thehypocrite
Member
I'm sure executives will meet their goals to get their bonus.
Made 💰? Fire people.
Lost 💰? Fire people.
Made 💰? Fire people.
Lost 💰? Fire people.
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Microsoft to lay off 'thousands' of employees
- Thread starter LordOfLore
- Start date
LastGamer84
Member
Wall Street was a mistake
Stockholders are nothing but trash...
It's not enough that you make money, if you're not making more money every year then somehow you've failed.
Although this is true it just grosses me out.
Which is why I will just never be in business.
cpp_is_king
Member
It boggles the mind that people legitimately feel that companies have some sort of civic duty to provide jobs to people, even when there is literally no work at the company that needs to be done by those people.
TyphoonStruggle
Member
I don't know about the first part. But... well, duh at the second part.
Night.Ninja
Banned
I guess no other company shed jobs this week
If it was easy to find another job it wouldn't be an issue but in many cases its near impossible.
That's why I went for a public service job... Good security, good pensions. People get mad you take their tax money, I guess.
Randolph Freelander
Member
We have this thing called inflation, for starters. Business profits need to grow over time the same as any other income source for an individual, because make no mistake, business profits are income sources for individuals, and not just fat cats.
(I was going to say publicly held business profits, but it's not as if mom-n-pop shops are somehow immune.)
Zelenogorsk
Banned
Fire whoever thought up that Windows 10 upgrade nagware. I went from thinking about getting W10 eventually to being proud to stick with Windows 7 due to how annoying that shit got.
I think people have this image in their minds of the job market being like a Great Depression food line. It's really not that big of a deal to get laid off unless you are completely broke. They probably got severance pay anyway.
Fuck you got mine, right?
This idea sort of gets muddied due to often close ties between corporations and governments
Zelenogorsk
Banned
Since when does saying "layoffs suck because it can be hard to find another job" constitute a "fuck you"?
Bunch of them laid off in Seattle, no less. I got three recruitment emails from Amazon this week alone. Sounds like most of these people are in careers. Losing a job is disruptive and scary but there's no reason to think this is catastrophic for thousands of people.
Randolph Freelander
Member
That brush of yours seems too broad, and maybe that's not your intent. Perhaps these folks from Microsoft will be in good shape, but not all layoffs work out quite like that. Many displaced workers actually have nowhere else to go.
Further that these people shouldn't go do what work there is to be done.
Job transitions can be difficult personally but on a macro scale refusing to reallocate resources because the transition is difficult would be disastrous. This is true regardless of who owns what.
We should perhaps do more to help people move between jobs. I'm not really sure what else people think ought to be done?
cpp_is_king
Member
I agree with you in general, but it largely depends on your field. For experienced sales and marketing like what it sounds like is affected, there will be tons of jobs available for these people. We can always cherry pick exceptions and find the small set of people who were displaced / unable to find new work, but in general for the types of positions described here, people are not going to be having that much trouble.
And yes, like you said, if you want job security, try to find work for the government.
I think many people are (understandably) coming at it from a straight-out-of-college no-work-experience entry-level mindset, or unskilled data-entry job type of mindset. It *is* hard to find those kinds of jobs. For skilled workers with experience in sales, marketing accounting, digital media, engineering, etc. It is not hard. Honestly most of them will probably get severance pay that goes beyond how long it takes them to find a new job, meaning they'll be raking in "double salary" for a period of time. Of course there will be some people that have a hard time, but again, if you want job security find work for the government (and receive less pay). There's always a tradeoff
Boredom rooms, I guess.
Angelus Errare
Banned
I mean considering how much America worships and loves bending over for corporations you'd think these companies were under some sort of civic duty to provide jobs lol. It's why I never understood America's hard on for corporations as some sort of entity that should be worshiped. Like "we gotta appease the corporation/wealth gods so they can bless us with jobs!"
rokkerkory
Member
Thanks trump?
It's funny seeing people at gaf
1. Talk about a company as if it would be an official institution of some kind
2. Have no clue to the reasoning or the selection method but just randomly guess and then criticize them for that.
MS is moving towards the cloud. There will be new jobs and some older jobs will be gone. Just like how energy is moving away from coal and into solar/wind; there will be layoffs and new hirings, just like with MS. Someone I dont think the same people that are mad at MS are up there with trump defending the coal jobs in the same way.
Also, with MS in the resume and the severance packages they give, these people will have good chances. Very good.
1. Talk about a company as if it would be an official institution of some kind
2. Have no clue to the reasoning or the selection method but just randomly guess and then criticize them for that.
MS is moving towards the cloud. There will be new jobs and some older jobs will be gone. Just like how energy is moving away from coal and into solar/wind; there will be layoffs and new hirings, just like with MS. Someone I dont think the same people that are mad at MS are up there with trump defending the coal jobs in the same way.
Also, with MS in the resume and the severance packages they give, these people will have good chances. Very good.
BudokaiMR2
Member
These people are leaving one of the most well-known companies on the planet and are probably getting nice severance packages as well.
I really don't think they are gonna have any problems landing on their feet. Hell, I wouldn't be surprised if their cell phones are already ringing off the hook with calls from headhunters.
"A part of our company is hemorrhaging money and is becoming more obsolete by the day? It's fine! We're turning a healthy profit anyway. Let's keep this albatross around our neck indefinitely for the miniscule number of people it will keep employed rather than adapt toward the future!"
- Every successful CEO ever
Some of you are just absolutely precious. How would that be any different than Trump's ridiculous "plan" to prop up the coal industry? It doesn't matter if Microsoft is the most profitable it's ever been, an obsolete job is still obsolete. Do you guys still buy floppy disks too?
- Every successful CEO ever
/s
Some of you are just absolutely precious. How would that be any different than Trump's ridiculous "plan" to prop up the coal industry? It doesn't matter if Microsoft is the most profitable it's ever been, an obsolete job is still obsolete. Do you guys still buy floppy disks too?
Jeff Freecss
Member
What people are missing is that Microsoft is always hiring. It just that they need people with different skills sets now.
They will also need fewer positions of human capital in the company, and that's the automated elephant in the room...
Silent Chief
Member
I'm always shocked by the number of people Microsoft has in sales and marketing.
Their legal division is huge too.
It's pretty easy to find a job when you have experience in sales.
I don't know about marketing, but I like their ad about "why this family should get a horse".
Marketing is what sells what's on store shelves.
The sales department is for those large contracts.
Their legal division is huge too.
It's pretty easy to find a job when you have experience in sales.
I don't know about marketing, but I like their ad about "why this family should get a horse".
Marketing is what sells what's on store shelves.
The sales department is for those large contracts.
Even if the work-life balance is "good" the employer-employee balance is as awful as most every other company in America. Until employees have real say in their work, who stays and who goes as a community, everyone will hate the employer, and why wouldn't they? It's an entirely adversarial relationship. The only really innovative companies I've seen are those where the wealth, and thus distribution of power, is entirely flat (i.e. everyone receives the same salary, from the janitors to the CEOs), and hiring and firing decisions are made by communities specific to the work people do.
Similarly, saying "that's not how business works" is endemic of a much larger problem in the working world in general. It's an excuse for not taking responsibility for putting people out. It's as much a non-excuse as when the police talk about "bad apples" in racially motivated shootings.
MS has some jobs listed in their recruitment pages. Looks like a lot of development areas and some retail store positions.
https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&page=0
Hopefully some of those marketing folks will be able to resume a career somewhere else.
https://careers.microsoft.com/search.aspx#&&page=0
Hopefully some of those marketing folks will be able to resume a career somewhere else.
I'm not saying "that's not how business works". Business can work that way too, maybe. Thats the cool thing; if you want to create such a company or fight for another company to become like that, go ahead. Maybe it'll work really well and you'll attract lots of awesome employees, or maybe it wont work because the people that has spent more time/money/effort on their education and work career wants higher salaries than the janitors etc. (And ofc everone can't have CEO-level salaries).
Try it!
GeordieMark
Member
The have a round of redundancies every year, usually twice. This isn't on the orange one.
The real issue here is the philosophy that makes un-needed work being done for no reason "Good".
Companies should operate with the workers they need and no more.
They should also be taxed enough that no one actually needs that job to live.
Forcing companies to hold on workers they don't need is ridicolous. Just tax them more.
Companies should operate with the workers they need and no more.
They should also be taxed enough that no one actually needs that job to live.
Forcing companies to hold on workers they don't need is ridicolous. Just tax them more.
What does "should" mean in this context? Should means nothing when talking about private businesses. They find their own "should". You can or course propose law changes that enforces certain behaviours, but do you really think that this and the taxing you are suggesting will keep companies operating in the country where you are from? The big companies will just move their business elsewhere. The economy will break apart and everyone will lose as a result.
Bony Manifesto
Member
But businesses are already committed to outsourcing whatever they can to cheaper countries. Tax isn't really the issue, as places like US can never do work as cheap as it can be done in, say, India, even if you enact the libertarian fantasy of taxation being eliminated altogether.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
They always threaten to move to another country, but it isn't that easy. First of all, infrastructure and high quality workers cannot just be moved and outsourced like a bunch of farm animals.
You can do that with factory and assembly jobs. You're not going to move 5000 specialized workers to some tax haven. Think about the cost.
Relocating a single employee and their family alone can be extremely expensive and is only reserved for absolutely essential and irreplaceable employees.
It is very very expensive, costly and time consuming to hire, train and get a worker up to speed. When you fire someone and have to put someone else up to speed, the process that goes on can cost many many many many thousands of dollars. Most people forget these costs. It's really staggering.
Companies get a lot of benefits from staying in a place with a good infrastructure and highquality workforce. With good infrastructure you get lots of government assistent based programs that help take pressure of you as a company in terms of providing for the well being and function of the workers. With a high quality workforce you can find some of the best and bravest more easily, than you can if you move your entire operation to a tax haven in the middle of nowhere.
And you'll find that many of these high quality workers are not going to just pick up and leave.
Companies don't have the responsibility to make the right calls for society. They are a self sustained ecochamber that has to maximize profits. This is why trickle down economics is not feesable. The idea is that if we just give in to all of their demands, that it will create job growth permanently is a fleeting idea.
Software optimization alone, is going to cull a lot of the workforce. We're already seeing it. 10 years ago, by the token you needed an army of web designers to make your page, you can now use one of the many drag-and-drop solutions to get a viable and workable templates. You got tons of easy extensions that allow with the click of a button to make your own storefront.
This is not strictly automation or outsourcing, but also just optimization. Fewer people needed to do the jobs as our tools (software) get that much better.
We need fewer bankers, fewer traders, fewer brokers. People cannot keep up with our technologies.
And really, companies have the incentive to do this. Having human employees is a clusterfuck. It's ill advised, it's not good. Human error is detriment to your work, human employees have so many hangups and problems and considerations. From pension, to healthcare, to breaks, to vacation, to fucking everything else. The sooner you can get rid of people from your organization the better it will be.
It is so frustrating that republicans cannot fucking comprehend, that people are not desired. They are needed. They are just a means to an end. But republican thinking is that people should be bitches to corporations.
Corporations needs to be taxed a considerable amount.
Eventually inequality is going to get a point where the economy crashes and nobody but the privileged few will have the money to be consumers that keep corporate profits up.
It's in the companies best interest to cut these jobs and produce results for shareholders. It should be in the governments best interest to regulate these companies and ensure the public interest.
Ok the phone, cant reply properly.
first off, I agree. I'm from sweden and I think our current tax levels are great (highest in the world).
And of course moving your business isn't easy but the post I replied to wasn't some small tax change suggestion, it was about having enough tax that people didn't even need the job.
Outlandish and aburd claims get (in this case much less) outlandish reponses. I'm sick of these kinds of threads on gaf being riddled with fantasy fiction level posts that states opinions without considering even the most basic levels of logic (forget business logic I'm talking 1+1=2 logic) and also ignores all the lessons to be learned from history.
YES things aren't fine and we need to come up with politics that push things towards the better, but we get nowhere from ignorant fantasy ideas.
Freshmaker
I am Korean.
Riiight.
Maximus.
Member
Big companies have a lot of dead weight. It really sucks people have to lose their jobs, but it isn't the obligation of a company to keep employees just because it can, when it works for shareholders and maximizing value. Too many employees can lead to redundancies and too much beaucracy. Shedding 3000/121000 won't fix all those concerns, but it's just reality.
butzopower
proud of his butz
This is it. Market has been shifting for a long time, and you either go with it or you get left behind. Doesn't make sense to starve the body to save the foot.
Basic Income is not that outlandish.
It's certainly more outlandish to think we can keep a near-full employment through the next industrial revolution, and even more outlandish to think we can force companies to keep the population employed when they don't need the workers.
One obvious method that's part of what i was talking about is moving the tax burden to the profits or revenue, away from labor as it largely is currently.
One staunch problem nowdays is that a worker costs up to twice it's net take-home, while automation\optimization features are not taxed that way, and even incentivized.
Then again, keep on thinking local solutions can solve global trends.
It is extremely outlandish, undoable and unrealistic. It's a fantasy.
There will be challenges going forward, just like there were challenges when we went into the industrial age, and the tech age after that.
The solution to these challenges is to NOT resort to crazy fantasy ideas that -just will not happen-, they just wont. There is a zero percent chance of them ever even being tried on a big scale.
The solution is to have a serious discussion about taxing and more importantly retraining. Just like the coal mine jobs might be going away completely in favour of solar/wind related jobs, the marketing jobs at Microsoft are going away in favour of work within Cloud services. People can and should be retrained, and a discussion regarding potential legal obligations to allow retraining within a company - that would be an interesting discussion.