

Microsoft getting ready to lay off 17% of staff - noor420
http://www.fudzilla.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11142&Itemid=38

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prakash
No Layoffs at Microsoft, and a Round-up of other Recent Comments:
[http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-layoffs-at-
microsoft...](http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/12/no-layoffs-at-microsoft-
and-round-up-of.html)

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kleneway
This is definitely the post to read if you want a good perspective of what's
really going on. I don't have any firsthand knowledge, but around this time
every year MSFT seems to do a reorg, which can cause a lot of people to have
to find new roles internally (which most people do every 3-4 years anyway). I
suspect that internal roles will be more difficult to find, and a percentage
of the internal job seekers will eventually run out of time and will quietly
leave the company. But I highly doubt they will come out and announce a
blanket 17% cut on 1/15 - just doesn't make any sense.

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webwright
Why doesn't it make any sense? That post mentions that a large number of HUGE
business customers are going away (bankrupt financial firms, mergers, etc).
Revenue is going down. Does MSFT need 90,000 to do what they need to do to
grow/succeed?

That post is interesting, but internal memos of managers saying, "No layoffs!"
isn't very reliable. That's EXACTLY what they would be saying if there WERE
going to be layoffs to keep people engaged, working hard, and NOT stealing IP.

I'm not saying there are going to be layoffs, but off the cuff I imagine it'd
be a pretty good idea. Trim the fat.

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patio11
That is a pretty deep cut, especially for a company which is profitable and
has a warchest of several tens of billions last time I checked. (Full
disclosure: shareholder.)

Do we have any evidence that this is, you know, true? Because if not, the
rumor that I have $7 million worth of 10,000 yen notes stashed in my carry on
luggage is also a fact. Please, let it be a fact.

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ojbyrne
The name of the website itself doesn't exactly inspire confidence in its
accuracy.

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byrneseyeview
Extremely unlikely. $20 billion in cash + equivalents on hand, 40% operating
margins -- they don't need to do layoffs right now, and they'll benefit much
more if they ramp up hiring instead.

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wheels
It might be house-cleaning. I think some companies are doing layoffs right now
that don't really need to because it's one of the few times where you can get
rid of a lot of dead wood and come out looking prudent rather than in trouble.

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byrneseyeview
That is a good point, but I'm not sure. I have talked to a lot of Microsoft
people in the past, and asked them a lot about Microsoft, and I would be
extremely surprised if they had that much dead wood.

Especially because as they get bigger, their demand for 90th percentile types
rather than 99.99th percentile types grows.

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wheels
Nah, you get lots of dead wood at any big company. Nature of the beast. The
hiring practices are more like an initiation rite than a real quality
indicator.

Plus, 15% would be a pretty small amount of deadwood at a company that size.
It may just be specialists hired for departments that don't exist anymore or
people that stopped caring 5 years ago, but have been around so long that they
can't be fired.

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potatolicious
From what I've heard from friends at MS, it seems their dead wood is in
management - there's a culture of ass-covering and doing the bare minimum on
many teams, which goes a long way to explain why MS rarely does anything
revolutionary. Great ideas that are risky don't make it very far in that
company.

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gaborcselle
If this is mostly MSN, maybe they're just getting ready to replace that unit
with a company they're aiming to buy :-)

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dotcoma
if it's mostly MSN, it can't possibily be a cut of 15,000 people. Or can it?

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trickjarrett
Does this mean they're renaming Windows 7 to Windows 5.81?

In all seriousness, that's a sign of the times. I'm actually interested to see
what happens. Never before have so many programmers, developers, and IT people
been in the job hunt at once. So with this flood of available staff, there is
bound to be something interesting to come out of it. And I expect YC's next
round of funding startups will have a record number of applicants.

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pmorici
What's with all the MSFT employees speculating about the companies private
business on a public blog's comment forum? Maybe they should start by firing
those folks.

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potatolicious
Because they can't speculate about this at work, or on a company-approved
internal forum? MS is notorious in disallowing criticism of itself internally.

Hell, I've even heard of people being asked to refrain from inviting coworkers
to "Wii parties" via company mailing list.

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icefox
Why would Microsoft disallow criticism internally? Isn't that the one place
where you want criticism?

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pmorici
I wouldn't find it surprising if they did. Think of it from the companies
stand point. If employees are bitching about salaries, working conditions,
etc... All that does is serve to get the entire work force all hot and
bothered about it. It's not like we're talking about debating the merits of UI
design in their products.

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jredville
As an employee, I assure you that we are fully allowed to criticize the
company internally.

