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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

#311

Post by eddieroger »

untog wrote: post #95
eddieroger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The culture of a place like Hacker News is diametrically opposed to the type of people who would seek out and get an MBA. We're all supposed to be start-up focused entrepreneurs who are waiting for our exit by a corporation, only to also leave and start over. It's a common perception (even if it's wrong) that one of the tenants of an MBA is a communication style like the one used in Nadella's letter.

You basically just said "this perception might be wrong but it's one we criticise anyway", which... yeah. In any case, MBAs can help start-up focused entrepreneurs. They can be start-up focused entrepreneurs. Your perception that it can't be so is exactly what I'm talking about.

I was intentionally ambiguous. Of course an MBA can do those things, but MBAs don't start in their parents' garage. Steve Jobs didn't have an MBA. Larry Page and Sergey Brin only have honoraries. David Karp of Tumblr didn't get an MBA. The ideas just conflict, so it makes us dismissive for no good reason.

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

#312

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

The whole point of M&A is too eliminate redundancies in the acquired company, so you can drive the same aggregate revenue with lower aggregate costs. Layoffs are not a sign of M&A failure, they are at least neutral, and might be a sign of success.

edit: clarifying language

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

#313

Post by sanderjd »

ScottBurson wrote: post #282
sanderjd wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, that was great. Your version is clear and to the point without losing anything. It really makes me wonder why corporate messages are so often written in such a strange style. It clearly isn't necessary, and often ticks people off.

I think fuzzy communication is a sign of fuzzy thinking.

That may generally be true, but people capable of becoming CEOs of big companies are almost certainly not a fuzzy thinkers, which suggests to me that there is something else going on. Maybe this sort of corporate-speak, while being a negative signal to the set of people I'm more familiar with, is a positive signal to different and more important sets of people, like other executives, business media, and investors.

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

#314

Post by snowwrestler »

sz4kerto wrote: post #104
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…

> 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.

Google bought DoubleClick in 2008 for $3 billion.

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

#315

Post by Scuds »

mattzito wrote: post #8
k2enemy wrote: post #3

And now, every day for a year, everyone gets to wake up and wonder if this is the day that they will get laid off. Why can't they wait and make the announcement once they know who they will eliminate and do it in one swift action? Why put people in limbo for a year?

It's actually an attempt to try to be smart about letting people go. Sure, yes, they could come up with a master list and just pull the trigger today. But the odds of sweeping up a huge number of "false positives" grow considerably. The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed…

> The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc.

or people can get re-hired on as v- contractors or moved to other parts within the company. It's not like other MS employees haven't left and started their own firms using MS technologies.

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

#316

Post by ssmoot »

clarky07 wrote: post #278
ssmoot wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making the public earnings call the centerpiece seems like a real bad morale move. If I were a 'Softie it would be a strong signal where the leadership's priorities lie (stock price). It gives the talk of "lean" and "accountability" a decidedly negative undertone IMO. I do like the line about "the respect they deserve" without qualifier. It adds a bit of humanity to the whole thing. But not enough overall IMO. It rea…

well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me. Yes treating your employees well is a good thing, and it's necessary for a successful business, but that doesn't mean you should keep people who aren't needed or aren't performing. With an acquisition of this size there are going to be redundant people, and as Nokia was headed towards going out of business, everyone wou…

> well, his duty is to the shareholders so having that as a priority sounds like a good thing to me.

I think it's pretty tone deaf in a letter to employees. But tomato/tomato I guess.

I didn't say anything about keeping redundant positions, just that he wants to raise the bar for results, and I feel like this release only hurts that effort.

I'm not aware of any great turnarounds that began with "look, we're here for the share-holders". (I'm sure for good or ill they're out there, but they haven't come to my attention for whatever reason).

It's just about the exact opposite of other famous turnarounds based on the "it's the product stupid".

I don't know... I just feel like there's a lost opportunity here. Morale is going to suffer regardless. That doesn't mean you have to make it worse by being tone-deaf.

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

#317

Post by incision »

rmk wrote: post #308
incision wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. 'Cisco figured out that mergers between similar sized companies rarely work, as there are frequently struggles about which team will control the combined entity.' I recall asking people there about why they didn't acquire certain companies that I thought would make a lot of sense from a technical / product perspective. The typical answer was right in line with that quote - that Cisco stays away bigger co…

That's not really true. They bought SourceFire last year for a few billion.

>'That's not really true.'

Sure it is, there just happen to be exceptions.

Of the 21 years and 136 Cisco acquisitions with prices on Wikipedia, 14 come in over $1B. The average price overall is $530M, and the average price excluding >$1B deals with $178M.

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

#318

Post by amputect »

sgedljsgejkl wrote: post #273
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…

Do you even know what the definition of at will employment is?

If we're being bitchy over definitions, then do you even know what the definition of "industrial action" is? Because it's orthogonal to whether or not the firings were legal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_action

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

#319

Post by pliptvo »

sgedljsgejkl wrote: post #273
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…

Do you even know what the definition of at will employment is?

"On the one hand, the doctrine of at-will employment has been heavily criticized for its severe harshness upon employees.[39] It has also been criticized as predicated upon flawed assumptions about the inherent distribution of power and information in the employee-employer relationship.[40] On the other hand, conservative scholars in the field of law and economics such as Professors Richard A. Epstein[41] and Richard Posner[42] credit employment at will as a major factor underlying the strength of the U.S. economy. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Controversy

Well I'm certainly not a conservative.

I think the second point is true. An at-will contract (or lack thereof) is essentially skewed towards the free will of the employer in a way that is massively to the detriment, as these cuts prove, to that of the employee.

At will might be the employment norm in America, but assuming a sizeable number of Nokia's workers are actually Finnish where they have far stronger employment laws, I would wonder whether this is all even legal.

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

#320

Post by sumedh »

pxlpshr wrote: post #75
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.

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.

> you should consider posting an email as if you were the one newly responsible

For starters, I would not use the word "synthesized" in my email.

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