4 ms·

a bunch of them now work at Google on the Brain/Tensorflow team. definitely was an odd move.

• abz10 10y ago
  This was Satya sending the strong message that no-one is untouchable and everyone must get inline or they will be next. It's actually a common strategy that requires the victims to be their best people. Obviously you can't to this too many times. Politics as usual.
  • shostack 10y ago
    Can you elaborate on how that works? If the victims are their best people who are doing solid, profitable work, laying them off seems like it would create a state of uncertainty which, in this climate, might just cause people to jump ship because competitive jobs are just around the corner. Or was there some issue with the group where they had to sacrifice the good with the bad due to lack of overall profitability?
    • abz10 10y ago
      It's about internal power, even at the expense of the companies wellbeing. These layoffs were in the context of a larger set of layoffs that Satya undertook as his first big move at MS. Satya was getting across the board pushback from lots of different warring orgs at MS. He even had to bring the Big G out of retirement to help him out. So by taking out the top dogs he becomes the top dog. I don't even blame Satya for doing it - it's human nature that required it. If he didn't do it he would have eventually been pushed out of MS for not getting anything done. It's why drug cartels are so violent, it's why our election choices are Clinton and Trump. At least he's less evil than Sinofsky and Ballmer who were both cartoonishly horrible. Good people have been leaving MS for a very long time. But big company corporate politics are really toxic in the US. MS is actually one of the better ones. Intel, Amazon, Netflix are much worse. Facebook and Google are on the decline. Yahoo.... yeah As for this AI thing, my bet is that it is mostly fluff. Most people will ignore it until the next re-org comes along. There was a similar thing with Big Data at MSR a number of years ago and look what happened there.
      • work4beer 10y ago
        good point that need's repeating many times all these places with lots of people suck a small team, in a nice place working on an interesting problem, it best central control is always 'Godwin' like everytime grooming elite people at big companys can be done, but its very rare, and its even more rare to see those people have a happy life, much of what you see here on HN-YC is young people, who are always happy, like a puppy, the real deal is to view the elite post 40, and still working post 60, you simply don't see it much in high-tech, especially in california I think the trend now that everything is cheap ( HW/SW ) is to be anywhere, and build a small team and do what you want, as long as you want, all big company's all suck for much the same reason, the people who don't produce are made managers, then those who do produce get tired of stupid politics and being controlled by 'idiots', it's very rare for a producer to become a manager, as in time your brain will rot, managing people is not fun, it sucks bad, I get real bored about all the BIG MONEY talk, I mean say $200k/year, that is peanuts, I remember back in the early 1980's, we used to make $50k/day, and then you could buy a house for $50k, now $200k, doesn't buy anything, except a high tax bracket. In summary, people are being fed bile, keep it small, and work as a close team with like minded people, and run like hell from big corporations.
    • ww520 10y ago
      You think you are better than the ML group? No? See I've just fired all of them. Don't think for a second I won't fire your ass on a whim. Now get to work. Something like that.