Microsoft gearing up for layoffs? Let's hope not
I've been competing with Microsoft for years--at Lineo, Novell, and now Alfresco. But I can't get even remotely excited by the prospect of a big layoff at the software giant, with some speculation suggesting it could go as deep as 10 percent of Microsoft's 91,000 full-time employees.
Another 9,100 people out of work is not a good thing, no matter how much you may dislike Microsoft.
I, for one, do not dislike Microsoft, and have profound respect for the company's execution and many of its products. I want to see Microsoft giving Google real competition on the Web, just as I'm glad to see Google forcing Microsoft to innovate on the desktop again. It may well be that Microsoft will be a stronger competitor for pruning its workforce, and I'm a big enough believer in the free market to think that in the long term, the people affected will be better off, too.
But I still don't want to see Microsoft layoffs. Not this Christmas. Not when the market can't absorb the displaced employees. Microsofties have families, too.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
Stay classy!
1. if you don't like the OS there are alternatives like Mac OS X or Linux, which is free
2. who do you recommend we "stand up and fight"?
3. one of the problems with our country is labor unions (like the Teamsters) that have driven our cost-of-goods to a point that now the jobs aren't necessary because no one can afford to buy what they used to. Have the Teamsters done anything for you in the year that you have been laid off? the auto industry is the most obvious example, but face it, unions have served their purpose (which was vital 50 years ago) but now they are a big part of the problem. $40 per hour to drive a truck??? It took me 4 years of college (and $40K in student loans) plus ANOTHER 2 years of busting tail for some critical certifications to get to that level. Sorry, but driving a truck is not that specialized. Good luck finding a job.
[Edited to remove personal attack.]
oh and maybe truck driving wasn't your strong suit.. so get a better job. :) It will make you feel better!!
drummer
The whole country is laying off workers. But the answer isn't to scoff at Microsoft workers if they do get laid off. We need to work through this so everyone, including you, can work at a job that lets them use their skills.
Yes it is terrible when anyone loses their job. The country is sliding into a depression, and it seems there's nothing we can do about it.
At the same time, no software or hardware manufacturer has done more for computing in the entire world than Microsoft. Remember what it was like before Microsoft? Everything priority-based?
The endless attacks against Microsoft are ridiculous.
IBM opened up the PC and innovation was built on top. Microsoft have never been anything but proprietary. Where have you been for the last 20 years?
IBM simply wasn't able to keep PC closed. They tried once, with MCA bus. MCA failed miserably. Just like Token Ring.
[Edited to remove personal attack.]
[Edited to remove personal attack.]
*Lack of deep knowledge in certain product lines (ie telephony and videoconferencing knowledge in their OCS team)
*Promises thrown out by their salespeople (ie the "no it doesn't do that now, but just wait for the next version) but then not executed by their software teams
*Arrogance. Pure and simple, knowing what I do of the Microsoft mentality, layoffs will simply confirm to those left that they are an elite bunch, and sorry, not everyone can work for Microsoft. Google has this mentality, too, to such an extent that certain IT support functions' job descriptions would basically require the applicant to have written the RFC document or similar. Microsoft doesn't believe in RFC documents, and so their source of arrogance is somewhat less quantifiable than Google's, but is still awesome.
Most workforces are under-resourced already. There have generally, in almost every industry, been so many rounds of layoffs, hiring freezes, and so on, that there is very little fat in most companies. I don't know about MS, but the kneejerk reaction that firing people is the answer when you have bad news for shareholders has outlived its usefulness. Why not go at it the way it should be done: "We have had a really good look at our overall strategy, and decided to sell these parts of our business which don't make sense to us right now in this market. There are good people working in those businesses, and we are hopeful that they continue to be successful under new owners, and expect to sell the business with promises to treat our people as we would treat them." Or alternatively, and more brutally, "we have looked long and hard at the numbers of this certain business, and it is losing money." We are no longer happy to lose money, and don't believe that we will be able to sell this business line, though we will try to give it away to another company if they think they can make a go of it. That would in all likelihood lead to layoffs, but we need to give whichever company acquires those assetts a free hand to turn the business around."
Rather than layoff's being a side-effect of a shift in strategy, layoffs too often become the strategy. Sure, it is a good thing to make sure people continue to strive, and to stay motivated. And if you can't do that, to find a way for them to get that somewhere else (and on somone else's dollar). A lot of that does happen in the process of layoffs, but because of the mass nature of them, it is a clumsy tool for getting rid of old wood, and too often leads to your good people, who know they can find a job elsewhere, and are tempted by severence packages to move on.
And the irony: Because they haven't made hard strategic choices, instead relying on doing all the same things they were doing before, only with fewer people, most company's make a complete hash of layoffs, needing to hire back many of the people they just let go, often at a higher cost, as contractors.
I hate the mentaility of layoffs in non-manufacturing industries. It leaves too few people to do the same work properly, and in the end costs a company as much or more than it saves. Stupid.
OTOH, I doubt this'll bite the permanent employees too hard - MSFT will likely can their 10% out of the contractors.
Now if they cut 10% of their vendors, that would be a significant change.
2. Microsoft / Bill Gates / Steve Ballmer have done more for their country than you ever will - so stop being a ******. For proof of that, consider:
- The revenue MS brings into this country through international sales *far* outweigh the payroll to employees outside the US - probably in the region of quarter of a trillion dollars by now.
- Indirectly throug the gates foundation (it has many US-specific programs - http://www.gatesfoundation.org/united-states/Pages/program-overview.aspx) working diectly with United Way, etc.
Lastly -- stop being a ****** in general. People are people all over the world. We have easy lives. Why are you ok with 9100 people losing jobs in the rest of the world but not in the US? If you have to wish for something can't you just wish that 9100 people don't lose their jobs -- here or anywhere else?
btw... the auto companies(GM, Chrysler, and Ford) screwed themselves over by sticking with gas guzzling cars and not switching to electric cars like Toyota and other auto companies.
Thanks,
drummer
Then there are all the data centers going online, as well as their whole new business model with services over OS's.
It's an interesting speculation, but unfounded and just that- speculation.
Perhaps they should consider downsizing their offshore workforce and concentrate on building up their onshore workforce, to take advantage of this opportunity. The more likely scenario is that they'll lay off U.S. workers and build up their offshore staffs, in order to pay low wages. Maybe they'll be looking for a bail-out from the taxpayers next, and use the money hire more offshore workers.
1. Matt Asay's generated a FUD-storm. Microsoft *has not* announced layoffs. This is speculation by Matt Asay. He has motive to speculate. The guy works for companies that directly compete with Microsoft, and constantly writes high-visibility anti-MS FUD. Unethical if you ask me.
2. Your reasining is flawed. If say, Yahoo lays off 1000 people -- MSFT cannot hire 1000 of them (or even 100 of them) unless they have that many openings in their online services division. Do you think that someone working on web technologies at Yahoo (or any other comany with massive layoffs) would be a good fit in say the teams that build office/visual studio/windows/xbox? Talk sense man!
3. MS has a huge positive cashflow, and cash reserves. They won't be looking for a bailout from taxpayers anytime soon. Stop this silly FUD right now, please.
4. Just because the company is healthy now, does not mean they should not try to anticipate future threats and prepare for them accordingly. If Detroit had done that we might not be in the current mess we are in. If Bush had done that, he would not have sent 4000 of our finest to their death in Iraq over a meaningless invasion. If wall street had done that, perhaps we would not be looking at record levels of foreclosures right now. Don't take your anger at these things out on MS.
5. The mentality that all employees are the same is a complete logical fallacy. You say MS should lay off foreign workes and hire in the US. MS will die if it does that. To continue to be in the upper echelon of software makers they will need the best people (same for Apple/Google/Cisco/Anybody). In their business they can't afford to consider nationality. If they do that, soon some Chinese/Swedish/whatever company will do to them what Nokia/HTC did to Motorola (make them an endangered species).
Bottom line -- look beyond the knee-jerk reactions, and think for a second. nd especially, be wary of conflicts of interest when somebody like Matt Asay writes an article.
They either read .net for retards or are proud of their 2.1 GPA from some out of touch CS program in a regional university.
MS does have some excellent people, but most are of the type described above. Hopefully, they won't find work in this field because they are not qualified.
- by vamman December 25, 2008 9:21 PM PST
- Microsoft laying people off? The American economy is in some bad way. The top industries are failing miserably. Its like every major company all of a sudden can't deal with a bad market.
- Reply to this comment
-
Showing 1 of 2 pages (51 Comments)