Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Microsoft Layoffs - Cinco de Fire-O

Well, if ever you wanted to console yourself with some tequila, today might be your day. Phase Two of the big Microsoft 2009 layoff engages today.

Is this it? Will there be more? From Mr. Ballmer's email:

With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010.

Strangely, Ms. Brummel have asked folks to avoid emailing each other today because the last layoff's email volume was so distracting. Gee, sorry to be a bother while people are trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Let's see... how to avoid that... I know, tell people what the hell is going on and which people / groups are affected. Oy.

Please, if affected by today's events, note which group you're in and any messaging about things going forward (as appropriate and proper).

(And please, Ms. Brummel, if you talk to the troops about this, don't share how people affected by the layoff are thanking you - that just seems creepy.)


Dropping moderation for today, but as usual: be responsible. I will delete comments later that are off-topic, along with any other comments that react to the deleted comments. If in doubt, go visit the CRF parallel thread: http://minimsftcrf.blogspot.com/2009/05/comment-stream-microsoft-layoffs-cinco.html


1,545 comments:

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Anonymous said...

IDC 90

Anonymous said...

Oh I'm sorry, did the fact that my dad gave me information somehow make my point less valid? Bring some real arguments, don't try and undermine my position because I talk to my father.

I have no sympathy for anyone in the bottom percent. They either belong there or they are too weak to move out from under a poor manager. I don't care if you planned poorly and are stuck in that position. I also have no room in my heart for those too afraid to take a risk and make a change.

The company will do better without those people. The remaining employees will be better off.

What is a job anyway? If you are talented you will never have trouble finding a new one. Don't defend the bottom 20%. They don't deserve it.

Anonymous said...

@12:15pm

"Does anybody else think its bullshit that Microsoft doesn't pay out stock awards? At least give us a pro-rated vesting on the shares we would get. "

This seems like something you should be able to negotiate. You might want to look at finding an attorney to see what you can do.

Anonymous said...

I have heard of 2 in St. Louis office - one in IW Group and one in EPG Marketing. Both were fantastic performers and will be missed.

Anonymous said...

What all this gibberish tells me is that MSFT must, and I say must, cut much deeper and wider before they stop laying off people: bottom first; top second. Then let the new leadership reshape and redirect the company. And if they don't succeed, do it again, and again. And if it is never righted, then it gets what it deserves.

A discontented stockholder.

Mini Msft India said...

Good comment came across indian mini site, can be useful for many tomorrow.

fight after consulting with lawyers.
as per Indian labour law you can sue, so dont sign any agreement tomorrow if you're asked to do it by HR. Consult a labour lawyer.
Some news items useful to sue
Why India's labour laws are a problem
Second Labour Commission For Layoffs Sans Permission
Corporates turn to law firms to avoid layoff disputes

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with Anon at 9:10 am ... I'm one of the people that lost my position in January. AND, to add insult to injury, I'm STILL waiting for my severance pay!!

Microsoft is an awful place to work! They don't care about their people ... they give you lots of lip service, but actions and words don't match. LisaB is a complete joke ... she should be fired or have the courage to just leave.

The job market is very rough ... lots of people looking for work, but not many jobs. Especially jobs that are close to what you NEED to earn ... I had one job offer 40% less than what I was making at MSFT and I took a cut to go there. The job market is really awful.

Good luck to those given the ax today and those of us that are still unemployed from January.

I'm trying to find out who in my group is left ... another sad day. I hope they handle this one better than the last - they ignored the WARN act before ... will they do it again?

Time will tell.

Anonymous said...

For those people who think they are the smartest people in the room and enjoy insulting colleagues - just wait, no one is immune, even you.

Please exercise some respect for co-workers and take your over-inflated egos elsewhere. Your remarks illustrate your lack of empathy and show how truly out of touch you are.

Unknown said...

Job loss...Been there. Done that. Yep, still 'there'.

I think losing my job was one of those defining moments in my life. I had a choice: I could choose to lose my way (my mind), or I could rise to the challenge and follow what my Spirit told me to do, always remembering that I am more than a statistic on the news.

I'll share with you what I was told the day I got "set free" (laid off) from my job: "This is a new chapter in your life. WRITE ONE HELL OF A CHAPTER!" And I did just that! Will you?

If you need a break from the doom and gloom, then let me send you a FREE (no strings) book download. Sign up at: www.noexpertsneeded dot com

Times are tough, but it doesn't mean that we can't still 'give back'...

take care,
Louise Lewis, author
No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!

Anonymous said...

Someone said there are no poor performers, there is only poor management. Poor as in when they hired the wrong candidate, poor as in when they couldnt motivate, coach and enthuse the somewhat-under-performer, poor as in finally not even being able to sack the person showing respect.

Stop beating up what you call the bottom 20% - most of them could be you in a different situation. If anything - be angry with the senior management and board of directors, not fellow collegues.

Anonymous said...

Have heard that remote workers are getting cut. One in a group I know about, and that person was not only a high performer, but very knowledgeable about the product area.

Anonymous said...

Any news on the SQL group yet?

Anonymous said...

I got the axe. More details tomorrow. Actually, I'm quite relieved.

Anonymous said...

@12:47 which group?

Anonymous said...

Most of the people come here for information -- well, at least for today. :) So please save your irrelevant complaints and let's focus on the topic -- what are the groups get hit hard?

Anonymous said...

"Microsoft is clearly betting on the Online Services business. While MSN and Search have struggled to get it right, it doesn't mean it's the wrong place to invest."

It's absolutely the wrong place to invest if you can't succeed. And 15 years of effort, only to still be losing vast quantities of money as recently as last quarter, certainly qualifies as not succeeding.

"I recently joined MSN, along with a number of senior, talented folks from across Microsoft. It's clear that the intent is to do more and do it better. MSN isn't pretending that its track record is stellar. Just the opposite, in fact."

Their track record is public record. So who in their right mind would try to spin it as successful? And it's not about intent or desire, it's about results.

"To be viable, and competitive, in our world in the future, we're going to have to succeed in the online services space."

Online services aren't necessarily synonymous with search and advertising, although at this point it is hard to see how one prevails in online services without a strong advertising monetization engine. But again, just because MS needs it doesn't mean it's capable of acheiving it directly. And 15 years of track record says it can't. So maybe a brighter strategy is to admit it and partner with those who have actually demonstrated success?

"Windows got us here. Online Services is the future. I completely agree with the investment strategy and direction."

The current investment strategy and direction has been an unmitigated failure. Just ask the several thousand employees leaving today.

Anonymous said...

Are the people still being informed?

Anonymous said...

A friend of mine was informed just half an hour ago...

Anonymous said...

3 got laidoff from Finance in online services group...

Anonymous said...

Just heard that two managers and a writer got axed on the Surface team.

Anonymous said...

Are the people still being informed?

If reports upthread are to be believed, those effected will be notified over the next few days. Ugh.

I can't say for sure, since I was laid off in the January wave (where we all were notified more-or-less at once, early in the morning). But leaving people hanging all day - or over several days - just seems like the worst possible way to handle this. Leave it to Microsoft...can't even fire people well.

Happy Cinco de Fire-O, and pass the tequila.

SoCal-MSFT said...

From what I heard, at least two MCS (Microsoft Consulting Service/Professional Services) had at least two layoffs in Southern California.

I was one of about four in SoCal that was laid off in January.

I had tons of interest from companies and took my time before recently accepting a position with a well-established company.

The six months of severance help to lessen the urgency to find something right away. So now, it is nice to be "double-dipping" (having a few months left on my severance, as well as having a new regular paycheck).

Anonymous said...

Any news from COSD?

Mini Msft India said...

Came across this in our Indian Mini blog comments.

Communist fighting and Microsoft India lay offs, Thought that it may be a joke ? But it can be made true here in India. Anything is possible in our country :-)
If some revolutionary employee leaders gets identified to represent the cause to appropriate forums, media they can make this 'Jet Airways' ordeal real and possible once again.
Who is going to tie the bell over the cat?

Over to original comment...
"Lessons learnt: Jet Airways: Oct'08
21'Oct Jet Airways decided to lay off over 1000
30'Oct A week in the life of Jet Airways
23'Nov No political pressure to reverse staff
Go and Meet Mr. Naidu, Mr. Reddy and Mr. Chiranjeevi. Not joking...

Like how we met Bal Thackeray and we were able make the reverting decision of 1800 people's lay off in Jet Airways with Political help, you also will be able to get some..

Heard you people are too intelligent than all your peers in rest of the industry, do teach some lesson to the MNCs

-Current Jet Airways Employee who got job back
An ardent communist "

Anonymous said...

Question: If you get laid off, I am sure that your corpnet/email access gets cut off, but do the Outlook emails/GAL stored on the hard disk of your home computer also get nuked?

I would not want to lose all my emails in my Outlook as they contain a lot of personal information and contacts as well, and finding every such email and forwarding it is not a very productive activity.

Would appreciate if somebody could answer this. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Fire up the computer with the network plug disconnected, and copy the necessary emails to a local folder. You should be set.

Anonymous said...

The only thing I've heard about COSD is that at least some parts of it are unaffected -- namely Deployment. Otherwise, I haven't heard anything about Windows in general.

SoCal-MSFT said...

>>I would not want to lose all my
>>emails in my Outlook as they
>>ontain a lot of personal information
>>and contacts as well, and finding
>>every such email and forwarding
>>it is not a very productive activity.

Export everything to a flat file (delimited text file). Take that file with you, and then you can import them back into your own Outlook at home.

Anonymous said...

"Just heard that two managers and a writer got axed on the Surface team."

Why would the Surface team need more than one manager? No wonder we need cutbacks.

SoCal-MSFT said...

I know this works for Contacts (exporting to file).

For email, archive everything and take the archive file with you. You can then attach that archive file to your home Outlook and have access to the messages.

Anonymous said...

Question: If you get laid off, I am sure that your corpnet/email access gets cut off, but do the Outlook emails/GAL stored on the hard disk of your home computer also get nuked?
I was laid off in January. I still have my complete email record on both my laptop and my PC at home. You won't lose anything.

Of course, I no longer use Outlook for email (I just keep it on the PC for when I want to refer to an old message). Now I use Apple's Mail app...on the new Mac that I bought with my severance check. ;)

Anonymous said...

Why Steve is doing this thing.... Don't he understand that...what he is eating today is bcoz of these employes to whom they are making unemployed today..... They are just getting less profit but still getting profit, they are not bank corrupted then why they are making other people's life a hell

Anonymous said...

Any update on MSIT cut?

Anonymous said...

Rumor is: they are getting rid of some people who didn't post favorable ratings in the last organizational health polls on the grounds: we're better off getting rid of the unhappy employees.

Anonymous said...

Any news from the SVC (Silicon Valley) campus? Anyone there been hit?

Anonymous said...

IDC ? MSIT ? are the numbers known to someone

Anonymous said...

Actually LiveSearch did get a wack taken out of it but in Colorado. A bunch of the crew working on imagery for the VirtualEarth got blown out today including me. Some of us were vendors but several M$ fte's in our building got pink-slipped to. The bummer is there some damn good stuff coming soon that will blow google out of the water.

Anonymous said...

and then they wanted to buy Yahoo ? Awesome !!! Reminds me of some great visionaries, you dont need a degree from a Univ or for that matter from the Greatest B schools to use your common sense, rightly said !! COMMON SENSE IS NO MORE COMMON THESE DAYS !!! Hold good for most of the companies today who are only GREEDY, WILL SURELY EAT THEM SOME DAY TOO !! LIKE THE MADOFF'S OF THE WORLD.

Anonymous said...

any number from office?

Anonymous said...

I believed in Microsoft until they quit believing in me.
@9:10 you are not alone. I am amazed how many believe the rumor that many of the 1400 got rehired at MS. Talk about getting the wool pulled over their eyes.
I kept my family a "Microsoft family" while I was there, made my family carry Zunes when they wanted ipods, etc. After the layoff, first thing I did was get an ipod touch..best thing I ever did! Life goes on...

Anonymous said...

MCDC is hit, too.
Not sure how many people though, was about 10 in January...

Anonymous said...

I fully agree. It is sad people don't get the economics of Web 2.0, which represent a paradigm shift unlike any other in history. .
.
You need to reevaluate the connection between your convictions and reality.

I have been hearing this nonsense about browser-as-OS, service/web oriented "applications", thin client etc. ever since Java exploded onto the scene in the 90s.

The only big companies making bank on web services are eBay, Amazon, and Google, which have been around for forever. The hardware/software landscape is not changing radically. Microsoft needs to ignore faux-futurist morons (including Ballmer since ~2001) and concentrate on Windows, Office, and dev tools.

Anonymous said...

"I kept my family a "Microsoft family" while I was there, made my family carry Zunes when they wanted ipods, etc. After the layoff, first thing I did was get an ipod touch..best thing I ever did! Life goes on..."

Before the douches can get here and mock you for representing all that's wrong with the company, I'll tell you that I also made my family a "Microsoft family" and will soon be purchasing my first iPhone. Funny how getting shit on changes your perspective and makes you less willing to endure substandard toys.

Anonymous said...

the company is somewhere you work for money, for career. It is not something you should love. I got tried of "I love this company" slogan from the monkey like dude.

Anonymous said...

I fully agree. It is sad people don't get the economics of Web 2.0, which represent a paradigm shift unlike any other in history. .
.
You need to reevaluate the connection between your convictions and reality.


You didn't read the entire Web 2.0 post, otherwise you would have caught the sarcasm.

Anonymous said...

"Question: If you get laid off, I am sure that your corpnet/email access gets cut off, but do the Outlook emails/GAL stored on the hard disk of your home computer also get nuked?

I would not want to lose all my emails in my Outlook as they contain a lot of personal information and contacts as well, and finding every such email and forwarding it is not a very productive activity.
"

You are suppose to remove all Microsoft email and confidential documents in your possession after seperating from Micorosft. Return all Microsoft assests back to MS.

Ofcourse you can do this after copying your personal communications from the PST file. I am assuming it is in PST file. If its on the server than you do not have access to it anymore.

Anonymous said...

What all this gibberish tells me is that MSFT must, and I say must, cut much deeper and wider before they stop laying off people: bottom first; top second. Then let the new leadership reshape and redirect the company. And if they don't succeed, do it again, and again. And if it is never righted, then it gets what it deserves.Steve Ballmer is not going anywhere. It's a family business.

Because of Microsoft's size, it would take years to turn over the number of people you suggest. Can you wait that long if that's what you believe it will take to get the stock price up?

Take the loss and find another stock if you don't have enough of it for the dividend to provide a good enough return for your retirement.

MSFT vs AMZN

Anonymous said...

60 in Dublin, most in the Operations Center (EOC) and SMSG but some in the development center (EDC). Mix of voluntary positions and redundant positions.

Anonymous said...

"You are suppose to remove all Microsoft email and confidential documents in your possession after seperating from Micorosft. Return all Microsoft assests back to MS.

Ofcourse you can do this after copying your personal communications from the PST file. I am assuming it is in PST file. If its on the server than you do not have access to it anymore."

Outlook 2007 stores emails in OST files instead of PST files. Same thing holds true?

Anonymous said...

Still no communication from COSD leadership. Any idea who is affected? Or are people still being notified?

Anonymous said...

YOU will eventually be one of those bottom ...hope the door does not hit you too hard on the ass on the way out!

That's what some of the more arrogant people posting here don't understand.

After you fire the bottom 6.5%, a new bottom 6.5% is created to fire next year.

Ballmer: Most early 'softies "weren't very good"Most of the 30 people employed by Microsoft when Steve Ballmer joined the company 26 years ago "weren't very good," Ballmer is quoted as saying in the Times of London today.

The Times reported on the Microsoft CEO's comments to the Institute of Directors conference in London. Ballmer aims to fire 6.5 percent of his global workforce every year, and suggested managers pick the number of reductions they think they can do better with and double it.

Ballmer told the group: "The real question is never: 'Are people not good enough?' The real question is: 'Can you do better?'"

Anonymous said...

I was offered 60 days' "administrative leave," but I've heard in the past that people the company wants to keep are offered 6 weeks of time to look for jobs internally. The "administrative leave" is just paid leave, with no access to any internal resources, email, etc. Was anyone offered the 6 weeks this time around? If so, how was the difference made between 60 days and 6 weeks? I was just promoted and had an "exceeded," so it doesn't seem to be performance-based in all cases.

Anonymous said...

These are not the times you expand your business but consolidate. I see a different tone here at the MS campuses, like the one recently opened. I am made to understand that the whole Real Estate Initiative to give the additional touch of the so called 'Ambience ' has added MS exchequer a boggling 2 Billion Dollars. I dont understand how a company can save on lay offs and how can it save on this kind of expansion ! Totally out of Whack ! Companies of this size are the ones who add problems to the society, like what GM did ! I would be more surprised if that head didnt roll who envisioned MS campus of this grandeour ! Ballmer and Lisa needs to go back to School and get that COMMON SENSE BACK !!

Anonymous said...

I am in some "at risk" bullshit category .... eg: could lose the job if RIF don;t get me...

the upshot is that "Money has no conscience" and although this bullshit is without malice, it is also without conscience....

think they call it sods law.

Anonymous said...

@2:17 So Ballmer wants to make up for his Sr Management ignorance on how to run a business ! and keep cutting so that they could have more work and gain some wisdom ? What about some of the Sr Management who travel from London to Seattle every week end in BUSINESS CLASS just becuase they love to live in London for what ever so called ' Family' reason or becuase they CANT get ENOUGH SUN HERE !! This is a SHAME, SHEER ABUSE OF MONEY. I WONDER IF THEY USE $ BILLS INSTEAD OF TOILET PAPERS !

Yobama said...

Why does a company with $$ billions in the coffers need to lay ANYONE off? Come on. We made a bunch of money when the going was good so that we would be prepared for days like today. You can' thave profits ALL THE TIME. This is about big Shareholders creating pressure for more profits at all costs (aka, greed).I am betting you voted for Obama. The shareholders OWN the company. The Board is beholden to the shareholders, and the CEO works for the board.

Of course the shareholders insist on profits. Pay close attention to GM and Chrysler, this is what happens when profits are secondary to employee benefits.

That said, I cannot understand why an across-the-board 10% pay cut, even temporary, like Intel did in the early 80's during the Jimmy Carter nightmare, is not a better solution than this mess.

Anonymous said...

Expired: Google plans to open a Redmond office

Tired: Apple plans to open a Redmond Office

Wired: the Army plans to open a Redmond Office

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately we have allowed the inbred DNA of muppets like SteveB, Lisa Brummel and Kevin Turner to replace that which held us firm, which galvanised us.

I think you are 1/3rd right. Kevin Turner has turned Micrsoft into Walsoft with his Walmart ideas of screwing the employees and vendors if it makes a buck for the shareholder. He alone has destroyed the heritage and reputation of Microsoft.

Anonymous said...

I'm in SQL. My manager told me that there will be no layoffs in TedK's org this time around. Someone in BOSG that I know got it, though.

Anonymous said...

Microsoft is using downturn in economy to stream line its internal operations. Not sure how effectively they are doing it. Street was happy when they heard about Micrsoft reducing its overall operational costs. I do not think this will be last time they are going through the layoffs.

Anonymous said...

@2:17 So Ballmer wants to make up for his Sr Management ignorance on how to run a business ! and keep cutting so that they could have more work and gain some wisdom ?

Cutting costs by cutting employees is the easiest thing to do.

As long as the Linux fan boys continue to expect granny to recompile the kernel, Microsoft won't have any serious competition on the desktop and Microsoft will continue to make truckloads of money.

Anonymous said...

I am making money from selling MSFT put options.

Anonymous said...

I got laid off today and didn't get a meeting request, but an instant message via communicator to come up to a conference room. Great communication and tact around it.

Anonymous said...

The person who said:

As long as the Linux fan boys continue to expect granny to recompile the kernel, Microsoft won't have any serious competition on the desktop and Microsoft will continue to make truckloads of money.

is wrong. Upper management is very aware of how big a threat Linux is and how much money they have cost us by making us sell Windows XP at a much lower cost for netbooks.

For the most popular Linuxes, such as Ubuntu, you don't recompile kernels or do anything. We can't sit back and rest on our laurels.

Anonymous said...

All the best to those that lost their jobs. Why isn't there somewhere that these guys can post their information, so former colleagues may be able to reach out to them and offer support, or else perhaps a contracting gig? Once those that are laid off get over the initial hurdles, there should be no shame in sharing your name and information.

Anonymous said...

Alrite ! I will take any job if Balmer offers me. Here are my very simple MANTRAS on how to cut costs without cutting man power, if he really thinks his Army is the best in the Industry.

1. Cut all the Business Class across the company board including his own if possible. Those who cant sit in ecoonmy are free to walk/ bike to the work location.

2. Cut the boarding lodging across the company that means only AAA rated hotels / motels for every one.

3. No expensive lunches / dinners WE SERVER ONLY PER DM 50 - 100 $ EAT OR DONT EAT IS THE NEW MANTRA. 'WE help you in cutting fat !'

4. No exagerated Relocation packages, you get to pack your own crocery / Pionos. If you break them please RECYCLE, save the EARTH.

5. Limit on Electronic communications expenses company wide !

6. No new crazy Real Estate Ventures. Put an immediate HOLD, (I MEAN IT ) ON THE MOVES. WE DONT MOVE CANT MOVE IS THE NEW SLOGAN !

7. Shut this Go Green Crap !! With all these vehicles running around, Like Obama Said 'I DONT CARE HOW GREEN YOU ARE !! YOUR CARBON FOOT PRINT IS BIGGER THAN ANY ONE ELSE IN THIS WORLD' SO STOP THIS CRAP !! GOVT WILL DO WHAT IT NEEDS TO DO. DONT COME WITH CRAZY IDEAS AND BUY VEHICLES / PAINT THEM GREEN AND STOP FLOATING YOUR IDEAS.

8. Coming to the Financial side.

.No bonuses to the Sr Management, you had your party ! That includes you Mr Ballmer.

. Performance bonuses to the real value added people.

9. Take feedback from your employees how much they appreciate this and see the through put. Tell me if you are not able to beat the CRAP OUT OF GOOGLE !!

10. LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST WE ARE FULL !! NO MORE AQUISITIONS !! WE CAN INNOVATE ! NOR RENNOVATE SHOULD BE THE MANTRA !!

for thos who are interested i am not a MS employee but feel for you all today !

Anonymous said...

what is the DBM career center. Is it a website or a career service. Any links ?

Anonymous said...

3000 layoffs over 12 months? ( Running until June 2010 ). Please, take a cue from IBM and layoff 10,000 in 3 months. Cull the herd quickly and move on. This "onesies and twosies" crap just drives down morale...

Anonymous said...

Netherlands some regional guest employees are gone and some jobs in COI

Larry Kollar said...

leaving people hanging all day - or over several days - just seems like the worst possible way to handle this.@1:01 - Exactly what I was wondering about. I'm not a 'softie, but I've been around long enough to know that layoff days are murder on productivity. Figure everyone's getting half the work done as usual on a day like this; with your employment figures that's over 50K person-hours down the tubes. If this is going on for three days, figure some people will get numbed to the situation and get back to work; just double the lost hours instead of triple, for 100K person-hours. The equivalent of 50 people doing nothing for a year.

Ouch.

Hope y'all get through this with minimum pain. At age 50, my options are pretty limited… my plans can be best described as early semi-retirement. At least I'll have a place to live.

Anonymous said...

There's at least one gone in Finance IT.

Anonymous said...

The 6-Forks office in Raleigh for Microsoft Advertising (AdManager) was hit hard -- something like 50 to 70 people gone and ~30 remain.

Anonymous said...

For the most popular Linuxes, such as Ubuntu, you don't recompile kernels or do anything. We can't sit back and rest on our laurels.

For laptops, a lot of wireless Internet providers (e.g Verizon) don't have Linux drivers for their hardware. I got a long list of instructions from the manufacturer of how to hack a driver and recompile the kernel to use my wireless card. Not very plug-and-play.

The Linux laptop they sell at Walmart doesn't offer much. For $150 more, you can get a Toshiba laptop running Windows with much better hardware.

Maybe a large company might make the jump to Linux someday to save money but your average desktop user doesn't have a lot of motivation to do so right now.

Anonymous said...

"For laptops, a lot of wireless Internet providers (e.g Verizon) don't have Linux drivers for their hardware. I got a long list of instructions from the manufacturer of how to hack a driver and recompile the kernel to use my wireless card. Not very plug-and-play."

Nonsense. If you can't find a native Linux driver for a wireless card, you can always use Windows one using ndiswrapper. RTFM

Anonymous said...

re: h1bs:
Get an education. Most people in this country aren't qualified enough to get a job in Microsoft. Microsoft would come to an end if it were to fire foreigners. It would be an aircraft without pilots.

re: managers:
yes, there's too much extravagant spending. The new Commons complex. The business class spending. Some of the managers need to be shown the door. Don't understand why that never happens.

re: Kevin Turner:
That's such a shame - the guy is utterly incompetent. Microsoft needs another Bill Gates. Bill was smart enough to retire at the right time. He sensed trouble.

re: Steve Ballmer:
Love the guy. Great energy. Smart. He is the only reason I work here. Love LisaB too. Need to get all his directs out the door and get a new exec team.

Anonymous said...

"re: Steve Ballmer:
Love the guy. Great energy. Smart. He is the only reason I work here. Love LisaB too."

I want some of what you're smoking.

Anonymous said...

"re: Steve Ballmer:
Love the guy. Great energy. Smart. He is the only reason I work here. Love LisaB too. Need to get all his directs out the door and get a new exec team."

Steve, didn't know you read mini!

Anonymous said...

driver support for linux ...
well lot of companies like verizon do not provide support , thats their mistake, not linux's fault. It is not technology that is limiting factor, it is marketing . If we have a billion users who adopt linux all these vendors would be forced to write drivers. So its both strong arm marketing and also market dominance that drives, the need for drivers. Start using linux you will know that its the best thing that happened, agree or not.

Anonymous said...

Like others, I recommend the DBM Career Center if you are in the Seattle area. The content is great. Especially the Wednesday 11am sessions for entrepreneurs. While you are looking for work, you might as well try to bootstrap your own business at the same time. Maybe you will be able to shake the collars of your oppressive corporate overlords.

I also recommend the resume class. After revamping my resume my call back rate went up from 5% to 35%. The DBM benefit is much more than a token gesture.

Anonymous said...

To all of you bitching about this...knock it off. Take a look at our current global situation. Microsoft is reacting, just like every other company out there... Can you drive down the street without seeing a "going out of business" sign?

You got fat sucking on the overproducing teet that is MS, and you constructed a false-sense of comfort. Now reality is here and it's shocking. Deal with it.

Anonymous said...

First, for those impacted keep your chin up and make the most of of the opportunity.

Consolidation in corporate EPG / PS / CS has resulted in a minimum of 40 layoffs from what was just corporate EPG before the org changes. I do not know how many from PS/CS. Lots of RGE and Services as well.

Despite some of the idiotic posts do appreciate the forum mini, good stuff. Leadership should have more courage and integrity than they've shown, very disappointing. I'm not sure the culture of eating your young and rewarding on a system that pits teammate against teammate is such a healthy thing.

Anonymous said...

Nonsense. If you can't find a native Linux driver for a wireless card, you can always use Windows one using ndiswrapper. RTFM

TYFYPSTIRTFM.

It is still a long list for granny to get her laptop running. Not very plug-and-play.

Hackitlinux: Using NDISWrapper to Install Windows Drivers on Linux

Anonymous said...

There are more software engineering tasks to be completed in the world than there are software engineers alive on the planet. Until recently, Microsoft couldn't keep enough on staff to do all the work. If you like coding, master your craft and you will never be out of a job for long. Even better, found a start-up with other engineers and discover why Microsoft is one of the most historically profitable companies ever.

Anonymous said...

"The DBM benefit is much more than a token gesture."

Try living outside of Redmond. It's worthless for the rest of us, but bully for you.

Global company my ass.

Anonymous said...

This is the worst morale I've ever seen. Like others have stated, they really should be doing these layoffs all at once and get it over with so everyone can stop worrying about it. With these layoffs not being just for the poor performers but entire teams and products people have no idea if they will get the axe regardless of how hard they perform over the next few months until the next batch.

Ballmer is looking at this situation with a 'how little can we cut' mindset instead of a opportunity to make the drastic changes everyone knows need to be made.

Too many products and teams that are relics of the early Ballmer days of trying to branch out into EVERYTHING and throwing billions at a product or market was a sufficient business plan.

Those days are over.

Ballmer needs to come to grips with that reality. His ego is too emotionally attached to the mass of dead weight he added to the company over his tenure.

Train wreck products like the Xbox fiasco need to be killed off. Salvage what you can and move it over to PC gaming. In another year or two the idiots in E&D are going to be wanting more billions to throw down the Xbox rathole with the same tired old promises of 'this time it will be different!'.

Ballmer's tenure has created what others have called a Culture of Failure at Microsoft.

A bad product/idea that costs billions is embraced over equally bad products/ideas that cost millions. With OS revenue and profits under full assault from netbooks and the economic crisis, blowing billions on Ballmer's fiascos like the Xbox and others needs to come to an end.

Anonymous said...

"For most impacted employees, job responsibilities will end shortly after May 5. The last day of employment varies. Some employees last work day will be July 3 with official separation on July 4. Internationally, the last day of work will vary by country based on local laws and regulations."

Seattle PI

Anonymous said...

What about COI? Any cuts? Corp as well as field?

Anonymous said...

is it true that max lay offs came from Indian HQ ? If thats true then yesterdays tax laws has started working more American companies will aligh themselves with FEDs !! Scary times !

Anonymous said...

So if I am not notified by 5pm today, does that mean I am safe from this round? 45 mins to go... Let's see if I am gonna get "lucky".

Anonymous said...

It's time for Apple to take over the MS campus. We need to inject true innovation to the Puget Sound region. MS is a dinosaur of a company with a dinosaur leader.

KevinT said...

>>So if I am not notified by
>>5pm today, does that mean I
>>am safe from this round? 45
>>mins to go... Let's see if
>>I am gonna get "lucky".

You're FIRED!

Anonymous said...

I realize the important of Unions in situations like this and in GM's case ! Our energy should be directed against the Management and not amongst ourselves !! These guys get to keep their butt but others dont ?

Anonymous said...

Instead of diddling away your spare time here, you could be preparing to support yourself if your husband gets fired from MSFT.



sadly LOL

Anonymous said...

any hits in PFE?

Anonymous said...

So if I am not notified by 5pm today, does that mean I am safe from this round? 45 mins to go... Let's see if I am gonna get "lucky"
Simple Answer NO ! There will be more notifications tomorrow too. Also this is only another Round, there will more more Rounds, based on the market and MS issues. So yes once this round ceases , you are safe, and somewhat lucky but only for this round. You might have licked your managers ass for a long time.

Anonymous said...

how many people "really" worked today at MS ! Its like paying for no work. I guess MS should give leave for 2-3 days till it sorts out all the layoffs, that way a lot of money is saved.

Anonymous said...

4+ in BGE (IT)

Anonymous said...

"I realize the important of Unions in situations like this and in GM's case ! Our energy should be directed against the Management and not amongst ourselves !! These guys get to keep their butt but others dont ?"

I'll join a union when hell freezes over, thanks.

Take your blue collar bullshit elsewhere -- I can manage my own career, and if you can't then please do feel free to join an assembly line.

Anonymous said...

"He supports this American woman and 2 kids, pays taxes and works his butt off at MS. Remember, you yourself are decended from people who also were foreigners. My husband would comment but he's too busy working, he's not diddling away his spare time spewing hate on the internet. Maybe if you tried to do more than talk you could also advance a bit more in life."

Please let go of the idea that we wouldn't be in this position if we just had worked a little harder. I put in countless nights and weekends in my decade at Microsoft, and I was in the 1,400. My boss and his boss would have liked for me and several others on my team to stay, but very few positions opened in my city during my job search period.

Now it's up to my wife to support me and our three children.

All but one of the people on my team did a lot more than talk, bitch.

Anonymous said...

MIni Microsoft india,
you are posting very irrelevant comments here. If you are looking for publicity, please come back in a few days. You are loosing ground with your initiative here...

Anonymous said...

"
Train wreck products like the Xbox fiasco need to be killed off. Salvage what you can and move it over to PC gaming. In another year or two the idiots in E&D are going to be wanting more billions to throw down the Xbox rathole with the same tired old promises of 'this time it will be different!"


You trolls need to get new arguments -- XBOX is becoming more and more profitable, and the LIVE business is raking in money hand-over-fist.

You'd be better served switching over to Zune now.

Anonymous said...

Just received a mail from Robert Youngjohns, CVP, President Microsoft North America Sales and Marketing at 4:41 pacific time.

He indicates that:

"Today has been another challenging day for us but I'm confident that we will continue to make the right investments to drive a vibrant, sustainable organization. At this time, we have reached out to all impacted employees"

So if you're in MSNA, looks like you're safe for now.

Yobama said...

"I realize the important of Unions in situations like this and in GM's case ! Our energy should be directed against the Management and not amongst ourselves !! These guys get to keep their butt but others dont ?"The whole union thing certainly worked out for GM now, didn't it? They were recently described as a 'retirement medical benefit company that sells cars to pay for it".

Microsoft is guilty of bad management at all levels.

Anonymous said...

I will be glad when the stupid comments get deleted from here before the rest of the world catches on to what sort of folks we have here at the company.

Anonymous said...

Server and Tools marketing and finance and safe.

Anonymous said...

[i]"
Train wreck products like the Xbox fiasco need to be killed off. Salvage what you can and move it over to PC gaming. In another year or two the idiots in E&D are going to be wanting more billions to throw down the Xbox rathole with the same tired old promises of 'this time it will be different!"[/i]

You have no clue what you are talking about, the PC market is barely profitable, all the money is in the console market. Moving to PC is obviously the wrong move for those familiar with the industry.

Anonymous said...

The concept of Unions is to keep check on Mgmt as Mgmt keeps check on the Work Force, tell me how many Union laws we have in this country ? NONE !

Anonymous said...

ASM Heavy-Hitting Support dudes wiped out, good luck when apps tank!

Anonymous said...

My supervisor survived today's RIF and I didn't. I don't mean to be gratuitously mean, but EVERYONE on my team always thought he is the most inept manager ever. We spent all of our 1:1s with he asking me about the finer details of our business. Go figure. And he's on some sort of "fast track" thing?

Anonymous said...

MSN got hit hard, a whole bunch of people got the boot today.

Yobama said...

The concept of Unions is to keep check on Mgmt as Mgmt keeps check on the Work Force, tell me how many Union laws we have in this country ? NONE !
Key word there is 'concept'. While they served a great purpose back in the 30's and 40's, today they are just blood-sucking leaches that are destroying American competitiveness. UAW is a great example, the Mechanics Union and what they do to Boeing is another.

Pensions?? WTF? Why can't they save in a 401K like the rest of us.

Anonymous said...

Not all unions are bad. Just because Police unions protect bad cops and they can get away with murdering anyone does not mean all unions are bad. It just means police unions are corrupted.

The NBA union is great. It guarantee money for its young players in exchange for a limit on max salaries.

As for a union at MSFT, I am not convinced either way.

Anonymous said...

"You trolls need to get new arguments -- XBOX is becoming more and more profitable, and the LIVE business is raking in money hand-over-fist."

Kids, leave this board to grown ups. Screaming troll because you think someone is going to take you console away from you is something no one wants to have to listen to.

The Xbox fiasco is over 8 billion in the red over the 8 year long train wreck it has been on the market. And that is being generous since the actually losses have been hidden by accounting games like sticking the profitable Mac guys in E&D.

Can't imagine what that must be like to wake up in the morning to head off to work knowing all your efforts are being used to play accounting games for the billions in losses generated by the idiots running the Xbox fiasco.

And the online fees have done nothing but lessen the massive losses the Xbox has generated and at the same time drasticaly limiting the appeal of the console because they end up adding an addition 200-250 dollars to the price of the system over the four to five years.

The 360 is quickly approaching the end of its life which means that it is time to waste another couple billion designing and ramping up production to be ready to try once again 'to get it right' like was promised after the first Xbox fiasco.

Anyone else in the mood to waste another couple billion on a game console? With layoffs going on, the looming netbook threat, the terrible economic situation likely continuing for the rest of the year, and coming off the Vista PR disaster?

The first Xbox was a bunch of very expensive commodity PC parts dumped in a big black box. Lost 4+ billion.

The second Xbox was the absolutely cheapest and shoddiest parts ever put in a console in order to try to keep the costs down. It looks like something you would build from stuff you bought at Radio Shack. The billions in losses racked up once again.

The E&D guys were given stern warnings that the first Xbox sized losses wouldn't be tolerated again. And that is exactly what they did after all sorts of promises about 'lessons learned' 'we've learned so much' and countless other platitudes.

So brute force and expensive hardware has been tried and lost billions. The absolute cheapest hardware has been tried and lost billions.

The Xbox has no viable business case for existing outside of a whole lot of hand waving about pie in the sky BS about 'owning the living room' and 'portraying a hip image for the company'. All those billions wasted and the one actual test of owning the living the Xbox did absolutely nothing to stop Sony establishing Blu-Ray as the next gen movie distribution format.

Meanwhile, PC gaming continues to die. And as it does, so does one of the single biggest reasons millions and millions of consumers run and buy computers with Windows.

The Xbox fiasco is like someone trying to saw off the legs of a ladder they are standing on thinking they can use them to extend the latter higher.

Anonymous said...

To 'mydaddysaid' of 12:22pm who wrote

I have no sympathy for anyone in the bottom percent. They either belong there or they are too weak to move out from under a poor manager.Speaking as a one-time-ever 10%er with a record of exceeded/20's or their prior equivalent, kiddy you have much to learn about the real world. I didn't "belong there". The guys who kept coming into my office to get me to tell them how to do their job (sometimes I did when feeling kindly, mostly I did not, after the first 2 months in which they did not learn, because I needed time to get my own work done) did. Peers on the team, who were also besieged with questions by those guys, had the same opinion of them, so it's not just me.

Similarly, unless you have personally triumped over some hellacious MS politics, you have no business labelling someone who couldn't get out from under a manager into another situation as "too weak". MS politics make the govt politics look simple.

It's not just ego, it's money at the higher levels, and some managers will get absolutely desperate (trapped animal-like) if they see that a situation has the potential to knock them off the gravy train, or lengthen the time it will take them to get to it.

Think a manager telling lies is easy to correct by going up or going to the side of them and just making sure everyone can see you're doing your job? Whoooppps, no one knew that that person up there new to MS was solely responsible for appointing that bad manager and kicking out the more effective previous manager. And no no one knew that a longtime partner had recommended this woman to that new employee as the best of a bunch of sub-par alternatives that had the required attribute of female. And it was also not obvious that a Senior VP had made it very clear to that person that the decision to kick out the OK one to put in the horrible one had "better" be a good decision. Similarly, no one except a small number of partners in a large division knew that that particular division had had a problem with retention of high-levelled women.

And then. No one knew that the bad manager was in a place where she would not be allowed to be seen as doing poorly, particularly because they'd just lost one high-levelled woman when they kicked out the previous manager in order to put this one in. That the new manager was legitimately failing, and had the poll scores from the team to demonstrate lack of confidence across the board, was immaterial. Losing the team's top employee (a principal known around the company) to another group was not acceptable to the powers-that-be because that woman manager had previously had problems with staff retention that post-reorg the new set of managers had not known about, and found out about only after they started doing due diligence after the fact. The lack of documentation of the problem manager's past was because of MS' legally-based unwillingness to keep such documentation around lest it cause trouble for them.

So the employee (me) was told, smile and take it, no you can't leave to another team because we'll look bad for losing you, in the meantime here's your shitpile of overassignment because we know you're golden handcuffed and won't leave MS and that'll teach you for wanting out of your situation before we told you you could leave it (what? you didn't know we could do that? there's an official policy against it? oh, sorry, our needs trump policy), we'll just make you into an underperformer so we can happily ditch you as good attrition next year and it won't hurt our problem manager when we do so, no we won't train or sanction the problem manager because then we'd be admitting she's got problems and that's the last thing we're willing to let our management see, besides she's been through lots of training before and it apparently didn't help anyway, and so on.

Yes, I had political favors to call in. But my set of political favor-ers had been dispersed around the company due to a reorg (did your daddy tell you about those and how they're sometimes done for real reasons and sometimes done just to separate manager A from manager B when they don't get along and the company is afraid of the legal fallout of firing either one?), and were loathe to stick their fingers back into the mess that had been the dept that had treated them poorly during the reorg. What many did was offer me work, only to find out that I wasn't allowed out, and it'd take an act of a god-level manager in their new division to go over it. They being new to the division didn't want to risk the request because they didn't yet know what other favors they'd need that god-level manager to do for them in the future, and they didn't want to use up a karma hit on this matter that no longer directly concerned them.

See, kiddy, it's not that simple, and you'll learn that in the coming years. The hard way. And yes, you'll be no less surprised and even offended than most of the rest of us, overachievers and average people alike, when you do.

It isn't possible to influence every single thing in life no matter how much of a rock star you might think you are (and you apparently do have that "rock star who knows the real score on everything" opinion of your daddy, as most kids do). Sometimes a person is dealt a bad hand and has to play it (sign the agreement, start interviewing elsewhere and move on).

Being able to recognize when you have an ultimately unwinnable hand and folding when you think you're in a situation of having lost as little as possible is something that you'll be learning in future years. No, it's not a skill that anyone wants to have. But it is a skill that is very useful to have, if you ultimately want to be successful.

And for me, being given 4 months severance in exchange for stock equal to nearly 2 years of salary that I'd have earned sticking around, was the least-loss time to fold. It's a bad outcome nearly any way you slice it, but no one I consulted could identify a better one, so I took it as being the lowest loss.

Ngoc-Huong Nguyen said...

Hi, Just posting out a few blog posts about my experiences with COBRA, Loan assistance, and DBM for those people who were laid off today. I got laid off in the January cut, and hope that some of my learnings will help someone, especially if they haven't been laid off before ( like I was ):
Loan assistance ( Make homes affordable program)
http://huongn.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!964756111E620093!507.entry

COBRA
http://huongn.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!964756111E620093!493.entry

DBM
http://huongn.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!964756111E620093!258.entry

Anonymous said...

"ASM Heavy-Hitting Support dudes wiped out, good luck when apps tank!"

Dude, the only reason ASM was created was to enable headcount reductions.

Crunching MSE tickets and keeping boxes running is a commodity, or at least it should be if MSIT has any degree of process standardization. Process standardization was the mantra for the creation of ASM, all with the goal of cutting heads.

The flogging economy has just given management the golden ticket to avoid the pain of a RIF and accelerate their plans to cut ASM.

Anonymous said...

Did anyone hear if Windows Live is getting hit as well?

Anonymous said...

Kids, leave this board to grown ups

... train wreck it has been on the market.

... by the idiots running the Xbox fiasco.

And the online fees have done nothing but lessen the massive losses ...

... terrible economic situation likely continuing for the rest of the year

The Xbox has no viable business case for existing outside...
Ignorance is bless. Not understanding how the Xbox business works makes it an easy target.

Upper management for Xbox screwed up, and they are still there (typical at MS). The problem is not the Xbox business being viable, the problem is the people running the show screwing up. Like all upper execs at MS there is no accountability.

In terms of the console business as a whole, Xbox Live is insanely successful, it is the healthiest and better online environment ever created for consoles, with the largest monetizing value. Learn more about the business model and current Xbox market positioning before sharing your assumptions. (Basic homework, the stuff that grown ups do)

And as far as economic crisis goes, in every economic crisis there is always a considerable increase on people's spending on entertainment. If nothing else that is an opportunity.

The console market is insanely competitive, you need to make investments to get the benefits down the road. Welcome to the real world outside Vista and Office where you actually need to compete.

Anonymous said...

After reading through the entire unmoderated comment stream, I've acquired a fine respect for the fine moderation job Mini normally does.

Blame Wall Street said...

Blame greed. The same greed that almost sunk us back in 1929, until our economy was "saved" by the military industrial complex.

The reality that will sink not only MSFT but the United States in general, is that the stock market will kill every public company and rape every shareholder. It is nothing but a grand Ponzi scheme.

Think. Yeah, a few get rich off stock options and hedge fund trading. But the need for any company to show profit every quarter and meet some random analyst's expectations means it has to consistently find new ways to stick it to consumers. Have you noticed every product you buy has consumables, and often proprietary and sole sourced consumables? Swiffer, air fresheners, razors, espresso pods? There's no magic. You have to make your valued customers spend, spend, spend. If they don't have the $, then make them use credit and swallow more debt. It is a recipe for failure. It's taken a few hundred years but the piper is here, and wants to be paid.

What if Microsoft had stayed private? There might be a few thousand less billion and millionaires, but think about the position we'd be in. Immune from hedge fund shenanigans. Would we be having these layoffs? What if we could do what's good for Microsoft instead of kissing Wall Street's greedy arse? Taking the time we needed to develop a completely new, streamlined OS instead of rushing to beat the earnings announcement.

The economy is catching up with us, folks. The Venn diagram intersection of the US economy as a whole and our beloved Redmond bubble has developed a slow leak.

Anonymous said...

So, is the bloodletting done, or will the axe fall again on others tomorrow?

Anonymous said...

Any idea if more cuts are planned tomorrow? MSN was hit hard today and believe more on Sales are expected. Any idea how many were affected today besides what was reported as 1200 in Redmond?

Anonymous said...

TechNet Magazine and MSDN Magazine editorial staff are completely gone after this round of cuts. Flash lives on. That's about 15 blue and orange positions eliminated in total.

Anonymous said...

I'm also a 1400er who was not lucky enough to be reshuffled as some of you put it. I've been proactively pounding the pavement, with no luck. I'm not alone, of the ~40 people from my old group who got cut - 2 found work at MS. There is very limited work available and I strongly suggest to those who are getting hit with this round to network, network, network. Saving your cash might be a good idea too.

Sigh

Anonymous said...

5:37, you are proof that literacy does not equal intelligence.

The world underwent a massive shift away from the desktop, which is only accelerating. MSFT has a choice - hugely downsize, and be content with making PC productivity tools and operating systems, or move into the new technologies replacing PCs.

As when moving into ANY new market, there is an initial sticker price - which is called an "investment" (see: xbox, zune, windows mobile). Later, comes "profit" (see: windows, office). Making investments into new technologies, and then pulling out before reaping the profits is an absolutely idiotic proposal!! The profits WILL come (see: nintendo, sony)

Desktop PCs are teathered to desks. Laptops have tiny screens, no sound systems and are awkward to use. People want to be entertained in the living room, they want to communicate on the go. I can more easily send email, read the news, listen to music, etc walking the hallways on my cell phone than carrying a laptop. The PC era is waning, as much as you don't want to believe it - people have moved on to iPhones and Wii's... MSFT can sit back and watch - or wither away.

Anonymous said...

I meant 5:20 above, not 5:37!!

Anonymous said...

you are proof that literacy does not equal intelligence.In this forum you have to ask, is this a compliment, an attack, or sarcasm?

Not sure what your snipe is for, since basically you just supported everything I said.

Anonymous said...

"Ballmer needs to come to grips with that reality. His ego is too emotionally attached to the mass of dead weight he added to the company over his tenure."

Not to minimize Ballmer's involvement, but SLT, Gates, and the Board were also involved. Unfortunately, all of them are incapable of putting their egos aside and admitting that any of this is the result of their mistakes. Which is why layoffs are going to be an annual occurence.

Anonymous said...

"Blame greed. The same greed that almost sunk us back in 1929, until our economy was "saved" by the military industrial complex."

See the trap we all walked into? In debt to the max and getting the pillars cut from underneath. The "emerging" markets are not that stupid having savings rates up to 40%. The 2B+ consumers there are not spending nearly at the same level as the US. We're a disposable society at every level: goods, whole towns (look at Detroit), employees, corporations etc. Creative destruction that's called right?

Anonymous said...

So, is the bloodletting done, or will the axe fall again on others tomorrow?
No word on COSD

Anonymous said...

""Dump the bottom 10% performers"

That assumes that Microsoft's management is capable of correctly identifying the bottom 10% of performers. That is hard to do properly at any large company, including Microsoft."

Very true. And for a number of reasons...

1. Despite the effort to "calibrate", there is still a wide variation between employee levels in different divisions. I conduct a lot of interviews, and I have to say that not only do I see a lot of level inflation in certain orgs, but there is wide variation in the quality and difficulty of the projects that employees work on. The bottom 10% of one organization might be the top 10% of the next. Remember that.

2. There is a certain amount of favoritism in every org; in some cases, the favoritism is based on friendships between people and, in others, it's based on a kind of "tenure" by longstanding employees over newbies. Not only is this unfair, but it distorts the curve badly.

3. Where does the cutting end? If you're constantly cutting the bottom 10%, last year's middle performers will be next year's cuts, if you get into that frame of mind. How is that going to motivate employees? Fear? Do we really want to motivate employees with fear? People don't work well under those conditions. They make "safe" and incremental choices that don't move the business forward.

Anonymous said...

Maybe MS will lay off the entire Entourage Dev team. What a joke of a product.

PS. I'm an Exchange admin for a private company and NOT a Mac fan...

Anonymous said...

Any report of incidents or did the cattle willingly enter the slaughterhouse?

Anonymous said...

So, is the bloodletting done, or will the axe fall again on others tomorrow?
Well, we don't know yet. It's been a crazy day, no word from upper management, so as far as we know, the axe will continue to fall thru tomorrow and possibly rest of the week.

Why the overal lack of transparency? Is it too much for the GM or VP to send some sort of an update, so we know what's going on?

No one in my group got any work done today. Everyone was just waiting around, monitoring their e-mail and looking for that dreaded invite with the GM and HR.

So, I guess we do the same thing tomorrow? :|

Anonymous said...

I think it's astonishing that people like Robbie Bach in E&D and ANYONE who has anything to do with ZUNE still have jobs. I would extend this to any and all execs at the core of launching Windows Vista.

Let's take E&D. xbox rocks, but ZUNE is a series of missed opportunities.

yes, the zune is getting great reviews and it's a very good basic mp3 player. but the problem is it took two attempts to get it right, it's undersold, and it's not a transformative, market game-changer like the iPhone or iTouch. I've heard again and again people like Bach and the execs say that making a "Zune Phone" isn't really their strategy at this point, and when one finally comes out it'll probably be 3-4 years post-iPhone anyway.

So what is the glorious Bach/E&D plan, to allow Apple to market the best-selling phone of all time? To get our asses royally kicked by a superior product that just about everyone wants? So what if it's not a fucking good business phone, it's a phone PEOPLE WANT and are buying, despite the hefty price and 2-year contract, in mass bulk.

Then there's Vista, and you can't spin it any other way: Vista is and has been a complete and total disaster in every way. It is a brand unto itself --- and that brand is SH*T. How can the execs in that department have jobs? how can you so totally and thoroughly botch the design, functionality and release of an operating system in such a public, embarrassing way AND STILL have a job. And you can only couple the Windows Vista failure with the lame Live Search tool, which in its corprate "KUMO" form is only marginally better than "Live.com" and still vastly inferior to Google.

There needs to be a big exec overhaul at Microsoft. There are too many directors, general managers, vice presidents, corporate vice presidents, SENIOR vice presidents, etc., all basically doing nothing but getting paid substantially more than the rest of us.

This has to change. Layoffs need to happen at the top. this is such an insult. I'm tired of this crap.

Anonymous said...

+1 to 6:33pm post.

Anonymous said...

Is the Layoff in US or atleast Puget Sound over today? Anyone know if they have plans to do more tomorrow. Can the guys not impacted today be considered as safe atleast as of now?

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous: "Desktop PCs are teathered to desks."Congratulations, Captain Obvious. But Microsoft makes a ton of dough from corporations that like the "tether" their employees to desktops.

"Laptops have tiny screens, no sound systems and are awkward to use."Which completely invalidates your closing point about everyone moving to iPhones and Wiis. You can't seem to make up your mind: Are small screens and crappy speakers bad... or good?

"People want to be entertained in the living room, they want to communicate on the go.How are the two related? Bzzzt! They're not. You're "tethered" (oh, perish the thought) in your living room, aren't you? OMG! NOOOOOOOO!

I can more easily send email, read the news, listen to music, etc walking the hallways on my cell phone than carrying a laptop.Actually, when I'm walking around, I tend to engage in the world around me, talk to people, not keep my face planted in a phone like an autistic geek.

The PC era is waning, as much as you don't want to believe it - people have moved on to iPhones and Wii's...LOL! Rrrrright. Because you can create so many interesting documents on an iPhone, right? LMFAO! Who are you kidding?!? iPhone are for casual use. They're not going to replace a PC ... EVER. If you can replace your PC with an iPhone, you really never used a PC, in the first place.

MSFT can sit back and watch - or wither away."Here, I actually agree with you. Microsoft needs to get its head out of its ass when it comes to phones and online services. Windows Mobile is losing badly. Live Search market share is abysmal. We need to either change strategies or run up the white flag.

Anonymous said...

So, I guess we do the same thing tomorrow? :|Everyone in COSD will be waiting with angst.

Anonymous said...

5:22 - You better hope your enemies in your highly political group don't read Mini, because you did everything but provide a map to your office and drawings of your co-workers, there. A 2000-word detailed screed isn't exactly anonymous anymore, you know.

Anonymous said...

I'm really curious about the MSPoll results - by all accounts it was going to be horrible?

For me the death knell was canning ThinkWeek! WTF? Maybe they realise that any innovative ideas are walking out the door and that the effort was no longer worth the reward? (I certainly held back, and now that I am no longer bound by an employment contract I may just take on a few ideas myself...)

Anonymous said...

-- Why do we always have to invest in something that others are proving to be worth investing..we are always behind in the race, atleast for the last 6-8 years...Why can't we show a new area where others would be interested and we lead...

Because online is the new area, at least for the next 10 years.

Anonymous said...

any managers affected ? like GPM or VP or Dev managers ?

Anonymous said...

"Ballmer aims to fire 6.5 percent of his global workforce every year, and suggested managers pick the number of reductions they think they can do better with and double it.

Ballmer told the group: "The real question is never: 'Are people not good enough?' The real question is: 'Can you do better?'""

That's great until at some point the talented and successful people just say "FUCK YOU" and stop putting up with the bullshit.

This is not the same company I joined 10 years ago. That company died and its founder left.

Anonymous said...

6:44: hardly matters, since he/she doesn't work here anymore, right? (The 5:22 post is one of the best so far; definitely food for thought.)

Anonymous said...

Hotmail and GNS were cut by 15%

Anyone know about other GFS teams?

Anonymous said...

For those who asked, MSIT and SMD got hammered. No numbers yet, but lots of emails of people who got cut.

I for one enjoyed trying to work in my office while emails trickled in about people getting cut while management and leaderhsip seemed to avoid the issue altogether by being absent. I understand this was by directive from HR.

Anonymous said...

Maybe MS will lay off the entire Entourage Dev team. What a joke of a product.Include the exchange team.

Look at the number of times our email clusters are offline.

Anonymous said...

Mini! Come back! The discussion board is full of ridiculous, offensive, and embarrasing posts.

Mini Msft India said...

For those ignorant creatures, here in India we have done unethical way of laying off people for past 2 weeks continuously and it took the morale of everyone here in the building 2 to deep bottom.

Rest from my reply comment.
I'm all for a lean and mean Microsoft India.

After hearing the sad family impacts( laid off employee's father died due to health insurance mess up due to the sudden termination, pregnant wive got miscarriaged due to shock of the news about termination) of some of the employees( #emp 18-50) who were terminated in the last 2 weeks here in MS IT India, I'm strongly inclined to go, take a communist way of fight, get a decent severance package atleast.

I want Microsoft to be successful, but not at the cost of employee's lives.

I know if there's no political intervnetion, leave giving the job back, we may not even interested to give additional paise as severance.

Before questioning my integrity and passion for the company,please do your due diligence whether we have given advance notices and enough severance to all those who were asked to move before?

All of their stories are very terrible and those guys are not even picking up any of the phones from their old MS colleagues. They hate MS to the core.

The popularity game played a role in the past layoffs, not complete meritocracy. If we have adpated some real good metrics, we should lay off some of the big heads who were part of the big 'expansion' mess up.
Accountability ?


I'm sure that they we would not end up repeating such mistakes when we have the fear of public intervention, atleast let us try it make simple and straight ( 2 months notice, decent severance, no threat for signing the agreement,providing medical insurance for 2 more months, etc)for all of the employee's whoever getting impacted in this wave 2.

Expecting some big head should also role down along with shop floor employees..

Anonymous said...

"3000 layoffs over 12 months? ( Running until June 2010 ). Please, take a cue from IBM and layoff 10,000 in 3 months. Cull the herd quickly and move on. This "onesies and twosies" crap just drives down morale..."


If you haven't figured it out by now, the people who make decisions at MS are hacks. It's time for shareholders to start demanding some of these asshats step down. I work outside the company but make my living supporting MS products and I'm beginning to wonder WHEN is the company going to start paying attention? While you all are slaving away on Zune and Office version 6000, IT depts at major corporations are starting to seriously look at ditching MS. Your company has lost its way. Those of you who remain need to start asking tough questions of your "leaders" and demand that some of them fall on the sword as well. One more PR nightmare like Vista and MS is in serious trouble.

Anonymous said...

Cheers 6:44, it's 5:22 writing back.

I'm already safely and surprisingly happily involved in my post-MS opportunity, and I'm working on product direction in a multi-platform online games house that has little love for MSFT except as a source of cash we can tap which is becoming less and less critical to operations.

The tale was an illustration only, with selected details changed to protect both the guilty and innocent. Anyone who doesn't do that when posting to mini isn't thinking or is one of the C's that the company acquired in the 2000's ("A's hire A's, B's hire C's").

Precise details or not, it is reasonably close to the what I and others experienced. It stands as educational material for the kid who's sure his or her daddy knows all. Even when you think you know how it works, there's often more to know that you don't yet know. And some of it is highly significant to your situation.

And about that "office" you wrote about. My next employer actually gave me one, it has walls and a door, rather than a defined area of floorspace. You who think principal IC's must have it so great, there's an eye opener. It's in the name of team cohesiveness. I don't entirely disagree with it, but still value and missed a private space to think and work.

Anonymous said...

Watching the post count drop, drop, drop. Mini's in da house.

Anonymous said...

Windows Live is safe. They are a miniscule portion of the company with strong potential and deliveries. The division (Steve Sinofsky) made a lot of adjustments and cost cuts way before this series of announcements of layoffs were made. And their revenue numbers are up.

Exchange, EHS, MSN and Office lost a few people. Forefront is being hit hard - they had removed a General Manager and PUM before and now axing a Test manager and a junior dev manager (wonder why a V2 takes 5 years to ship? - useless execs with no business sense or knowledge of security). A lot of operations folks are gone. So were some contractors and sales people across the board, writers and people in xbox and zune.

Anonymous said...

Condolences to everyone who got hit. I left MSFT in 2005 after 6 years there and am very glad I moved out. I was tired of the complete demoralization of the employees and the constant whining. And of the constant management BS and politicking. As I moved I got 50% pay raise, a company with a positive atmosphere and interesting work. Yes, I have $10 copay when visiting the doctor and copay for medicine, but this is negligible compared to the pay increase. May be the layoff will turn out to be a positive change. And may be if you do not like MSFT, you should leave too. My view is that you get what you deserve and you can blame only yourself for what you get.

Anonymous said...

You have no clue what you are talking about, the PC market is barely profitable, all the money is in the console market.Ahem, Flight Simulator was highly profitable, thank you.

Anonymous said...

One fact that still seems to be lost by monkey boy and his uber-bear "economy reset" mantra is that Microsoft still made $1 billion per month last quarter in net income. Last year we made $1.3 billion per month.

Because we didn't make the same huge net income, 5000 people have lost their jobs. Any other company would be overjoyed to have the kinds of margins and income numbers we have. It really makes you wonder how much of this is being done for the market. Gee...can we survive on only a billion a month?

Anonymous said...

i am so happy to have resigned a few months back! microsoft is one of the most disorganized companies i have ever worked at.

Anonymous said...

"I think it's astonishing that people like Robbie Bach in E&D and ANYONE who has anything to do with ZUNE still have jobs."

You're not alone. The market is baffled by it as well. Bach has been paid more personally since 2001 than the net profitability of his entire division. Not many executives can claim that distinction.

Anonymous said...

some comments...
- lots of sour grapes
- if you can't figure out how to archive your own personal email, you're an idiot and deserve to be fired
- after 356 comments, what more can be said? Yes, management sucks, yes there were great people laid off, and yes, we all deserve more...guess what, this is life. When you joined the company you made a decision to put your fate in someone else's hands. The only way you can turn this around is if you own your own business. Stop bitching, suck it up and make your mark in the world. STart by not checking this blog post for a few days...jesus.

Anonymous said...

Big riff in Surface, although I guess that was expected. As usual the best people get riffed, the rest remain. Politics, gotta love it.

For the Microsoft bashers out there though, gotta tell you, I've worked in a bunch of Silicon Valley companies in the past, startups and midsize, and have never felt as cared for as I have in MS, and have never seen my career grow as much as it has here.

That said, the layoffs were idiotically executed (guess MS management doesn't have much experience with how to conduct layoffs), and poorly targeted. But believe me, I've seen worse.

Anonymous said...

Mini, i love the title, man (or woman). I laughed my arse off when i saw it this morning. keep our spirits up!

Anonymous said...

MSFT must diversify its revenue which is why its investing heavily outside windows & office. MSFT didnt become what it is today by closing ranks and protecting its assets, it took chances in markets it had no business being in, and succeeded. The company must make big bets, and when one bets big, one occasionally loses big (hello search). People who complain about unprofitable divisions have absolutely no vision for the future. BTW, the Windows division did more to contribute to the destruction of what little credibility the company had when it unleashed the giant sucking turd known as Vista. The rest of the company has to fight to rid themselves of the residual stink that abomination continues to leave on other products.

Frito-pie said...

+1 on 7:57...people unite when there's an opportunity to complain. Hence the successful track record of Class Action Lawsuits.

Anonymous said...

I know the Forefront manager you're talking about. He's been there since V2 started and hasn't shipped a single product since he joined Microsoft some 6 years ago. All he does is big talk and politics and places his career interests in front of Microsoft's. It's a shame he is still around. He is there for stealing our IP and then wants to go back to his home country with all the designs and specs and start his own company. Adding features to Forefront my arse - they have been fixing bugs and design issues since the last 2 years.

That guy has gotten so many people fired and made so many enemies. First name starts with a K. Last name with an S. Thank God I don't work for him but I would personally go thank Lisa and Harish if they had the courage to fire him.

Anonymous said...

Any ideas how many in lpo

ivan awfulitch said...

I'm always amazed at the complete lack of reality and business acumen that most posters have.

What do they tell us in NEO about, "why does Microsoft exist?" No, it's not to make software or help your grandma use email or even share those annoying emoticons.

MS exists to MAKE MONEY!!

And when you run a business that has to MAKE MONEY you CUT PEOPLE when things get tough. Microsoft = IBM = GM = CitiBank = some hamburger stand down the street.

When you don't have enough $ coming in the front door, you have to save it from going out the back door. Sorry - people get laid off, fired or rif'ed and welcome to the 21st Century where Microsoft is just like every other business even though blue badged people feel entitled that there is something "special" about this little company in Redmond.

Get over it - there is NOTHING SPECIAL about Microsoft - it's just another business and we are all commodities working for the man. Sad day for absent friends. And sadly, it changes nothing.

Anonymous said...

That said, the layoffs were idiotically executed (guess MS management doesn't have much experience with how to conduct layoffs), and poorly targeted. But believe me, I've seen worse.management have done worst possible things in certain cases. Specially those who were fired for underperformance. No notice, no severance and within 10 minutes they were thrown out of the door. The cases were pathetic when they fire some really good people in this way. As many people agree a very good person can get 10% under a horrible manager. I have see some small companies with horrible management. But even they performed the layoff in a more civilized manner.

Anonymous said...

I originally posted that Zune came out unscathed - my apologies it turns out that I should have said "mostly unscathed", but I don't know details beyond that.

To all the Zune-haters, no offense taken. I know it's a big risk and we have a lot to prove. If we're wrong about it we'll be on the street too.

Anonymous said...

Some of you don't get it. Behind all the numbers posted and all, we all know there are numbers that are not disclosed and that are not talked about. We are in trouble - Vista didn't take off, nobody needs Windows7, Office has delivered all it ever could and nobody cares for any more, small medium large enterprise-spending has gone down, Microsoft has wasted a lot of money in bad investments - the list goes on. Ballmer is preparing for worse times. This is a huge Titanic waiting to sink.

Anonymous said...

How many companies in the world have $20 billion in cash and investments, just sitting around? That's a heck of a lot of money. You can create a whole new Microsoft with that kind of money. Or even start a new country.

What's amazing is that we're cutting anyone. Put that money to use and create another whole new paradigm, just like we did when we created the Windows OS cash cow.

Keep all existing employees and launch a new business the world has never seen before. Be brave, Microsoft. Reinvent yourself. Cutting employees to appease shareholders and boost your stock price is a sign of mental apathy.

Anonymous said...

For all of our sakes, let's hope that Mini plans to burn the midnight oil moderating the blog. So much nastiness, come on people!
Embarrassing the diatribes here today. Stick to the purpose of this forum during the layoffs - who is getting hit and what are you being told. Thank you, Mini!

Anonymous said...

Any word on MBS/Dynamics? If any division deserves to get cut, it's them. Bloated, cocky, and run by the "Chimp in Space" (sorry, Russian Rocket)

OK, it's you again. You were spouting the same thing on the Seattle Times "live blogging" of the earnings report call last week.

Spell it out. What are your specific grievances against Kirill Tatarinov? What has he done that's so damaging to MS's bottom line or anything else that you have to keep calling him the same names?

Facts and figures, baby. Time to put up or shut up. I'd really like to know.

Anonymous said...

Being one of the first rounders a few months ago, I became painfully aware of a despicable "catch" in the 60-day WARN policy.

If you are notified today of your layoff and given 60-days paid to cover the WARN Act and find a job before those 60 days are up, Microsoft will force you to walk away from any severance packages you may have earned. They view taking another job during those 60 days the same as "quitting".

Anonymous said...

Layoffs are tough, and my thoughts are with all those going through the process today.

The sad thing is, from what I can tell the people who should be getting laid off are the ones who aren't. A lot of the vitriol here is directed towards management in an us-vs-them thing ("fire the managers -- they're not doing the real work"). But in my experience it's not just a management thing -- it can be inept or checked-out individual performers or managers. Usually they've been at Microsoft for 10+ years, in my experience, and are at L65+. They seem to be protected from everything -- including when they ignore explicit directives from their new Corporate VPs repeatedly.

I left Microsoft recently, mostly because of these people. And I notice that none of the dead weight lifers I knew have been laid off, unless it just happened today (which I sincerely doubt).

I've had some of the best managers of my career at Microsoft. I've had some of the worst, and I've had some in the middle. It's not just a manager problem, at least at the mid-levels, because there are some very good, very dedicated managers at the company.

The problem, it seems to me, that Microsoft has is the ingrained tendency in the company culture that privileges tenure over contribution at all levels and in all job types (not just management). It explains a lot about the company's recent performance, I think. There's a lot of perspective missing on the direction of the market when everyone's been in the same groupthink mindset for the last 15 years.

Anonymous said...

Mini Msft India @ 7:13 pm:
After hearing the sad family impacts( laid off employee's father died due to health insurance mess up due to the sudden termination, pregnant wive got miscarriaged due to shock of the news about termination) of some of the employees( #emp 18-50) who were terminated in the last 2 weeks here in MS IT India, I'm strongly inclined to go, take a communist way of fight, get a decent severance package atleast.Get a grip. We are all unhappy that layoffs are happening, but we all realize that employment with a company is not a lifetime guarantee. It was a mutual contract. Software market was extremely hot in India in the last few years and many software engineers jumped from company to company, collecting a healthy pay raise with each jump (every few months). It was all fun and profitable while it lasted and companies had to accept that reality and deal with it.

Now the tide has turned and companies are in a position where they can dictate terms and they are doing just that. That's business. Understand that these are cyclical. Sometimes employees have the upper hand. Sometimes employers have the upper hand. You had your fun when you had the advantage. Now the companies have the advantage and will exercise that in order to cut costs.

Anonymous said...

Regardeless how bad SB is, the XBOX is the BEST innovation from MSFT in recent years---- on par with iPhone. Just 5 years ago, can you imagine Sony PS could lose to Microsoft????

I don't understand why people kept talking about the "possibility" of iPhone for game industry ----possibility?? who cares? XBOX already takes the market----OK, second to WII.

Interesting thing is people follows this kind of "wall street thought" to think XBOX is a failure regardless its impact on game players, while they keep saying "Wallstreet style people" screw up MSFT.

Anonymous said...

It is like watching a wrinkle in time, seeing MSFT today. I worked for DEC (who?) for 15 years and rode them up to their peak and down for much of their death spiral. MSFT looks and feels like DEC did during the long plunge into oblivion (via Compaq then HP). Management out of touch, solid technical professionals on the front lines feeling marginalized and that the company was bloated, mis-managed, and headed in the wrong directions, missing key shifts in the industry. No words of wisdom for you, other than it appears you are repeating history here, and it is sad to watch this from down the road. Deja vu, Ground Hog Day, whatever. Unless someone with the power to do something, decides to do it and do it soon.

Anonymous said...

I was one of the people that got laid off in DevDiv. It seems like 15-20% in our group was let go.

Learning from the past - let's look for the opportunities for MSFT with the great employees still working to change the company and the world - and for us, who soon are outside the firewalls.

Beyond the outplacement firm, are there good online or real-life communities for networking with other people who are laid off from MSFT?

Anonymous said...

Our team (inside Microsoft Advertising) was hit "really" hard. 45% were Laid off (including myself).

I had been bracing myself up for it, but still - the cold-bloodedness with which the top manager spoke at all-hands meeting today morning was quite chilling. I am never going to forget for the rest of my life. And the less i say about HR folks, the better it would be.

I guess I've learnt my lesson today. Dont believe any crap that co. feeds you. Believe only what your mind says. Dump the co/product anytime for your personal gain. Work hard, but work smart - and work for someone who appreciates your smartness. Never get duped again by any talk-up speaches from GMs, recruiters and HR.

Need to take a good sleep after today.

Anonymous said...

SanjayP's SBA was deeply impacted. Most of his new products on the market were cut (from SPOT to RP). Interestingly, his SBA central teams were not impacted. People who did the work were asked to leave, but not people who did the talk.

SanjayP is finally surrounded himself with a bunch of random MBAs who are clueless about product development. These people will make SBA "Sanjay's BS accelerator", i.e. cutting randomly, and launching more random products waiting to be cut in the near future. One example is MS Vine, dreaming to compete with Facebook :-)

I chatted with a few SBA folks today. Looks like everyone in SBA is talking about leaving the team. People don't see there is any future working for a clueless MBA, more accurately, a bunch of bean counters in his central SBA "yes sir" team.

Anonymous said...

nobody was fired from biggest scam in microsoft which is LiveSearch. while money making groups have to let ppl go out the door.

Anonymous said...

Any update on the marketing teams inside E&D? Did they get hit and if so, which teams? Wondering especially about Windows Mobile, Zune, and Xbox. Not much on the Mini posts for these areas.

Anonymous said...

"Actually, when I'm walking around, I tend to engage in the world around me, talk to people, not keep my face planted in a phone like an autistic geek."

Nice. Try actually observing the digital generation - as they keep in touch on facebook via iphones, and with each other via 5000 messages a month, neither involving a sale of windows or outlook. If you don't give people what they want, someone else will. MSFT can develop products people actually want, or continue to scale down to until supply for its products equals diminished demand.

The problem with MSFT is development of technologies MSFT employees want & value, not the consumer. Development of cell phones who's primary value is syncing to your outlook calendar, notifying you 15 minutes before your skip level, etc (mobile). Just because the millions of people buying iPhones want something completely different than you do doesn't make them idiots or autistic geeks... It makes them consumers taking a pass on your product.

Corporate Darwinism in action - evolve and innovate, or die like a dinosaur in the dirt. Listen to the consumer and meet their needs, or layoff when they defect. It's nothing personal.

Anonymous said...

Ballmer's post:

"provide support as we did during the previous job eliminations."

Yup, just like all the support provided for the first round where managers wouldn't even talk to former laid off workers because they recruiting was prioritizing internal transfers higher. Some support...

Anonymous said...

As of today I am still safe - although I know that I am not special and can definately be replaced. I hope that I ride this wave out and can see MSFT move into the future and I hope that the leaders can make you all proud and change the company into what all your feedback wants it to be. No company is perfect. I have been here over 10 years and would love to spend another 10 here. My prayers are with you that are looking for jobs or that are unhappy in your current position.

Anonymous said...

SBA cleared out three entire teams: Response Point, .net Micro Framework, and MSN Direct. Lot of top engineers went to work for those groups when they started. Sure, you could argue "Well, if they are so talented, they should have no problemo getting rehired." But they may not have the morale to stick around. Could it have been possible to keep top talent by eliminating the product but not the talent?

Some folks were given til friday before their badge, access, etc. are revoked. Others have 60 days to find a new position or be terminated.

Anonymous said...

"Not one job offer, not one real opportunity, nothing. So if it's only me out here, and everyone else landed on their feet, I guess I feel even worse. I don't think that I am the only one leftover from the 1400, and I hope that those getting cut today will have better luck than I am having. Likely over a hundred well thought-out applications for supposedly real jobs out here, and most companies don't even answer. The continued arrogance of a few posters is the only thing that makes me wonder if it's a good thing to be kicked out. It's not your job to make me feel good about losing my employment, but you don't need to keep up the drivel about how everyone worth anything got picked up in a heartbeat."

To this poster - ignore the crap posts on this site. What you're experiencing is reality for a lot of people that got laid off. HR is on a mission not to rehire - it's said but reality.

Anonymous said...

So, it's over. SBA got 3 groups completely cut. Thanks to Mini's blog, people were expecting this (though we really didn't expect complete elimination). At 9 am our group and quite a lot of HR folks were sitting in a conf room where 3 lines of managers repeated the same things "good bye and thanks for all the fish". HR explained that during that day we'll have private 30 min conversations with them, where we'll be given a package. So we did. There were nothing to sign off right away. Everything was handled in nice manner.
Whar is really interesting though is that people were virtually divided into two groups. Those who have all 60 days for job search, they'll have badge and email during that time, corpnet access and RAS (pretty much everything that regular employee has) and those who are officially on payroll for 60 days, however they have to return the badge and their email alias will be terminated this Friday. All devs, half of test and some PMs are in the first group. Assignment of the test and PMs between these groups is mostly unexplainable.

Anonymous said...

So COSD still hasn't heard? Wow, they can't even deliver a layoff on time!

Anonymous said...

So if I am not notified by 5pm today, does that mean I am safe from this round? 45 mins to go... Let's see if I am gonna get "lucky"

The truly "lucky" were in the 1400. Those notified today are still marginally "lucky." You are in the "envy the dead" my friend.

Anonymous said...

@ 9:07:00 PM - yes HR is awfully perky when they give you the axe, aren't they? I also saw some dancing around boxes full of manilla envelopes as they passed them out. Like they were happy little elves handing out candy canes and lollipops.

Anonymous said...

@ 10:05:00 PM

1) what does SBA stand for?

2) Did you ask the HR people what was the basis for selection into the 1st group you mention?

Good luck.

Anonymous said...

.NET Micro Framework, and MSN Direct?!?!

those still existed?!

::facepalm::

Anonymous said...

First, to all those affected by the layoffs, I'm truly sorry and wish you the best. I left on my own a few months ago after almost six years as an FTE, just got too sick and tired of the extreme politics, lack of innovation, bloated organization, bully culture etc. Not to mention an extremely incompetent and sociopathic marketing director of my team. I was extremely fortunate to have landed another job without a pay cut in a great, growing company, that actually appreciates me and my work. It's a tough job market, I won't lie, but there are jobs out there! And more than that, there is a life after Microsoft, and as I've found -- a much better life! Unfortunately, I already know of at least three great hard working employees in my old team laid off today. And the sociopathic marketing director? She's fine.

Anonymous said...

The opportunities Microsoft missed in the last decade are mind blowing. Does anybody remember what the theme of the 1999 company meeting was? SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE. Yes kids, in 99, back when Google was only a blip on the radar, Ballmer was jumping up and down screaming "Software as a Service!!!" And what happened? We blew every single initiative in that area. Ever heard of Hailstorm? Look it up and cry your eyes out. MSFT didn't have to end up where it is today but there you are. I say "you" and not "we" because I finally gave up and left a few years ago. Couldn't be happier.

Anonymous said...

I am in COSD. No official mail from Jon/Wael, but short meeting this a.m. with one of the trio folks to say that "we're safe". Heard that maybe some folks in Windows International may have been cut, but that wasn't confirmed. Also don't know if there were any ripples in the rest of COSD/Windows. I have to wonder whether those cuts will be held off until we ship.

In any event, good luck to everyone - those who left us in Jan, those who got notice today, and those left behind.

Anonymous said...

As someone who developed for Response Point at one time, it sucks to hear the plug was pulled. It is a great product that is unfortunately completely based in a market that has been ravaged by the recession (small business) and could be seen as a luxury item.

It makes me sad hearing the constant hate that seems to brew on here (both the comments and from Mini) about E&D. There is no doubt that the div has been less than profitable, but it contains just as much talent as other more profitable divisions and at least as much innovation. People seem to think that unless Microsoft can be #1 at something today, it is not worth doing. Sure, that is working for Windows and Office, whose market share was built years ago. However, people are spending more and more time on their game system, music players, and cell phones and there is no indication that is going to change. Microsoft can clearly stay in the control of the desktop and productivity market, but as that market starts slowly shrinking how is the company going to fill that void?

Apple managed to see this years ago when they had one foot in the grave and the best they could do was wrap their products in bright colors. They took a chance at jumping in to a new market with the iPod. The truth was, the iPod sucked for a couple of generations and just stayed afloat from hardcore Apple fans. However, they stuck with the gamble and turned it in to an industry virtually all their own.

Microsoft needs to at least try to compete in these established platforms. Some may eventually fail, some may be a hit (Xbox is going that way), and some may create an industry all their own.

Anonymous said...

What a company (I survived). I have yet to meet a single fellow employee who holds an ounce of confidence or respect for upper management - not one.

We have a middle management structure with some competency in places but many more like scared rabbits - a clear example of top level management by fear.

We have a focus on individual achievement caused by the setting of goals that are typically not team oriented but rather individual metric oriented and in some cases competitive with others (e.g. go get 10 "wins" when a "win" is poorly defined).

We have clearly revenue producing individuals (e.g. MCS consultants on customer paid gigs) being laid off (how in the world can you justify cutting revenue producing individuals...?). We have highly agitated customers as a result.

We have EPG guiding lights turned off and shown the door, while those above them continue their "success" of instilling false senses of security to upper management in order to save their own less than competent hides.

We have competitors who openly feed us our lunch daily and laugh at our inability to create success as we continue to not focus on promising markets and instead instill a seeming stubbornness chasing after lost causes.

We have enough wasted food sitting out in the hallways of the Redmond campus daily to pay for numerous jobs.

I watched a 15 year MS veteran today cringe and get noticeably ill every time his phone rang. How can great people with great work ethics and great past success be put in such a position? This simple fact alone shows how "valuable" employees are here and illustrates the "management by fear" methodology in place.

Management by fear and stubbornness - it's brought down whole empires over the course of human history. It can bring down MS if unchecked.

It's time for some serious self reflection and a new awareness that management needs to change course dramatically if this company is to grow and get back to its past glory. It's a simple fact and it's echoed strongly by all factors - especially the stock price.

How can the #1 World's software company with large profits and billions of dollars in the bank have stock at $20 per share while out competitors eat our lunch in this area? This really is a continuous vote of no confidence in current management policy. It speaks for itself.

The day is not over yet and I wonder how many people on the good ship Microsoft have already gone to bed in a worried daze that it's still not over? Goodnight Microsoft.

Anonymous said...

To find who got laid off, look at people's calendars. If they have one half hr appt. on tuesday - they were given pink slip. This does not apply if he/she is manager, because then most likely he is giving the pink slip.

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