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Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

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Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#291

Post by dragonwriter »

DVassallo wrote: post #288
pliptvo wrote: post #252

I find it fascinating that there's not a single comment here regarding industrial action. 18,000 people will have their jobs slashed just like that without any resistance? Instead they're just meant to leave with a smile on their face knowing that it's in the supposed benefit of their former employer? I'm sure Nadella finds the decision to send 18,000 people to the job market much more 'difficult' than they'll find i…

WA is an "at will" state. Businesses may fire "at will." There are no laws regarding dismissal, so businesses are not required to give warnings or follow any particular steps. Source: http://www.lni.wa.gov/WorkplaceRights/ComplainDiscrim/Termin...

That all seems to be a non-sequitur, since industrial action does not require that the event it is in response to is illegal (indeed, industrial action has frequently been directed against employers whose actions are not merely legal but strongly backed by government and supported with government force.)

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#292

Post by ertdfgcb »

aikah wrote: post #72

There was a previous thread on HN where some users were cheering for MS saying,it was just fat trimming or "actually that's good news". I dont wish it to happen to anyone. Being laid off is never "good news".

It's good news for Microsoft if that person was useless and slowing everything down.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#293

Post by asuffield »

kyrra wrote: post #147
incision wrote: post #135

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...

Disclaimer: I have worked for Cisco, and no longer do so.

Cisco is an engine for buying up small companies, digesting them, and extracting value from their products. It does not really do engineering or create its own product lines. As a result, it has polished the process of buying up companies, and progressively shutting them down while extracting the maximum sales value from the products that company has developed.

The key thing is that this is the core model of Cisco's entire business. It's actually not too rough on the people involved - the profits of the milking machine are shared fairly generously with the people being milked - but it is all about purchasing products with "potential future value" and converting it into cash, not creating new value.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#295

Post by pionar »

ersii wrote: post #268
tptacek wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cisco has a very different M&A strategy than Google. They add product lines through acquisition, in preference to building internally (if you're on a Cisco team and you're ever given an MRD for a product, the joke goes, quit and start a company to do it instead). As often as not, Google acquires companies to absorb the people. Google typically buys much smaller companies, and more selectively. I would be very surpris…

What does "MRD" stand for? I've been searching for a definition but I can't seem to find any, that makes sense in this context. Given the context, I guess it's some kind of product development order?

Market Research (or Requirements) Document

It's a document that's usually produced by a product management group in a company that outlines (very vague, almost laughably so) the "market requirements" - what users will want/need - for a given feature or set of features.

This is usually handed to developers/designers to come up with a "High Level Design" (HLD) that gives the "how" to the MRD's "what".

It's usually only seen in larger software companies.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#296

Post by tptacek »

pionar wrote: post #295
ersii wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "MRD" stand for? I've been searching for a definition but I can't seem to find any, that makes sense in this context. Given the context, I guess it's some kind of product development order?

Market Research (or Requirements) Document It's a document that's usually produced by a product management group in a company that outlines (very vague, almost laughably so) the "market requirements" - what users will want/need - for a given feature or set of features. This is usually handed to developers/designers to come up with a "High Level Design" (HLD) that gives the "how" to the MRD's "what". It's usually only…

It'd be more accurate to say that MRDs are an artifact of waterfall design. Waterfall is out of fashion, and so small companies tend not to use it, but if you're shipping hardware (like Cisco does) it's often more natural than agile.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#297

Post by jobu »

frou_dh wrote: post #5

Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture Body: Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction ... Christ.

I'm just thankful I don't work at either of those companies. 18,000 is a huge number and a big blow to company morale, but that letter is the icing on the cake. The corporate sleaze speak was extremely thick, and while Nadella did avoid the term "headcount" he never referred to any of those laid off as "people" (only jobs, roles, workers, positions).

At the very least he could've added a thankyou for your hard work, or an apology to those that no longer have a job.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#298

Post by romanovcode »

headgasket wrote: post #212
72deluxe wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 transform…

>as I will not pay or lock myself in MSSQL

Then don't use MSSQL? Are you really that stupid to think that C# can only use MSSQL as its database?

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#299

Post by asuffield »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #258
cwyers wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that "we can run this unprofitable business with half its current headcount, thus turning it into a profitable business" is hardly an indication of failure.

You're assuming the unprofitable business will become profitable. Businesses are never unprofitable because they have too many employees. Businesses are unprofitable when management lacks the skills, the foresight, or the vision to make those employees profitable. Edit: If this isn't obvious consider what a world-class entrepreneur could do with 12,000 experienced employees, a couple of billion in severance savings,…

What can you do with 12,000 employees with minimal experience and skills who have been working on a long-standing but now obsolete product line that was manpower intensive, when your business is being completely realigned around other product lines that still make a profit but rely on small numbers of highly experienced staff?

This is not a random question; this company exists.

Re: Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs

#300

Post by badman_ting »

pierreio wrote: post #94

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…

Very strange comment, I'm sure execs expected all of this when the deal was done. Their expected outcome probably does not look "catastrophic" to them.

Actually, I would say that by the time the deal rolled around the catastrophe had already played itself out at Nokia. It's sad what happened to Nokia, but the acquisition is the least of it.

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