With another 3,000 positions cut today, Microsoft's protracted series of layoffs is now at an end, according to GeekWire. A few more jobs may still be cut in early 2015, but the largescale redundancies are over.
Starting in July, the company eliminated close to 18,000 positions in total. After an initial wave of almost 13,000 layoffs, a further 2,100 people were cut in September and 3,000 more were cut today.
About 12,500 of the job losses are in the recently acquired Nokia Devices and Services business. Of the remaining cuts, some 2,700 were in and around the company's main campus in Redmond.
39 Reader Comments
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
I guess not everyone has this experience.
Server, Office, and Xbox are not fading in relevance. MS is doing just fine overall.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Maybe I'm naive but re-training them to new jobs and responsibilities to grow the company?
I have noticed the last couple years that conveniently, any time a company wishes to restructure, split, or merge people are laid off. The press releases make it sound mournful but secretly I wonder if the executives figure the higher the number, the more serious this restructuring/split/merger looks to the shareholders. Of course installing a little fear in the remaining employees never hurts either.
It would be nice to see benefits extended to companies have moratoriums place on them after such events. Say, 4 years.
Of course with this in their Nokia group that makes things a bit more hazy. Multinational companies are almost nations of their own.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Maybe I'm naive but re-training them to new jobs and responsibilities to grow the company?
I have noticed the last couple years that conveniently, any time a company wishes to restructure, split, or merge people are laid off. The press releases make it sound mournful but secretly I wonder if the executives figure the higher the number, the more serious this restructuring/split/merger looks to the shareholders. Of course installing a little fear in the remaining employees never hurts either.
Why retrain them for positions that don't exist? You can't just retrain people and put them in newly created positions on a whim in any way resembling a cost effective manner.
You guys are mourning these individuals as if there is some kind of over saturation for experienced engineers and developers with a major software firm on their resume.
Perhaps I view jobs differently than others, but employees are selling a service. Keeping them around when you no longer need that service doesn't make any more sense than keeping a cable subscription you don't use.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Maybe I'm naive but re-training them to new jobs and responsibilities to grow the company?
I have noticed the last couple years that conveniently, any time a company wishes to restructure, split, or merge people are laid off. The press releases make it sound mournful but secretly I wonder if the executives figure the higher the number, the more serious this restructuring/split/merger looks to the shareholders. Of course installing a little fear in the remaining employees never hurts either.
Why retrain them for positions that don't exist? You can't just retrain people and put them in newly created positions on a whim in any way resembling a cost effective manner.
You guys are mourning these individuals as if there is some kind of over saturation for experienced engineers and developers with a major software firm on their resume.
Perhaps I view jobs differently than others, but employees are selling a service. Keeping them around when you no longer need that service doesn't make any more sense than keeping a cable subscription you don't use.
Trust me, Microsoft is still hiring, they're just not hiring the same skillset they just laid off.
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If you noticed the telemetry numbers they have built into to >windows 8 you will notice they are able to understand more about your ways then ever before. Why not give the os away for free since they are selling the data.... to them. Now that they are THE leading intelligence firm in this country I would have thought techies understood this was happening as the evolution of a corporate giant without oversight driving internationally for the bottom line at all costs no matter what country it destroys is the objective. Now that the hardware companies and software companies working in collusion with each other, its no wonder this country has lost its technological edge. Which mandates action by the federal government by law to break this up.
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Last edited by Nekojin on Wed Oct 29, 2014 2:12 pm
See also:
https://beta.cironline.org/reports/job- ... ers-in-us/
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Maybe I'm naive but re-training them to new jobs and responsibilities to grow the company?
I have noticed the last couple years that conveniently, any time a company wishes to restructure, split, or merge people are laid off. The press releases make it sound mournful but secretly I wonder if the executives figure the higher the number, the more serious this restructuring/split/merger looks to the shareholders. Of course installing a little fear in the remaining employees never hurts either.
Why retrain them for positions that don't exist? You can't just retrain people and put them in newly created positions on a whim in any way resembling a cost effective manner.
You guys are mourning these individuals as if there is some kind of over saturation for experienced engineers and developers with a major software firm on their resume.
Perhaps I view jobs differently than others, but employees are selling a service. Keeping them around when you no longer need that service doesn't make any more sense than keeping a cable subscription you don't use.
Perhaps the mentality that likens human beings to a cable subscription is exactly the problem.
keephire people they have no use for?That is perhaps a more relevant question.
No company is perfect, but Microsoft's lack of focus and/or inability to execute over the past decade is now coming home to roost. They've obviously had some hits, but an 18,000 person layoff reveals a lot of misses.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Maybe I'm naive but re-training them to new jobs and responsibilities to grow the company?
I have noticed the last couple years that conveniently, any time a company wishes to restructure, split, or merge people are laid off. The press releases make it sound mournful but secretly I wonder if the executives figure the higher the number, the more serious this restructuring/split/merger looks to the shareholders. Of course installing a little fear in the remaining employees never hurts either.
Why retrain them for positions that don't exist? You can't just retrain people and put them in newly created positions on a whim in any way resembling a cost effective manner.
You guys are mourning these individuals as if there is some kind of over saturation for experienced engineers and developers with a major software firm on their resume.
Perhaps I view jobs differently than others, but employees are selling a service. Keeping them around when you no longer need that service doesn't make any more sense than keeping a cable subscription you don't use.
Perhaps the mentality that likens human beings to a cable subscription is exactly the problem.
So the alternative is companies should just be forced to keep people for life once hired, even when the needs of the business no longer account for keeping that person around?
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Most of the non-Nokia employees being cut have been SDETs. These are people hired for having developer skills, but tasked with testing products and building test infrastructure.
Many test teams were cut in half or worse, and with an immediacy that meant no knowledge transfer to the survivors. Its a big hit to morale and capability. Testers are often the ones on the team picking up the slack for any kind of Ops issues, engaging with customers more frequently, and providing the kinds of end-to-end regression and ad-hoc testing needed to keep big projects moving along smoothly.
In the short term, the cuts are a squeeze. They load more test work onto already overloaded product devs and redefine the test role away from what people were hired for toward more data-science and analysis. In the long term many hope that this is the first step toward "combined engineering", where dev/test is a single role that takes on whatever needs resources.
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Perhaps I view jobs differently than others, but employees are selling a service. Keeping them around when you no longer need that service doesn't make any more sense than keeping a cable subscription you don't use.
Ever see the movie Logan's Run?
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Most of the non-Nokia employees being cut have been SDETs. These are people hired for having developer skills, but tasked with testing products and building test infrastructure.
Many test teams were cut in half or worse, and with an immediacy that meant no knowledge transfer to the survivors. Its a big hit to morale and capability. Testers are often the ones on the team picking up the slack for any kind of Ops issues, engaging with customers more frequently, and providing the kinds of end-to-end regression and ad-hoc testing needed to keep big projects moving along smoothly.
In the short term, the cuts are a squeeze. They load more test work onto already overloaded product devs and redefine the test role away from what people were hired for toward more data-science and analysis. In the long term many hope that this is the first step toward "combined engineering", where dev/test is a single role that takes on whatever needs resources.
Just two weeks ago I heard Meier Shmouely, Director of Engineering at Skype say that he hopes to cut 80% of his testers - and this was totally independent of today's layoffs.
I like how you never hear people complain about how employees seem to be considered long timers if they choose to stick around for 2 years but as soon as MS doesn't keep everyone around forever, management are terrible human beings.
The majority of people are no more loyal to their employer than their employer is to them.
keephire people they have no use for?That is perhaps a more relevant question.
No company is perfect, but Microsoft's lack of focus and/or inability to execute over the past decade is now coming home to roost. They've obviously had some hits, but an 18,000 person layoff reveals a lot of misses.
No, it's the inevitable end to a merger of two large multinationals. Did anyone seriously think this is because of poor performance when Microsoft is making more money then ever?
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Most of the non-Nokia employees being cut have been SDETs. These are people hired for having developer skills, but tasked with testing products and building test infrastructure.
Many test teams were cut in half or worse, and with an immediacy that meant no knowledge transfer to the survivors. Its a big hit to morale and capability. Testers are often the ones on the team picking up the slack for any kind of Ops issues, engaging with customers more frequently, and providing the kinds of end-to-end regression and ad-hoc testing needed to keep big projects moving along smoothly.
In the short term, the cuts are a squeeze. They load more test work onto already overloaded product devs and redefine the test role away from what people were hired for toward more data-science and analysis. In the long term many hope that this is the first step toward "combined engineering", where dev/test is a single role that takes on whatever needs resources.
Just two weeks ago I heard Meier Shmouely, Director of Engineering at Skype say that he hopes to cut 80% of his testers - and this was totally independent of today's layoffs.
Yeah, the alternative future is no test at all. Why validate anything works when you can ship a half-baked product in permanent alpha state, outsource your testing to customers, and just analyze the feedback! They won't mind data loss and unusable apps when you've got that latest whizbang feature to snap your windows!
Can the end of the X-Box be coming soon - say after the Holiday Season sales? They might be planning to sell off console division if they find a buyer.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
Most of the non-Nokia employees being cut have been SDETs. These are people hired for having developer skills, but tasked with testing products and building test infrastructure.
Many test teams were cut in half or worse, and with an immediacy that meant no knowledge transfer to the survivors. Its a big hit to morale and capability. Testers are often the ones on the team picking up the slack for any kind of Ops issues, engaging with customers more frequently, and providing the kinds of end-to-end regression and ad-hoc testing needed to keep big projects moving along smoothly.
In the short term, the cuts are a squeeze. They load more test work onto already overloaded product devs and redefine the test role away from what people were hired for toward more data-science and analysis. In the long term many hope that this is the first step toward "combined engineering", where dev/test is a single role that takes on whatever needs resources.
Just two weeks ago I heard Meier Shmouely, Director of Engineering at Skype say that he hopes to cut 80% of his testers - and this was totally independent of today's layoffs.
Yeah, the alternative future is no test at all. Why validate anything works when you can ship a half-baked product in permanent alpha state, outsource your testing to customers, and just analyze the feedback! They won't mind data loss and unusable apps when you've got that latest whizbang feature to snap your windows!
Is this why they're expanding their beta and preview programs for both Windows and IE? I wonder if quality will really suffer in the long-term and we'll see Microsoft profits and revenue fall leading them to try and hire back those testers 5 years down the line.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
It's quite common in Europe to try and retain as many people as possible, rather than lay them off immediately when things get bad and try and rehire them when things pick up again. They lose the investment and experience that has been given to them so far.
That means retraining, offering positions on Satellite sites etc. Only when it's absolutely necessary are people laid off, and even then they are offered external training, and help from Recruitment people with writing CV's etc - all at the companies expense.
Companies with a 'fire and hire' short term mentality tend to have problems not only recruiting but also retaining people.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
I can't understand the opposition to this statement. Do people think MS should pay people to sit around and do nothing all day? Considering Microsoft hired them in the first place, I imagine most of these people are very intelligent and good workers, it sucks to be them now - I've been there, but it seems like it will be much better for society to have these people doing productive things.
Why exactly should companies keep people around they have no use for?
I can't understand the opposition to this statement. Do people think MS should pay people to sit around and do nothing all day? Considering Microsoft hired them in the first place, I imagine most of these people are very intelligent and good workers, it sucks to be them now - I've been there, but it seems like it will be much better for society to have these people doing productive things.
I think part of the opposition comes from Microsoft's incessant and enormous claimed need for H1B contractors. It's hard not to see this as firing the experienced (read: expensive) full-time (American) workers so they can bring in a new crop of cheap Microserfs to replace them. Obviously that doesn't apply to the Nokia folks so much, they're casualties of poor management as is so often the case.
In the end the problem you're seeing here is that managers have discovered that if they fire people they DO have a use for, then replace them with cheap foreign labor, their bonuses go up. And the problems from doing so that crop up years later are then some other schmuck's problem.
Can the end of the X-Box be coming soon - say after the Holiday Season sales? They might be planning to sell off console division if they find a buyer.
Xbox Entertainment Studio was a TV/Movie studio, not games developers. The xbox isn't likely to be sold off anytime soon.
Nokia's software guys? Most of them don't add value. The majority duplicate existing jobs and/or require retraining to get on the same level as the employees Microsoft has. Administrative staff? What sense does it make to keep administrative staff that aren't necessary? Support staff? Ditto. There is a LOT of overlap between two companies like this. The better ones will be kept, and those who are useful, but if you have someone whose does that job, what would prompt you to keep them around? Pay them to learn the job that you are already paying someone who knows what they're doing to do?
The idea that Microsoft should, for some reason, keep those people employed for the sake of keeping them employed is STUPID. If companies ran their business that way, they wouldn't BE in business, and their employees wouldn't get severance. Microsoft is doing EXACTLY the right thing: terminating employees that they don't need, and doing so in a way that ensures those employees have severance and are as well taken care of as possible.
As for foreign workers visas, the firing of one foreign national who does not bring you value means you shouldn't be able to bring one that does to America? How, exactly, does that make sense.
"You're hungry? Well, you threw away some leftovers last week, so I guess you don't really need food."
Nokia's software guys? Most of them don't add value. The majority duplicate existing jobs and/or require retraining to get on the same level as the employees Microsoft has. Administrative staff? What sense does it make to keep administrative staff that aren't necessary? Support staff? Ditto. There is a LOT of overlap between two companies like this. The better ones will be kept, and those who are useful, but if you have someone whose does that job, what would prompt you to keep them around? Pay them to learn the job that you are already paying someone who knows what they're doing to do?
The idea that Microsoft should, for some reason, keep those people employed for the sake of keeping them employed is STUPID. If companies ran their business that way, they wouldn't BE in business, and their employees wouldn't get severance. Microsoft is doing EXACTLY the right thing: terminating employees that they don't need, and doing so in a way that ensures those employees have severance and are as well taken care of as possible.
As for foreign workers visas, the firing of one foreign national who does not bring you value means you shouldn't be able to bring one that does to America? How, exactly, does that make sense.
"You're hungry? Well, you threw away some leftovers last week, so I guess you don't really need food."
..
Nice rant, spoken like true middle management in the conquering company.
I've been through 6-7 mergers and takeovers in Big Pharma, ranging in value from a paltry few billion to $100billion+. I've seen how these things work. And what you're saying is what is always said by management to justify their actions. The problem is, after they put to the sword all the people who actually generated value in the company they just bought, they also kill off the expertise. Knowledge transfer is a joke. The company taking over invariably equates might ($$$) with right (expertise) and they're usually wrong. Management in the vanquishing company also always makes out like a bandit on bonuses (and because they now have a bigger empire) and the sharp operators like SAC Capital make out great from insider knowledge, but down the road the vanquishing company so often is revealed to have destroyed a perfectly viable smaller company by ultimately pounding money down a hole. But management makes out great.
And in this particular case, Microsoft is killing off ca. 3K jobs in Redmond. Hint: that won't be the cheap H1B workers.
Color me tired of corporate propaganda and the fiction of an actual free market. It might possibly have made me slightly cynical about motives and results. To say nothing of managementspeak.
Even if I was such a person, that's not a logical criticism of what I said. Leading off with an ad hominem attack does not bode well for the rest of this post...
Because, unsurprisingly, it's true.
What "expertise", specifically, do the duplicitous positions Microsoft acquired from buying Nokia have that Microsoft employees, pre-merger, didn't have? What generated value for Nokia was good HARDWARE engineers and a good brand name. Do you think their financial guys had some mysterious secret knowledge that generated profits? Do you think their HR people knew some dark arts?
No. The fact is that when one company buys another, there are, very often, huge overlaps. Microsoft needs accountants. Nokia did, too. But now that Microsoft owns Nokia, you don't suddenly need the same total number of accountants. There are redundant positions.
Or they equate "spending more money than you make" to be a bad way to run a business. And they're usually right.
So, what I'm getting is that you have a problem with this in general, and you haven't yet cited any specific facts that show that Microsoft has destroyed a perfectly viable smaller company. Nokia was NOT a viable smartphone manufacturer. That's why they sold off those assets to make money in a reduced role.
3,000 out of a much, much larger overall cut. And no, the "they took ur jobs" nonsense isn't any more intelligent if you throw H1B in the sentence.
I color you biased and cynical, and thus unable to analyze this specific instance with a clear head. As you have griped in generalities, and didn't rebut any substantive point I made, there's little meat to your argument.
Simple question: which is better for these workers: Nokia going out of business and filing for bankruptcy, or Microsoft firing them with a severance package?
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