Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#41

Post by IncreasePosts » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #36

IncreasePosts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, ageism is allowed as long it doesn't discriminate against older people(45 years old or older I think?). You're allowed to discriminate against youth all you want. Offering a buyout is in no way discriminatory since it is voluntary. If it was forced buyout, then yes it would be discriminatory

By that logic a job offer is in no way discriminatory since it is voluntary?

A job offer can be discriminatory, why not? "You were our only female candidate, so we're offering you the job"

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#42

Post by jadamson » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

petcat wrote: post #19

aggakake wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft uses React Native in their Start menu because the kids don't know Windows programming anymore.

[flagged]

It's a laggy resource hog. It's slow to open. You can spam the windows key and watch CPU usage increase.

Putting words in someone's mouth to defend that dreck sounds ridiculous, yes.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#43

Post by ErneX » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #20

> years of work at Microsoft plus their age totals 70 Is that ageism? How is that different than saying if their gender is Y, their race is X or their religious belief is Z?

I mean they could instead fire them, at least they can opt to this.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#44

Post by darth_avocado » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:14 PM UTC

chongli wrote: post #17

darth_avocado wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re probably not the only people who keep the lights on. And if a few people are gate keeping information, you already have a problem that needs fixing.

How do you go about fixing the problem if you end up buying out all the people with the domain knowledge you were hoping to preserve? That's like burning all the treasure maps before you set sail.

Not saying a move like this won’t have any impact, but over emphasizing on domain knowledge is detrimental to engineering orgs. Some things will break, some things will be rediscovered by sinking more time, some things will be lost forever. But you also gain flexibility, fresh direction and the ability to move forward. When you work at a company for 20 years, you may be valuable when it comes to things that are done “the company way” but are also partially blind to how the industry has moved forward in those 20 years.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#45

Post by AntiUSAbah » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #13

ecshafer wrote: post #5

Isn't this one of the things IBM did multiple times through the late 90s and early 2000s? Is Microsoft the new IBM?

>Is Microsoft the new IBM? Lots of us thought they peaked during the Windows XP, now it looks like the Windows 10 era will be their peak beginning a long decline. There have been major missteps trying to turn Windows into a subscription/surveillance product, combined with Azure being a mess, Europe running away from American locked in products, OpenAI losing the lead and the space becomming crowded and expensive, and…

All of this might be true, but the numbers still match.

Windows is despite of all this garbage still the de facto standard. Azure is still a way to go thing beacuse so many companies just use office365 and microsoft can be trusted.

If you look at their numbers, they also grew quite fast. That might be more of their motivation though. They added 40k in just 6 years and are now at 230k.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#46

Post by ajayvk » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

aggakake wrote: post #14

freediddy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.

Microsoft uses React Native in their Start menu because the kids don't know Windows programming anymore.

Makes no sense if you look at the start menu as an interface to the operating system.

Makes perfect sense if you look at it as one more place to show ads

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#47

Post by oblio » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

stego-tech wrote: post #34

donatj wrote: post #12

I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now. Paying to get rid of your institutional knowledge and experience is an insane move, especially as everything is on fire.

It depends. Sometimes these buyouts are targeted towards groups that are toxic to the growth of the organization as a whole, like folks who have been around for a hot minute and have built up a cache of power but fail to use it other than for self-preservation or glory. I've worked in places where a handful of higher-ups nearing retirement block all progress because they refuse to learn anything new and are months or…

I wonder if Raymond Chen is still there :-(

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#48

Post by free652 » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:15 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #12

I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now. Paying to get rid of your institutional knowledge and experience is an insane move, especially as everything is on fire.

>I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now.

I always felt thats the deal. But not a lot of people left the company when one was given, and we have rolling buys out now so people are trying to time buyout + a new job offer.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#49

Post by 10xDev » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:16 PM UTC

avaer wrote: post #25

Can't help but notice the trend of tech companies shaving employees at an accelerating pace. Nobody wants to admit this (and there's a lot of reasons it could be temporary factors like "overhiring"), but to me this seems primarily if not exclusively driven by AI. You just can't say that to HR. The bigger question is if this keeps accelerating, can the industry and broader economy handle so many jobs disappearing, so…

It is overhiring. We are nowhere near close to some collapse: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-data-playground/

If you try to pattern match using news headlines towards some belief, you will. But the statistics are often a lot more boring.

Re: Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

#50

Post by petcat » Thu, Apr 23, 2026, 9:17 PM UTC

jadamson wrote: post #42

petcat wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's a laggy resource hog. It's slow to open. You can spam the windows key and watch CPU usage increase. Putting words in someone's mouth to defend that dreck sounds ridiculous, yes.

Well I don't use Windows so I can't comment on the quality. And I actually don't even really care about it. I was just commenting on the curmudgeonly perspective that young people can't do things right.