• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Microsoft announces biggest ever job cuts, 18,000 in the next year (12,500 Nokia)

morpix

Member
New CEO, New Restructure. I've personally gone through 3 or 4 of these. Every time a new CEO starts at any big corporate, they wanna make their mark. And that usually means "Restructure time!". It pisses me off that their personal success relies on making so many people jobless...
 
New CEO, New Restructure. I've personally gone through 3 or 4 of these. Every time a new CEO starts at any big corporate, they wanna make their mark. And that usually means "Restructure time!". It pisses me off that their personal success relies on making so many people jobless...

TBH Microsoft was an incredibly bloated company and a lot of the jobs became redundant with the Nokia merger.
 

FranXico

Member
well Nokia was popular with some people and the whole situation looks shitty, especially now with the huge cuts.

it's not like MS executed some sinister master plan and came out on top of the mobile market either though. Windows phone is irrelevant and will probably get killed itself at some point.

Well, they didn't come on top of the mobile market, I'll give you that... ;)
 
Not sure if this has made the rounds yet or not--
Kotaku

The entire TV division? Woah. I'd like to say I'm surprised but, well, I'm not. At all. Given they just recently hyped some of this stuff I'd have to think this was/is a surprise.
 

SFenton

Member
I know some people who have been hit by this. I've never personally known someone who's been "laid off" before, so it feels a little gut-wrenching to hear about it first-hand. :(
 
Nadella, Ballmer, same fucking thing. Microsoft is and always will be run by cretins willing to sell their own grandmas for more profit.
 

Fredrik

Member
This is so sad,
And I'm not so sure they'll make more money from this... From the sound of it they're laying off old Nokia people. Who is supposed to make the Microsoft phones awesome now? Microsoft themselves? We've already seen how that works out. :/
 

Kssio_Aug

Member
Well Apple liked the Windows Phone UI so much they released iOS 7.

Well, I dont know if apple said something about what youre saying there, but I see nothing on iOS7 that reminds me of Windows Phone.

Well the lack of content isn't to blame on the OS... The OS itself does its job and does it the same way Win8 does.

MAYBE not, but the apps are all part of a system, Android wouldnt be near as interesting if it wasnt for the giant number of apps you have access on it. And in terms of apps desing, from my experience iOS has usually the better ones, then Android, and just then Windows Phone, some apps there are really messed in my point of view!

Windows RT itself just isnt that bad because they maintained the old desktop on it too, and there you can access folders, internet explorer and office, but the Metro interface, besides a lot better then when released is almost nothing without the apps. And their app store is weak.
 

Marco1

Member
The money these companies waste on buying other companies to then shut them down could change lives for the better not make them worse.
 

Yoda

Member
Mission Accomplished for Elop. Layoff were inevitable because the new CEO has to prove himself to WallStreet; best way to do that is mass layoffs. I always assumed Microsoft employed more people than Apple, that graph shown earlier is quite eye opening. Also they actual number being larger than the "leaked" number is very much intentional.
 

SURGEdude

Member


What a smug piece of shit that man is. Reading this letter is just bizzare. Why would MS just tell him to avoid needlessly drawing attention back to their little scheme?

The fact that he didn't have to serve jail-time for maliciously manipulating the stock to intentionally decrease shareholder value so he could pick the bones of some of the top mobile patents that took decades to actually invent and then dump the people who made it possible is just insane. The timing of everything and the result was so crassly obvious that I really think he is proud of his role.

So either he is seemly unsympathetic of his historically bad CEO tenure, which will live on in MBA textbooks thanks to gems like the Burning Platform debacle, or he is just about openly admitting to being Balmers sociopathic little henchmen who destroyed tons of jobs, damaged pensions, and kicked his home country right in the nuts, all with as much glee as he can show without inviting investigations by regulators for what sure looks like fraud. Even if they can't prove it, because it's pretty foolproof in its deviousness it might shut him up and scare the next guy. But then again these regulators are just learning the game before they take a fat check in the industry so I imagine his plan is actually a nice reminder that once they get in the uppermanagement club they can basically just come to work everyday, take a shit on their desk, and then when somebody asks them what they regret about it years later they can just point out that they never did find the bathroom.

Someday we will know for sure, but I'd bet that he is pretty proud of creating a new type of scam that can be excused away by hiding behind the fact that if he really was that stupid and bad at running Nokia it wouldn't be actionable. I'd say between that and seeing his media appearances the man is pure sociopath without even the veneer of giving a shit
 

Furyous

Member
A couple things:

Does this mean Office is making its way to XOne?

Xbox needs to get in line with this vision somehow someway.

Now we'll see the future of the cloud of Xbox One because we have to.

Does this mean moneyhatting is done?

Is that Halo tv show still coming out?

I realize 18,000 jobs lost is huge but 12,500 of them come from Nokia. If Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs out of the Xbox division then we should all worry.

This is awful news but this means everyone will have to tighten up their focus to better deliver quality products and services to consumers.
 

Yoda

Member
A couple things:

Does this mean Office is making its way to XOne?

Xbox needs to get in line with this vision somehow someway.

Now we'll see the future of the cloud of Xbox One because we have to.

Does this mean moneyhatting is done?

Is that Halo tv show still coming out?

I realize 18,000 jobs lost is huge but 12,500 of them come from Nokia. If Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs out of the Xbox division then we should all worry.

This is awful news but this means everyone will have to tighten up their focus to better deliver quality products and services to consumers.

So that won't be happening. The work those 18,000 people were doing isn't going to vanish as Microsoft isn't exiting any market. The people who are left will simply have to do more on top of their old workload. While I'm sure there will be 'some' restructuring, but this is more about pandering to shareholders and investors and less about he long-term viability of the company.
 
Stephen Elop's message

In short, we will focus on driving Lumia volume in the areas where we are already successful today in order to make the market for Windows Phone. With more speed, we will build on our success in the affordable smartphone space with new products offering more differentiation. We’ll focus on acquiring new customers in the markets where Microsoft’s services and products are most concentrated. And, we’ll continue building momentum around applications.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/jul14/07-17announcement2.aspx

Looking at this it seems they want to focus on trying to 'out-hipster' apple in america rather than focus on upcoming markets where all of the growth in smartphones is going to be.

Seems like a huge mistake to me, and a massive waste of what was once the worlds premier handset manufacturer.
 

SURGEdude

Member
Looking at this it seems they want to focus on trying to 'out-hipster' apple in america rather than focus on upcoming markets where all of the growth in smartphones is going to be.

Seems like a huge mistake to me, and a massive waste of what was once the worlds premier handset manufacturer.


The whole part where Elop talks about making more low cost Windows 8 Phones is just bizarre. You can get the phone I keep as a backup for hiking and sports which is basically a 2 year old HW design (Lumia 525) but in a pretty nice feeling chasis for like $50 with no contract which makes it great for swapping the sim card if you don't want to risk your primary phone. And MS did a good job making the OS run smoothly even on low-end HW. I've always felt that to get a good experience on iOS or especially Android you really need to go with mid-range or above. As long as you can put up with the different OS and not having much outside mainstream popular apps its a good value. Tough as hell as well and if you break it who cares.

If anything I think they need to push the high end stuff if they ever want to make money. Looking at the marketshare knowing they sell phones for like a quarter of the competition makes the numbers that initially surprised me in lower cost markets suddenly seem abysmal. I can't even imagine there is any way in hell they aren't losing money on each phone they sell for less than $150 or so.

If they can only snag at best about 15% share but only in the most budget-centric markets and can't even get near 10% anywhere else after 4 years with a full range of prices and tons of marketing that would make even somebody who hated the OS consider one then I just don't see what they can do to grow it without a real significant change. Losing more money without bringing in the people who spend money on apps isn't going to improve the store much either. If that share was coming from $500 devices it would be a different story.

I'm mixed on the OS,and I like the iPod Touch quite a bit. However last Christmas when people asked me if they should pick one I up I pointed them to look at the cheap Nokia instead. They are practically giving them away for even non-phone users who just want wifi and basic apps support and the apps they are available run consistently well even the small number of games that need to engage the GPU a bit.
 

Truespeed

Member
Is Jean-Louis Gassée new to corporate speak? Looks like the same stuff I read from every other huge company that makes these types of emails public.

But, this wasn't just a typical corporate speak memo. It was from the CEO of the world's largest software maker who was redefining the company's vision 5 months after Steve Ballmer had redefined it. Additionally, I don't recall Steve Ballmer ever babbling such incoherent bullshit in any of his memo's to the company. At least with Ballmer you got the information you needed without having to decode it.
 

JaggedSac

Member
So that won't be happening. The work those 18,000 people were doing isn't going to vanish as Microsoft isn't exiting any market. The people who are left will simply have to do more on top of their old workload. While I'm sure there will be 'some' restructuring, but this is more about pandering to shareholders and investors and less about he long-term viability of the company.

They wont be manufacturing tons of feature phones anymore.
 

Yamauchi

Banned
Synergies and strategies
Synergies and strategies
Synergies and strategies

Okay, you can shut up now, Satya. Just tell people you are cutting off blubber to increase profit margins and narrow your focus. Really, it's okay.

I'd say it's a good move overall. I think their continued efforts in the mobile space will continue to fail, and I do still feel that they should be a pure OS/Office/Cloud/Enterprise organization, but they've burned through billions (probably tens of billions) on mobile and can afford to continue to do so.
 
A couple things:

Does this mean Office is making its way to XOne?

Xbox needs to get in line with this vision somehow someway.

Now we'll see the future of the cloud of Xbox One because we have to.

Does this mean moneyhatting is done?

Is that Halo tv show still coming out?

I realize 18,000 jobs lost is huge but 12,500 of them come from Nokia. If Microsoft cut 10,000 jobs out of the Xbox division then we should all worry.

This is awful news but this means everyone will have to tighten up their focus to better deliver quality products and services to consumers.

MS still hasn't updated office on Mac in YEARS
 

onQ123

Member
The Audio testers was cut loose also.

From Bkilian at Beyond3D Forum

Welp... the entire Xbox core audio test team was let go during the MS layoffs last week :(. I'm glad I left when I did, or I would also be looking for a new job now. I don't know what this means for audio support and new uses. I believe the dev team is now expected to test their stuff themselves now, which will essentially halve the amount they can get done in the same time.
 
Top Bottom