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Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#191

Post by mcast »

coredog64 wrote: post #89
Karunamon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Entirely serious question: is COBRA actually of any use to anyone? From where I sit it's always been pretty aspirational since it requires you to also pay the employer side of the insurance which is colossally more expensive than the employee side, and you are expected to do this while being out of work?

There’s a hack for COBRA if you’re immediately switching jobs: Sign up for COBRA but don’t make the payments. If something really bad happens before coverage at your new employer kicks in, make the payments and the claims. TL;DR: Treat COBRA as an options contract.

I thought COBRA benefits were retroactive? I was told you can sign up once you're at the hospital.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#192

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

skinnymuch wrote: post #150
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of co-ops and private companies... Please show me one public company that has said - sorry shareholders - we're returning 100%+ of profits to our employees forever.

Who cares if a public company hasn’t done it? We know it’s possible. We need to make the world a better place not have the status quo.

You can't do it with a public company because you have a fiduciary obligation.

You can't raise money from Shareholder A with the promise to never return the money.

That's a donation. Not gonna be able to raise money like you can from VCs and IPOs.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#194

Post by Apocryphon »

refurb wrote: post #119
whatever1 wrote: post #5

Families will get torn apart, people with health issues will be on their own, immigrants will get booted. C-suite will get a raise from the stock price bump. Congrats on our system.

I mean you could change the laws so that you get a job for life. Of course the countries with those laws have never created a company like MS in the first place, so..

Even without such laws, doesn’t the corporate culture in Japan foster jobs for life, and they have plenty of megacorps akin to Microsoft?

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#196

Post by Apocryphon »

mardifoufs wrote: post #172
yokoprime wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of profitable companies in Europe. It might be easier to become profitable in the US since you have less of a safety net, but that's a price US voters are willing to pay. Pointing to corrupt developing countries whenever socialized healthcare is brought up is disingenuous.

Do you think european corporations don't do mass layoffs? What is this completely false view of europe so many seem to have?

People at the risk of suddenly losing their health insurance start to envy countries where that doesn’t happen

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#197

Post by mym1990 »

thr0w4w4ymsft wrote: post #2

MSFT manager of 25+ person team here with no actual heads up on this. The writing has been on the wall for months though from internal comms so this should come as a surprise to no one. No one on my team has any information about this beyond the Satya email, so this is either a "no news is good news" situation (assuming you don't actually want to be laid off), or a poorly executed process. I'm hoping for the former f…

Can you give an example of what a broadly speaking internal comm(not anything specific to MSFT) would look like that might be a red flag for future layoffs?

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#198

Post by MSFT_Edging »

hnfong wrote: post #129
jarym wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Federal Reserve wants to tame inflation by cooling the economy. I don't believe that historically that has ever been achieved without causing unemployment to rise. These large companies are ultimately doing what the Fed wants them to do, no point blaming the c-suite for that?

Worse, they're actually sort of using unemployment rate as a benchmark on when the economy has cooled down and when to stop raising the rates. eg. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2022/10/12/does-the-f... It's politically incorrect to say the Fed is trying to make x% people lose their jobs but that's basically what they're scheming for the past year or so...

Its politically incorrect because you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud.

Our system relies on the fear of the bottom. Capital is in charge, they require the threat of destitution in order to continue to get away with their continued extraction. When wages go up, more power is vested in the worker which isn't okay by the folks at the top.

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#199

Post by x86x87 »

dehrmann wrote: post #185
x86x87 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. This was floating on Blind for at least 2-3 days.

Blind has predicted 5 of the last 3 layoffs.

That's why as a journalist you cannot use it a legit source. But usually you get an advanced warning.

This comes with the cost of the paranoia induced by seeing the corporate underbelly

Re: Microsoft to lay off 10k workers

#200

Post by mrandish »

culi wrote: post #136
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contrary to popular belief, at a company the size of MSFT - the execs could drop all their wages to $0 - and it would not be able to save 5% of the workforce from getting fired. The execs get paid a lot - but there's not that many of them, and there's 200k people at MSFT making an average salary (with benefits) >$200k. That's >$40B per year. The execs don't take home >$2B per year. Satya made <$60M last year. There's…

If all 10k of these workers get paid an average of $150k, Satya's salary alone would cover 4% of them. I find it hard to believe you couldn't save 5% Do you have any actual numbers on the number of execs vs workers and their salaries?

I just saw a headline yesterday based on a new study which said the average U.S. CEO's compensation is 399 times the average employee. So there's your number. A CEO taking zero would cover less than 400 employees. Also, keep in mind the vast majority of Satya's compensation is in long-term vesting stock options which can become worthless if the stock is lower in four years than it is this year. Also, due to how capital gains taxes work, Satya is going to hold his vested options for at least another year after they vest.

Plus, every sale of the company's stock by a key executive is immediately reported to the SEC and publicly available on the SEC and company's websites. Wall street watches this like a hawk. If any key exec unloads more than a few percent of their entire holdings at any one time, it will hurt the stock price pretty substantially. Effectively, it makes it so the CEO can't sell a lot their stock at once while they are CEO.

The big numbers you see for CEO compensation for this year are largely stock options that were granted years prior which vested this year. Almost all of Satya's compensation is performance-based instead of guaranteed. The company he leads must deliver sustained profitable growth over the long-term for his comp to be worth a lot. The fact it's worth a lot this year is almost entirely due to him already delivering on his commitments to shareholders in the past. Keep in mind that the average public company CEO is in the CEO job less than five years. Satya is in the minority that is succeeding. Due to the high visibility of the CEO role, the majority who don't succeed have a high likelihood of never earning significant compensation again.

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