Microsoft layoffs rumor
This is getting serious --
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/ ... lieve.html
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
This will devastate the local real estate market if true. Scary times.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/content/ ... lieve.html
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/
This will devastate the local real estate market if true. Scary times.
Comments
WE NEED TO BUY MORE ZUNES!!!
That "Mojave" commercial sums up the MS problem most concisely. MS has to literally disguise the name of Vista (and pay people in a commercial to look excited) in order to try and sell it. And what about those Gates/Seinfeld commercials?
Its like watching a onetime top movie star grow old and do everything they can to try and stay young and "with-it". And just as pathetic and ultimately....hopeless.
"Microsoft is preparing to announce the first wide scale layoffs in its 32-year history, with up to 15,000 jobs at risk, according to some predictions," 'The Times' said in a report published online.
If they're smart, I'll be one of those that gets laid off. I'm SO LAZY!
Microsoft just hired a new president for its online properties (including MSN) from Yahoo after a lengthy search. He started full time today. Do you think that SteveB is going to surprise him in his first week of work by laying off +20% of his team? I don't!
There may be cutbacks at Microsoft but that rumor is based on a fairly illogical premise. I don't think it can be given much credibility
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN1449233320090115
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123197886745683743.html
I don't know...I already know some people who are reconsidering plans to purchase due to general anxiety over their job stability. Prices might come down, but it might do very little to spur forward new buyers.
Most people do not want prices to go down. They want a return to 2006 bubble pricing. Denial is still the order of the day. I wonder when the shit really hits the fan?
Most people want whatever is best for them personally. Since 65% of the population owns their primary residence, of course they prefer higher prices. The confluence of this fact with the fact that Americans, on average, are really really bad at math is why so many people think higher prices are better even when they are against their own best interests (if prices were lower you could sell and buy and even nicer home!!!).
The high prices only matter if they're specuvestor/flippers scumbag types. Why nobody pines for higher prices on TV/DVD players/computers?
How about retirees? People like the emotional pay off of their home selling for more than they bought it when they move. Even if it means the house they are moving to is also more.
It's not really logical, but yes most people like to view the world that way.
Any time I see "across the board layoff" it raises my BS flag. There are groups in M$ that could probably stand to be trimmed back, and groups in M$ that can't (at least not now). Arbitrary RIFs will cause a lot of release delays.
I'm not a manager, so I don't know the exact numbers in my group, but contractors represent about 5-10% of employees and their contracts have not been renewed. Hence, there are ways to make relatively large cuts without a big to-do or expensive severance packages.
Let's assume (briefly) this is true. That would be on-top of contract labor being released?
It sounds a little excessive to me, given how absurdly profitable Microsoft is. But, on the other hand they seem (IMHO) to have more employees than they really know what to do with anyways. Maybe their plan is to preserve capital so that in 2 years they can buy up several also-rans like Yahoo for nickles/dimes on the dollar. Given that most businesses are moving slowly to upgrade to Office 2007, and avoiding Windows Vista entirely, and there's a major recession in the works, they don't really need to release new versions of either flagship product until 2011.
Toss in the liability of several of their more fringe products (Zune, that mammoth surface computer, and the XBox hasn't been terribly profitable), and it doesn't seem entirely certain they won't use the recession as an excuse to cast off some dead weight (my bet's on the Zune) without officially admitting they lost a battle.
Maybe we shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the idea of a 10% chop to head count, even if it clearly won't be levied equally across the board.
http://www.techflash.com/Report_Microso ... 74774.html
"The report says the company's real estate and facilities group was working under the assumption "that the company's work force would not grow for the next 2 1/2 years. Beyond then, the planners expected annual growth of 3 percent.""
More details at:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/ ... ion20.html
Lets do the math from that article. Optimal low end of annual revenue was 67.3 billion bucks(earnings of 2.12 a share). Analyst estimating revenue report on thursday will only be 63.76 billion bucks (earnings 1.96 per share). That's a decrease of 3.5 billion bucks. According to the above article, looks like they are cutting costs by about $525 million with decreases real estate and traveling and expansion expenditures. Gee, I wonder what they're gonna do about the other 3 billion bucks in lost revenue (layoffs perhaps...)
That seems high to me, so lets make it $110,000. If I cut 9000 microsoft employees I've swiftly dropped cost by a cool billion dollars.
I'd add that if you are Microsoft, you can probably do that with no impact to your primary income (Windows/Office).
Just asking, but what about contract employees? They could release standard employees and still easily bring total jobs eliminated to 10% by just not renewing contracts with the 25% or so worst performing contract employees. Right?
"Across the board" is the only part of that statement that seems to be obvious rubbish. Windows 7 will probably not cut anyone (unless they are actually harming development), while the divisions listed will probably lose a larger percentage of jobs.
FWIW, I'm disappointed to see R&D make the list of places to cut. Microsoft has so much money, that they should have a permanent competitive advantage against essentially every other company in the world just due to their ability to massively fund R&D. The problem, is that very little has come out of that investment which has found its way into real products. Their surface computer is arguably R&D well spent (it's an original produce using new technology), though it might be too soon for it's time. XML was a MSFT product that caught on (but harms them in the long run). But very little else seems to be coming out of that investment. And why is that? They hire many exceptionally talented people away from other companies. So I know they have the brain power, and obviously they have (had) the funding.
I think, management at Microsoft just generally lacks foresight or an innovative spirit. For so many years, they haven't needed to be innovative, because releasing a new and nearly identical looking version of Office every other year was worth $40B/year. It's a little like the situation in Iraq. The US military had spent 50 years preparing to fight large scale wars with Russia or China, and didn't know what to do against an insurgency. Old leadership had to be replaced, and new leadership with entirely different ideas had to come in. Microsoft badly needs a similar shake-up if they want to remain as profitable in 10 years as they are today.