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Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#111

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#112

Post by pengaru »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #111
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting.

> It's hard to see how so many companies could grow their headcounts far in excess of their revenue growth, and people didn't see at some point, they'd start cutting.

It's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff without hiring both and sorting after the fact when you're actually informed by experience.

The economic downturn just gives excellent cover for what's an arguably necessary part of a cycle akin to forests burning.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#113

Post by mc32 »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

It can be that but also it can be that they see some of the competition cooling so they don't have to spend as much to keep up with their competition.

It's like airline pricing. One airline has a sale, others follow (competition heating up), then, one airline hikes fares, others follow (as competition cools down).

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#114

Post by anonporridge »

estebank wrote: post #67
anonporridge wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, 5% is a small, manageable number. Small enough that if you find you accidentally cut important people or roles, you can quickly get them back. The point in my second paragraph is that if the company actually needs a 15% layoff to maintain itself long term, it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop. After each layoff, you let the system settle and recover, making sure that…

> it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop This disregards the effect of repeated layoffs on the morale and mental health of human beings, which affects how "the system" settles and recovers.

Absolutely!

I think it really depends on the overall health and strength of the corporate body and the external environmental conditions it's struggling to survive in. Sometimes ripping off the bandaid quickly is the best of many bad options.

However, you also have to consider that seeing a larger percentage of your teammates cut loose might be more psychologically damaging than just that one guy who everyone kind of knew was a poor performer anyway.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#115

Post by therealdrag0 »

gowld wrote: post #59
anonporridge wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass layoffs give you the opportunity to quickly purge poor performers without as much paperwork. It's advantageous to have regular rolling layoffs because of this if you can justify them by economic conditions. There's also an effect of wanting to do smaller, pulsating layoffs over the course of many months or even years rather than one massive layoff of the size you actually need, because ultimately no one knows ex…

Why? What's wrong with firing people during other economic conditions? Why would the paperwork be any different, whether it's a small layoff or a big payoff? Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V is cheap, Microsoft implemented it many times in many products.

It can be tedious to fire people. I know a manager at MS that has been struggling with a terrible performer for over a year. They are just now getting to the point of going through the processes (first gotta do RCA and try to fix etc) and having a paper trail down with HR to be able to fire them.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#116

Post by vt85 »

dragontamer wrote: post #73
ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #25

It's hard not to read some of these stories and not think that somehow some of these companies are free-riding on the ability to do some firings with minimal pushback because of the "well, look at what everyone else is doing!" climate that exists now. I'm having a hard time teasing out how much of this is driven by some sort of fundamental analysis of the economy, some collective BigCo CEO shared thinking, or, at my…

> with seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product. Twitter is said to have lost $2.5 Billion/year in advertiser money, largely because Twitter's sales teams have not been returning emails from worried Advertisers. That's a pretty huge impact on Twitter's #1 revenue stream (estimated to be $5 Billion in 2021). Twitter's core product is advertisements. Without sales staff to keep the advertisers, the…

[dead]

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#117

Post by arwineap »

bob1029 wrote: post #60
this_user wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT is more diversified and has a lot of sticky B2B customers while AAPL is mostly B2C. Sure, they are selling to businesses too, but MacBooks can be easily replaced, unlike MS Office and its like.

> has a lot of sticky B2B customers Indeed. We are all-in on using .NET6+ for building software for our customers. This locks us into VS/Azure/Windows subscriptions as a side-effect. Our clients sign 5+ year contracts, so we aren't leaving this area any time soon. There are certainly less expensive ways we could run our business and deliver our product, but the amount of risk associated with those options is far beyo…

FWIW, we run .NET6+ on linux / docker on AWS

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#118

Post by jvanderbot »

anonporridge wrote: post #52
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What % of their work force is 11k employees? Article says 5%. Would also be curious to know what % of the 11k are engineers/breakdown by department/org, etc.

Yeah, 5% is a small, manageable number. Small enough that if you find you accidentally cut important people or roles, you can quickly get them back. The point in my second paragraph is that if the company actually needs a 15% layoff to maintain itself long term, it would be safest to do it in three smaller 5% waves rather than one fell swoop. After each layoff, you let the system settle and recover, making sure that…

Generally speaking, they probably want about 5% loss / year, so they can continuously hire new starts and eliminate vacated positions as required.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#119

Post by safog »

endsync wrote: post #78

Bloat is real, but there's another labor market dynamic in play here. There was a huge run-up in corporate employee compensation in the tech sector over the last few years. (Some called it a "shortage," remember. Some of it is genuine growth in the sector, some of it was definitely "labor hoarding" by large companies that could afford to carry excess staff in a tight market as a hedge against being unable to fill cri…

There's no reason to view it as a pure tech-only thing. Every single company has hoarded talent in the past two years owing to the tight labor market. And it only needs some folks to signal before the flood gates open.

Finance is beginning now but a lot of layoffs will follow in H1 2023 IMO.

I don't attach any positive or negative moral value beyond everyone just working in their own self interest.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#120

Post by bagacrap »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #85
estebank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> seeming negligible external-facing impact on the core product In both technical and product axes Twitter has already deteriorated massively, possibly beyond repair and the company might not make it to 2024, so I wouldn't call that "negligible".

Call me ignorant but Twitter seems no different from what it was a year ago. There has been way more media attention and pearl clutching since Elon's takeover, but that hasn't translated to noticeable a difference in terms of usability and product.

There have been some product changes in terms of moderation, those blue checkmarks, and impression count. I don't really blame Elon for trying new things. On the technical side I don't know what's changed.

That said, I concur that Twitter is doomed. It was already not very profitable before advertisers started backing away, and Elon's tendency to "move fast and ignore regulations" won't serve him very well in the current climate of tightly regulated social media. Elon's piggy bank is no longer unlimited due to the revaluation of TSLA and the tendency for his huge sales to drive the price down even further.

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