Microsoft Cutting More Jobs as New Year Begins (theregister.com) 52
Microsoft kicks off the new year with more job cuts, as fewer than 1% of employees reportedly face the axe. From a report: As first reported by Business Insider, Microsoft is trimming its workforce again, including roles in its security division, with the cuts targeting underperforming employees. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the layoffs with BI but declined to specify how many staffers are affected, stating, "At Microsoft, we focus on high-performance talent."
"We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action," the spokesperson told The Register.
"We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action," the spokesperson told The Register.
Resume poison (Score:2)
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Correct. Orange Man Bad still isn't president yet and has had zero power to cause this week's Bad Stuff. We are still in the previous administration from the other party, under the best president ever, can't keep up with him!
Not true (Score:1)
There are *tons* of new policies that let them bring them here faster and get them onto greencards or other visa types. That 65k number was bullshit even before we ignore that they don't leave when their visas are up.
If you don't mind working 60-90 hours a week you've got more job security in America as an H1-B than as a local worker. Look at Twitter. They fired everyone except the H1-Bs.
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Tesla alone accounts for 3% of H1-B visas https://electrek.co/2024/12/30... [electrek.co]
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H-1B isn't the problem here (Score:3)
Technically that's illegal.
You can't cut staff then turn around and hire H-1B visas. At least not directly. To even hire an H-1B visa, a company has to list a job opening available to US citizens first. There are a lot of tricks to make sure that US citizens don't see it or aren't accepted in the interview screening process, but it's difficult to orchestrate on a large scale. The tech industry does it all the time, one or two jobs at a time. But doing it with 1000 or 10,000 all at once is probably not feasi
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Not enforcing a law is the same as it not existing, see incoming president elect for many many examples.
It's not illegal (Score:1)
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You can't cut staff then turn around and hire H-1B visas.
Disney did. In fact they did it on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0... [nytimes.com]
Did they face any penalties for that? No.
I'm skeptical if they saved any money doing this.
The purpose is to destroy white families. A company reclining on a mountain of someone else's cash and protected by government can afford to lose money forever if it achieves its true objective.
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Disney did. In fact they did it on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
Disney fired employed and hired Cognizant and HCL to take over the responsibilities. Disney didn't add H-1Bs to their own staff during this period (because they couldn't, of course).
Did they face any penalties for that? No.
Because they did nothing illegal.
About 250 Disney employees were cut loose from the IT departments. About 100 of those people were moved into other departments. Those department were consolidated and effectively removed from the business. So the original positions don't exist any more.
Two novel RICO cases were were brought again
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To even hire an H-1B visa, a company has to list a job opening available to US citizens first. There are a lot of tricks to make sure that US citizens don't see it or aren't accepted in the interview screening process, but it's difficult to orchestrate on a large scale.
This is not true. It is not only trivial but to do but bascially always works. The question is not whether it's difficult to orchestrate on a large scale. The question is how many visas were denied based on the job opening being claimed by a US citizen? Is the number even greater than zero?
It happens all the time. (Score:2)
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Which party is in charge currently?
Um..how does that pertain to the h1-b problem and Musk buying a president to allow many, many, many more illegal immigrants in to the country?
Why was he against illegal immigrant workers the first go round? He now flip-flopped when Musk decided to go all anti-american and pro-migrant [ucsb.edu]
Don't believe yer lyin' eyes, right? (Score:2)
Microsoft is the number 6 biggest user of H1B visas. They have imported THOUSANDS of H1B workers, but at the same time they have layed off thousands (this week is the 2 year anniversary of a layoff of ten thousand).
When a company lays off thousands of employees in the US, and imports thousands of foreign workers (swearing to the government that these imported workers are coming to do jobs Americans cannot or will not do) the actual effect is the replacement of American workers with foreigners whether people
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"""HIgh performance talent""" (Score:2, Interesting)
If that's true, then why do they produce such shitty products?
Some execs more likely want bigger bonuses so they can buy bigger yachts, or more cocaine, or whatever it is these assholes waste their money on.
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Shitty managers. They keep replacing the workers but they haven't figured out that they need to dump their management.
Re: """HIgh performance talent""" (Score:2)
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Crappy managers hire crappy coders. Business as usual at Microsoft.
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What is stupid about his post?
The fact that you can't grasp it speaks volumes about you.
Re:Every organization should do this (Score:4, Interesting)
I worked at a place that did that. They announced it 2 weeks before performance reviews. And that each team over 20 people must let go of at least 1 person.
They hired a new guy who just had a baby, so he wasn't making a lot of progress on his projects. I, on the other hand, had been a total pain in the ass. But I delivered working code on time. So we swapped placed (involuntarily). Best decision of the year for me. I got out, sold my vested shares, and took some time off. That place didn't last long at all, closed its doors shortly after I started a new job.
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I worked at a place that did that.
I doubt they did: I suspect that what they actually did was fire the bottom 5% of each team each year, not the bottom 5% of performers. This at times results in laying off people who are better than entire teams. It also creates interesting incentives, and managers are now well advised to hire literally anyone ASAP when they get headcount, not necessarily someone good.
The reason is that (a) worst case, they are grist for the firing mill, (b) you might end up with someone go
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Automatically fire the bottom 5% every year ensures no slackers. It will be like a pro sports team that adds new draft picks every year. The low performers get cut or sent down.
Unfortunately managers often don't have a good idea who's in the bottom 5%.
Particularly if employees are being judged by numerical metrics that don't take any account of how difficult a task is. Solving one difficult problem is more valuable than doing a hundred mindless tasks that can be done with no skill or effort, but if the score is "number of tasks completed," the top employee loses by a hundred to one.
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Unfortunately managers often don't have a good idea who's in the bottom 5%.
Disagree. On any team, EVERYONE knows who the lowest performer is. You know who the slacker is. The one who is consistently not pulling their weight. The one who is slowing you down. The one who you hope you are not assigned to work with on a project.
I don't think it is fair to mandate that the bottom 5% (or whatever number) is cut each year... but I do think that managers know who their bottom performers are.
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Automatically fire the bottom 5% every year ensures no slackers. It will be like a pro sports team that adds new draft picks every year. The low performers get cut or sent down.
I remember when Microsoft did this in the 80s. My mother worked there.
Every year, the bottom performers got fired from each team/group/department. Then they hired 3 replacements to compete for the position. Put 'em all in one office to really make it clear that there is only room for one. One was usually gone within a month, and the final cut was made by end of the quarter. The surviving new hire was excluded from stack ranking for the first year to give them a chance to get established.
It was a pressu
Why did you hire them in the first place (Score:3)
I once worked on a git product and had a sr developer start a new branch, copy all of my code, and get it committed as his own. When I asked why he didnâ(TM)t use git features to include my changes, he said that was too complicated. This happens several times. Come review time they said I was underperforming because I didnâ(TM)t commit enough code. I was cited a completely different engineer as an example. I went and reviewed his commits and imagine I am shocked that his history was one line typos and capitalization fixes. Canâ(TM)t let SQL statements remain in lowercase, fine company values there.
Needless to say I no longer work there, but the question begs why even bring me on in the first place
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he said that was too complicated.
I really don't get the astonishing amount of work a surprisingly large number of programmers put into not learning the tools of their trade. I like to imagine them in a bygone era as a carpenter gnawing through a plank of wood saying it's easier and they don't have time to learn how to use a saw anyway.
They should also cut (Score:2)
Endless layoffs = negative morale (Score:2)
Excellent idea in theory (Score:3)
In practice, accurately measuring performance is tricky and has lots of room for skulduggery and favoritism.
It's easy to label a talented worker as "unproductive" if they challenge the system, ask for better treatment, or advocate for a union.
I wonder how many of the "unproductive" were older and well paid?
I love it (Score:2)
I love how companies ignore their poor management practices, which lead to "underperforming employees." Most of those who will be laid off are older workers in higher pay grades; just watch. They'll be replaced with offshore resources who work for less than 1/10th the cost.
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One of the hardest things to do as a manager is to manage a remote team in another timezone. Even having a manager on site to do it means you're getting information filtered and translated two or more times. 1/10th the cost and 1/10th the efficiency, unless your managers are particularly skillful. But if their US teams are bloated and ineffective, it's a safe bet to say these aren't skillful managers.
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Of course, but they're "cheaper" and your board of directors and upper management are holding you to goals of reducing costs which for an extremely profitable company like Microsoft is a brain-dead plan unless your only goal is shareholder equity. Companies like Cognizant and Wipro thrive on this because they can get thousands of drones in India, train them to a level of barely incompetent and sell them as highly skilled to C levels who are only getting measured on financial performance, not quality or inno
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It's an old problem: Penny wise and pound foolish.
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Which probably explains why Windows keeps getting shittier and shittier with every release. e.g. Get rid of the old folk who know how it works and replace them with cheap, clueless, replacements.
And I'm not even talking about the enshitification of things like forced Bing, Copilot, Telemetry. I've found bugs in Windows that were fixed under XP but then miraculously re-appear in 7/10. No idea about 11 as that pile of crap corporate spyware is never getting on any of my PCs.
Hell I can remember when you co
A former employer used this method (Score:2)
He spent some time every Thursday morning considering the workforce, how we were performing as a team and individually, and asking himself if he thought he could accomplish everything necessary with fewer people. And occasionally he believed he could, and Thursday afternoon was then spent informing that employee and settling accounts.
Fair? Well, his evaluations were in some part subjective, yes. But his goal was to ensure the business would continue profitably, not fail due to expenses exceeding revenue an