from their armchair.
In my opinion, this is a pretty good critique of his writing style along with some constructive suggestions on how to improve it: http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/07/13/microsofts-new-ceo-need...
I agree (and even added some of my own commentary at http://www.mimiran.com/proposals/the-importance-of-writing-w...). Nadella is not yet at the level of Ballmer, but he's working on it. Which is too bad, they are both really smart guys running a really important company. I'd like to think that if they had a clear direction that they could communicate clearly, they would be more successful.
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#2141. Any reason why executive pay can't be reduced and save these jobs ?
Why pay stupid executive million and millions dollars and chop jobs of these poor people ?
2. Who determines who gets to stay and who gets to be fired ? Fucked up ranking system ? Ass-Lickers ?
3. Anyone saying layoff are good should really take second look outside during daytime ( 9 - 5). Once you are in battleground of searching job its hell. Really , its hell. People don't fucking respond even though you have many blazing things to show. You know why ? Because , you may not necessarily be good fit ? Your age , Your cool factor , being fucking social comes into play. If you are in 30s and have given up coding , good luck finding something in management.
4. If you are on H1-B , its grand fuck. You get 15 days to leave country or find new job. Overstaying is illegal and you seriously jeopardize green card , stamping process. Many companies ( mine being medium size ) have automated notification to DHS about H1-B status update, cancelling petition, visas.
edit : Can't believe so many shills here. Let the downvote brigade begin. Have a good life.
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#215Earlier 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.
Microsoft only has license to the Nokia brand through the end of 2015 (Nokia is still a separate company).
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
Letting 80% marketing and PM go? Wow. I thought PM are pretty good in Microsoft.
Didn't Ballmer's reorganisation mean that there was a triad of developer, project manager and tester working together? That would mean one project manager for each developer wouldn't it? Or am I wrong? Has that changed?
The triads are at a higher level. Once you get down to individual contributors there is typically a high ratio of Dev and QA to PM (maybe 1-2 PMs per team of 15), and usually a couple more Devs than QA. I'm not sure how widely those ratios are enforced or how much it varies from team to team.
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#217So 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…
I hope the ex-Nokia people start a phone company.
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#218So 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…
> 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.
That wasn't a merger that was IBM dumping a low margin business unit.
These Uber mergers never seem to create any lasting value
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#219Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture Body: Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction ... Christ.
Here's my attempt at removing some of the worst fluff from the email: Last week in my email to you I outlined our direction as a productivity and platform company. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments. The first step to building the right organization is to make changes to our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce…
I was just thinking of doing this yesterday, you should email it to him! Could be fun to try to do this for all overly wordy corporate email/announcements.
Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
#2201. Any reason why executive pay can't be reduced and save these jobs ? Why pay stupid executive million and millions dollars and chop jobs of these poor people ? 2. Who determines who gets to stay and who gets to be fired ? Fucked up ranking system ? Ass-Lickers ? 3. Anyone saying layoff are good should really take second look outside during daytime ( 9 - 5). Once you are in battleground of searching job its hell. Re…
re: #1 point is less about cost cutting per se in a lot of cases and more about creating a more efficient and productive organization by firing people who are a drag on things. of course, this is microsoft we're talking about here, so ymmv.