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Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#121

Post by tikhonj »

anonporridge wrote: post #24
Xeoncross wrote: post #4

I'm wondering what data really drives the back-and-forth at big tech. We've seen google, amazon, microsoft, meta, etc.. do hiring freezes, then layoffs. Hiring freeze, then back open, or layoffs then more layoffs later. I would expect a longer term plan than just looking forward or backwards one quarter which seems like what has been happening the last year. I would assume they had better information and insights tha…

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…

> 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.

I've heard people say this, but it seems contrary to how layoffs are run in practice:

• entire teams or divisions are often laid off with no eye towards individual employees' tenure, experience or skills

• decisions happen on a condensed time scale by higher-level executives—not exactly conducive to a nuanced view of individual employees' performance, which companies struggle to assess effectively at the best of times

The "common knowledge" about what layoffs accomplish and why they're necessary really doesn't match what happens on the ground.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#122

Post by jmugan »

bagacrap wrote: post #100
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…

Is this a war on talent, or just free market dynamics?

They are both free market dynamics.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#123

Post by adam_arthur »

dragontamer wrote: post #110
adam_arthur wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.

But not the features that retain advertisers. Which were the silent issues that no one talked about before. And indeed, advertisers aren't talking about it now. They're just leaving the platform in droves. There's no one _to_ talk about it with. Entire teams (including high ranking executives) that kept relationships with advertisers have been fired. Twitter doesn't even have anyone answering / categorizing the compl…

Advertisers dropped spending because they don't like Elon/his behavior. Not because sales staff were laid off. It's quite obvious to anybody looking at the situation objectively.

Twitter has functioned fine after massive layoffs, and feature velocity has only accelerated. Too many developers have an inflated sense of self importance

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#124

Post by objclxt »

adam_arthur wrote: post #108
dragontamer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.

> Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs.

I don't know if deliberately breaking their developer API for third party clients counts as "shipping features faster than ever".

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#125

Post by [deleted] »

adam_arthur wrote: post #108
dragontamer wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Interesting that Twitter is shipping features faster than ever after 80% layoffs. Don't think Twitter's revenue issues have anything to do with sales staff. Advertising channels/campaigns can and should be 100% automated.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#126

Post by jh00ker »

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…

Or maybe it's some collective BigCo board of directors shared thinking that they need to show to shareholders that they are being proactive on that Overton window.

$MSFT ticking up ...

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#127

Post by etc-hosts »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #49
mgkimsal wrote: post #34

11,000 people - let's say an average loaded cost of $250k/yr. That's... ~$3b/yr these folks cost MSFT. Granted, it's per year, but ... keeping these people on for another 3 years would cost ~$10b. MSFT currently have $100b cash on hand. It's gotta be a little... frustrating to get be part of a 5% cut when there's so much free cash sitting around. I know, it's a narrow view of corporate finance, and I don't have the '…

It boggles my mind that people will work hard for an employer. You care about you less than a used napkin.

There's no shame in working hard at your job or getting a sense of satisfaction from writing programs to move 0s and 1s around, but I sometimes forget that my employer at the end of the day really does not personally care about me.

Always good to keep this in mind.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#129

Post by cldellow »

googlryas wrote: post #12

How do layoffs like this happen? Every team cuts 5%? Wholesale elimination of teams?

It varies. I was at MSFT during the 2008 layoffs.

My division fired a few percent of people.

A friend's group had a "We're firing everyone in Redmond who works on this team and consolidating in Hyderabad."

Re: Microsoft to lay off 11k employees

#130

Post by Sevii »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #31
Xeoncross wrote: post #4

I'm wondering what data really drives the back-and-forth at big tech. We've seen google, amazon, microsoft, meta, etc.. do hiring freezes, then layoffs. Hiring freeze, then back open, or layoffs then more layoffs later. I would expect a longer term plan than just looking forward or backwards one quarter which seems like what has been happening the last year. I would assume they had better information and insights tha…

I imagine it's three things. First and foremost, interest rates are up. Some development opportunities only make sense when loans are basically free. Second, the market's down, firing a bunch of people is a good way to boost stock prices in the short term, and people making these decisions are often primarily motivated by short term stock price gains. Third, big tech executives are heavily influenced by trends, they…

I think people over focus on poor performers when in reality layoffs are a great chance to get rid of teams and departments that don't make economic sense anymore.
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