9 ms·

For the most part, I'm indifferent to layoffs. Companies over hire and then course correct. It's part of the game. But for MSFT, it rubs me the wrong way. In th

For the most part, I'm indifferent to layoffs. Companies over hire and then course correct. It's part of the game. But for MSFT, it rubs me the wrong way. In the past 5 years, their stock has soared (150% on stock and doubled in valuation). They are insanely profitable ($82B profit). They are diverse (no existential business risk). The fact that they are unceremoniously laying off 30K of the people that helped them get there drives home it's just a paycheck, do your job, but know it can and will end when convenient for the company. I know folks will argue, low performers, but really. This "productivity apps" company hired them, onboarded them, made $82B in profit, surely they can figure out how to uplevel folks. Also how do you have a layoff every couple of months for 3 years. Thinking about the middle class in the previous generation, it was unions that effectively ensured a labor job meant a secure future. I wonder if that's the solution (again).

runjake 1y ago
Didn't Satya or somebody state in recent months that it was a tactic to get rid of low performers? I believe Meta is doing something similar. Edit: Allegedly not. https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-reveals-why-6000-employees-were-laid-off-chief-product-officer-shares-key-advice-for-coders-3862902/ https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-c... "Nadella addressed the recent layoffs, clarifying that the decision was not based on individual job performance. “This is a structural change, not a reflection of how people were performing,” Nadella explained. He emphasized that Microsoft is shifting its strategic focus, with a renewed emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), which the company views as a key driver of its long-term vision and growth."
- atomicnumber3 1y ago
  Also, if it were actually about "low performers", this wouldn't be in the news. They'd just be terminated during/before perf review.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    Eh, it can take a lot of political willpower to actually get rid of a low performer. We had an infamous case where it took two years to finally kick some deadweight to the curb. Wanted multiple years of underperforming performance reviews, I guess. Despite what some may claim about market efficiency, this is a public, wildly profitable company, not government. Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.
    - butlike 1y ago
      Think of it more as a "controlled burn wildfire," you want to clear land to let new foliage grow. Same with companies; you clear out some space and see what ideas flourish with the new crop
      - const_cast 1y ago
        Or, more likely, leadership is sloppy and lazy. They make mistakes and color outside the lines, and they pay for it. The hope is that they don't hurt themselves too bad. Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
    - runjake 1y ago
      We had a case where it took 10 years to cut 3 FTE deadweights and it only happened because of the 2008 Crash and consequential tightening of money flow.
  - pjmlp 1y ago
    Somehow on places like HN, people aren't worthy of a job, it is the inverse of Peter Principle, keep firing the low performers until they land a job where they manage not to get fired.
- deleted 1y ago
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- daxfohl 1y ago
  Shifting focus is not narrowing focus. They should be able to shift employees accordingly too.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    There's an economic slowdown without relaxing the monetary tightening (because inflation, while relatively mild, is still above target.) Further cutbacks from the level reached by the prior cutbacks due to monetary tightening when the economy was still in robust growth are to be expected, as are relatively transparent rationalizations that try to put an upbeat spin on them instead of the honest “the cost of money has gone up and the return of spending it on higher staffing levels has gone down.”
  - darth_avocado 1y ago
    If you have a large sales team for products that are not selling, and you want to invest in building a brand new product, you are not going to be able to move the sales folks into R&D. If you end up building the new product, you may eventually need the sales team, but most businesses in the meantime would reduce the headcount in sales instead of retaining them. I’m not saying that not bad for employees, but shifting focus isn’t always about changing what employees work on.
    - daxfohl 1y ago
      True. I didn't get to the fact that it was sales due to pay wall.
- belter 1y ago
  AI is the convenient scapegoat. Companies frame mass layoffs as a strategic shift toward AI to boost margins and excite investors, but in reality, it signals a deeper business crisis. Not one of these 9,000 jobs will be meaningfully replaced by AI anytime soon.
_DeadFred_ 1y ago
Love the modern lexicon, where people losing their livelihood is just part of a 'game'.
geodel 1y ago
Talking about stock price is in fact indication of layoffs being working not other way round. I don't think people are arguing against "job is just a paycheck" in last 5 years. In the same vein for company "employee is just a cost". Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union.
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  > Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union. Note that in some countries, unions extend to cover workers who are not even part of the union. Heard about this from some french friends: > Collective bargaining agreements (conventions collectives) may be negotiated between employers and labour unions covering a company or group of companies (accords d’entreprise), or between employers’ associations and labour unions covering an industry as a whole; in the latter case, the government may decide that the collective agreement covers even those employers who are not members of the employers’ association and is therefore mandatory throughout the industry. https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/f1d8c939/ten-things-to-know-about-labour-and-employment-law-in-france https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication... Not saying it's the right solution for $COUNTRY, but I was certainly surprised when I heard of this
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
    This is true on a workplace basis in the USA. Union contracts define terms for non-union workers.
sitzkrieg 1y ago
[flagged]
- wing-_-nuts 1y ago
  What nonsense. I've been in tech for ~ 20 years and it's literally taken me from living below the poverty line on ssi disability to fully financially independent. This is the one career where I could have accomplished that. It's basically 'disability proof'.
  - trod1234 1y ago
    Past performance generally speaking does not indicate future prospects. I agree with you, but that is only for right now. 7-10 years from now, I see no new tech jobs and the same work shouldered by a decreasing number of people until they vanish with no replacement. Chaotic whipsaws from disruption or other things can break brittle systems. Resilient systems don't have these problems, but they are only resilient because of their decentralization and lack of single points of failure (SPOF). Profit through money printing optimizes for SPOFs, and there are no existing incentives that can produce any other behavior. Its a terrible fate of societies which embrace money-printing.
  - sitzkrieg 1y ago
    ive been in tech just as long. im a craftsman who cares about my work. i work for myself. no big tech company will ever prioritize the right stuff ever again, that is pretty clear everytime i make the mistake of updating any software ever. i guess the real message is the boom is over if you want cushy or easy money
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago
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toomuchtodo 1y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions I know, I know, "union bad." I guess people will say that until all that is left is a person to watch the Machine, and a dog to bite the person if they touch the Machine. Or all the jobs are offshored to the cheapest labor on the globe.
- sokoloff 1y ago
  10 unions was evidently not enough to avoid this outcome. Perhaps if it went to 11, it would be “unions good”?
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    It took us decades to get to this outcome (since the Reagan era), I assume it'll take decades to get out of it. Mental models are rigid, progress occurs one funeral time (Max Planck), ~2M people 55+ in the US age out every year (~5k per day), so the opportunity is with young folks who will or already are in the workforce, etc. It ain't happening overnight. Solutions such as "try harder," "be more lucky," or "just find another job" are...not very actionable when you consider that ~60% of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life and the current labor macro. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-gen-zs-support-for-unions/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majorities-of-adults-see-decline-of-union-membership-as-bad-for-the-us-and-working-people/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie... https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-The-Middle-Class.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta... (i am once again asking you to think in systems)
    - sokoloff 1y ago
      If someone wants to work in a union shop, they can choose a job that is unionized or try to unionize their current/next workplace. People who don’t want to work for a union shop should have the same amount of voice as people who do (1 vote per employee). I think unions have struggled to gain traction because it’s obvious that they cost money to run (which is fine and proper) but it’s not obvious that that expense pays off for the typical member. If a median tech worker pays $1300-2600/yr in dues (1-2% of median salary), I think it’s reasonable for them to expect more than that on a net-present-value basis. Plenty of people are strong advocates; plenty are strong detractors; I suspect that a well-run union (efficient in its own ops and partnering effectively for the long-term health of the company and its union members) would be good on balance and also fairly “under the radar” making it hard to know how good it actually was.
daxfohl 1y ago
They're still hiring though. If layoffs are a prereq for hiring fresh blood, maybe it's worth the cost? Especially if hiring is weighted toward new grads and junior engineers, which are in the midst of a historically bad employment market right now. It's a stretch, but just a thought.
heathrow83829 1y ago
the first responsibility of any company is profitability. they have no economic, moral or ethical obligation to keep employees (no matter how well they performed), if it doesn't help them be more profitable. this should not be news. I think "low performance" is typically just a scapegoat. the real reason is they simply don't need that many empolyees to maximize profitability.
- dsr_ 1y ago
  Let me correct that for you: corporations feel no moral or ethical obligation towards their employees. Whether or not that should be the case -- and I think it should not be -- it is.
- CommenterPerson 1y ago
  This is Milton Freidman hype and brainwashing. A company profiting in a society has a responsibility towards that society. In Germany, they accomplish this by having one union representative on the board. Profit at any cost leads to a society where workers are paid just enough to prevent starvation so that there are workers.
  - heathrow83829 1y ago
    I agree that companies who are monopolies (especially government granted monopolies) have a responsibility towards society. But this does not apply to companies that need to compete to exist. For example, if a restaraunt or airlines (highly competitive industry), did anything to reduce their competitiveness they would instantly loose marketshare. that doesn't work. which one is Microsoft?
    - riffraff 1y ago
      It does not apply if regulation allows it, but this does not need to be the case, and has been debated for decades > [the New Deal architect, A. A. Berle] argued that corporations should "serve ... all society" through legally enforceable rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate "profit is the only goal" is not a law of nature, it's the outcome of a specific system of laws.
wonderwonder 1y ago
The issue is they are laying off US workers and then importing Indian workers to replace them via 3rd party contractors. I saw a post on X today which essentially said "Ai will not replace your job, an Indian with Ai will replace your job" - this was posted by an Indian and he was completely right. Microsoft is actively laying off people with 150k salaries and replacing them with offshore workers earning a 10th of the salary. At the same time our politicians appear to be looking everywhere for a solution to increasing US jobs except for right where the issue is. Everyone else sees it but our politicians are willfully blind.
- trod1234 1y ago
  That is one of the issues, yes. The main issue though is one of demographics. Like Japan, we have insufficient young people to do the jobs and produce what's needed to support the old. Worse, the old have utilized money printing and their privileged position to enrich themselves, and in the process it is tearing the country apart, and through economic manipulation force conscripting the young at suppressed wages to pay their debts off (i.e. social security). Thomas Paine would have a lot of similar things to say if he were alive today, specifically about dead men ruling. The economics given such lopsided movement cause chaotic disruption and deflate and are unsustainable. You are wrong insofar as they'll be earning a 10th of the salary. That may happen upfront, but in terms of purchasing power it will reach parity much more quickly given the macro monetary dynamics going on. When reading history, I could never imagine how bad it would need to get to make a multi-generational citizen abandon their home country and immigrate elsewhere. I have my answer today. They do so when there is no reasonable path to a survivable future. There are times where a reasonable person can see and know everything will burn, because there is nothing that can stop it, and the only thing you can do is remove yourself and your family from the path of that burn.
  - wonderwonder 1y ago
    While I agree with your overall point, I don't think the current issue with US jobs being outsourced is due to demographics. I think its simply one of cheaper wages. The fact that they are actively laying off US workers proves that there are existing US workers that can and have been doing the job. They are letting them go though so as to boost their bottom line to drive "shareholder value". This is an entirely self inflicted issue separate from the demographics issue that is affecting the west as a whole. We have more than enough qualified people willing to perform the tech jobs that the companies are outsourcing.
heathrow83829 1y ago
a company doesn't keep you because you performed well. they keep an employee because they need them to be more profitable, nothing more, nothing less.
- trod1234 1y ago
  In fairness they aren't a real company anymore, they are more like state apparatus/granted monopoly. The profitability they embraced was derived from surveillance capitalism which comes from a money-printer seeing as the government is the one paying for it. It was short-term up-front profit, followed by what inevitably comes after where they pay it back and more. They are laying people off because they wanted that short term profit more than they wanted to do business. There is a potential that they may chase this having the same dynamics as deflation, given that free money is largely no longer available suddenly (which pops the bubble). The people making those decisions knew the laws and countries would catch up to them eventually but they still did it.
bitbasher 1y ago
I'm indifferent to layoffs. I dislike layoffs these days because it directly fuels the "AI is replacing our jobs" brainrot and then fuels the "AI is the future" hype train. It's not impossible for this to be Microsoft's way to keep the AI flywheel spinning.
- justin66 1y ago
  I think we can all agree that the real damage caused by layoffs is their effect on the publicity surrounding AI, not their effect on humans and their well being.
  - bitbasher 1y ago
    Correct, people can get new jobs. We are all forced to live through this AI hype for the next decade.
pjmlp 1y ago
Well, it kind of tells why people shouldn't blindly side with their employers. It is a service, one side gives work, the other pays the bills, nothing else. Be a good teammate, that is all.
stego-tech 1y ago
> Thinking about the middle class in the previous generation, it was unions that effectively ensured a labor job meant a secure future. I wonder if that's the solution (again). It is, and they are. It’s why Reagan fired ATC strikers and blackballed them. It’s why private enterprise stockpiled machine guns and chemical weapons against strikers back in the Gilded Age. It’s why companies will spend billions to block Unions rather than just give workers the few million or so more they need over a decade to just maintain a standard of living. It’s why they’ll close down stores, warehouses, offshore jobs and outsource to contractors to penalize Unions. Unions are a direct response to the inequality of Capital allocation and distribution.
- wingspar 1y ago
  Wasn’t the PATCO ATC strike illegal?
  - Group_B 1y ago
    Yes, federal workers are not allowed to strike
  - stego-tech 1y ago
    That didn’t make the strike or its messaging any less valid. Employers frequently strongarm politicians to make strikes and organized action illegal, at which point a dangerous precedence is set and violence is often the ultimate outcome. If your job is so important that a strike should be illegal, then that job should also compensate you and your colleagues so well that a strike isn’t even a remote consideration. ATC was being treated like shit, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to strike. And now in 2025, literally everything they struck against (outdated tech, short staffing, high burnout, low wages) is still here, and still causing harm.
  - xnyan 1y ago
    The American Revolution, wasn’t it illegal?
- aydyn 1y ago
  Unions are not effective when there's such a surplus of labor and people willing to break lines. It wont work in today's tech labor market.
deleted 1y ago
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aeternum 1y ago
Not everyone wants to be "upleveled" which often actually means work on something completely different. This idea that companies must be the social safety net is deeply flawed, you want companies to take risks on new business lines that may not pan out. That's how we get innovation. In order to have that, you must not heavily penalize taking those risks.
jimt1234 1y ago
I was raised in a union-supported household. I've posted about it on HN before, but the tl;dr is that I'm still conflicted because: - Pro: My father only graduated high school, yet was able to support a middle-class family - a house, two cars, 3 children, healthcare, etc., all with his union trucking job. That is almost unheard of today. - Con: My father often talked about the corruption, like work being throttled to meet only the minimum output requirements in the union contract, and guys just sitting around, playing cards for half-a-day because it only took them a few hours to meet the requirements. (And new guys would get "talked to" in the parking lot if they tried to do too much work.)
- antifa 1y ago
  What's really the difference between union guys playing a little bit of cards on the boss's dime and the boss paying you poverty wages so he can upgrade to a bigger yacht? might as well pick the option that's going to have your back.
sydbarrett74 1y ago
Unfortunately, none of this matters to Wall Street, which wants eternal profit growth.
Eggs-n-Jakey 1y ago
it's not even that man, it shows insecurity in their growth and future business, they're terrified they took the wrong bet on their massive investments into Ai, or the perception of those investments. A layoff is a complete and utter failure in leadership top down. Then applying for 6k visas that are going to be compensated well below industry levels is just a complete joke.
DebtDeflation 1y ago
>how do you have a layoff every couple of months for 3 years It has absolutely nothing to do with managing out low performers or managing existential business risk. It has everything to do with managing annual EPS to Wall Street's expectations. There was an inflection point at the end of 2022 where Revenue growth slowed so to maintain Earnings growth, costs had to be cut continuously, and this process is still playing out.
RajT88 1y ago
This was an interesting read which cropped up on LinkedIn for me today: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-timer-creatures-frederico-baumhardt-yn1te https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-time... Layoffs have always been part of the game. There is reason to believe this latest set of layoffs are different (Scott Hanselmann himself said so on LinkedIn recently - "Laying off my staff is never easy, but this is the first time I've had to lay people off for someone else's business goals" whatever that means).
sershe 1y ago
Why do we need a solution to a non-existent problem? Middle class is doing just fine e.g. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/07/the-middle-working-class-has-not-been-hollowed-out/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/07/the-middle-w...
pllbnk 1y ago
I think you are highlighting the truly important bit here - that megacorporations are economy's cancer. I am on the side that work is work, there should be no emotional connection, except for the personal relationships. It is fine that companies hire when they need resources and fire when they don't. However, a small company might lay off 10 people and they will quickly disperse in the available work pool. However, laying off 30k people at once does serious damage to the market and the prospects of those laid off people.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
1. Over hiring isn't really a thing here. They knew what they were doing and knew they could just kick people out if things changed. I don't like that term to describe the situation. 2. That's how it is for most of these high profile layoffs. They are profitable but do layoffs so they can report record revenue later. It's not about "we can't afford workers", it's about blatant greed in 90% of cases this decade. 3. Yeah, talent retention is gone this decade. They don't care about growth or fostering future labor.

runjake 1y ago

Didn't Satya or somebody state in recent months that it was a tactic to get rid of low performers? I believe Meta is doing something similar. Edit: Allegedly not. https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-reveals-why-6000-employees-were-laid-off-chief-product-officer-shares-key-advice-for-coders-3862902/ https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-c... "Nadella addressed the recent layoffs, clarifying that the decision was not based on individual job performance. “This is a structural change, not a reflection of how people were performing,” Nadella explained. He emphasized that Microsoft is shifting its strategic focus, with a renewed emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), which the company views as a key driver of its long-term vision and growth."

atomicnumber3 1y ago
Also, if it were actually about "low performers", this wouldn't be in the news. They'd just be terminated during/before perf review.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
  Eh, it can take a lot of political willpower to actually get rid of a low performer. We had an infamous case where it took two years to finally kick some deadweight to the curb. Wanted multiple years of underperforming performance reviews, I guess. Despite what some may claim about market efficiency, this is a public, wildly profitable company, not government. Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.
  - butlike 1y ago
    Think of it more as a "controlled burn wildfire," you want to clear land to let new foliage grow. Same with companies; you clear out some space and see what ideas flourish with the new crop
    - const_cast 1y ago
      Or, more likely, leadership is sloppy and lazy. They make mistakes and color outside the lines, and they pay for it. The hope is that they don't hurt themselves too bad. Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
  - runjake 1y ago
    We had a case where it took 10 years to cut 3 FTE deadweights and it only happened because of the 2008 Crash and consequential tightening of money flow.
- pjmlp 1y ago
  Somehow on places like HN, people aren't worthy of a job, it is the inverse of Peter Principle, keep firing the low performers until they land a job where they manage not to get fired.
deleted 1y ago
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daxfohl 1y ago
Shifting focus is not narrowing focus. They should be able to shift employees accordingly too.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  There's an economic slowdown without relaxing the monetary tightening (because inflation, while relatively mild, is still above target.) Further cutbacks from the level reached by the prior cutbacks due to monetary tightening when the economy was still in robust growth are to be expected, as are relatively transparent rationalizations that try to put an upbeat spin on them instead of the honest “the cost of money has gone up and the return of spending it on higher staffing levels has gone down.”
- darth_avocado 1y ago
  If you have a large sales team for products that are not selling, and you want to invest in building a brand new product, you are not going to be able to move the sales folks into R&D. If you end up building the new product, you may eventually need the sales team, but most businesses in the meantime would reduce the headcount in sales instead of retaining them. I’m not saying that not bad for employees, but shifting focus isn’t always about changing what employees work on.
  - daxfohl 1y ago
    True. I didn't get to the fact that it was sales due to pay wall.
belter 1y ago
AI is the convenient scapegoat. Companies frame mass layoffs as a strategic shift toward AI to boost margins and excite investors, but in reality, it signals a deeper business crisis. Not one of these 9,000 jobs will be meaningfully replaced by AI anytime soon.

_DeadFred_ 1y ago

Love the modern lexicon, where people losing their livelihood is just part of a 'game'.

geodel 1y ago

Talking about stock price is in fact indication of layoffs being working not other way round. I don't think people are arguing against "job is just a paycheck" in last 5 years. In the same vein for company "employee is just a cost". Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union.

hardwaresofton 1y ago
> Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union. Note that in some countries, unions extend to cover workers who are not even part of the union. Heard about this from some french friends: > Collective bargaining agreements (conventions collectives) may be negotiated between employers and labour unions covering a company or group of companies (accords d’entreprise), or between employers’ associations and labour unions covering an industry as a whole; in the latter case, the government may decide that the collective agreement covers even those employers who are not members of the employers’ association and is therefore mandatory throughout the industry. https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publications/f1d8c939/ten-things-to-know-about-labour-and-employment-law-in-france https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication... Not saying it's the right solution for $COUNTRY, but I was certainly surprised when I heard of this
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
  This is true on a workplace basis in the USA. Union contracts define terms for non-union workers.

sitzkrieg 1y ago

[flagged]

wing-_-nuts 1y ago
What nonsense. I've been in tech for ~ 20 years and it's literally taken me from living below the poverty line on ssi disability to fully financially independent. This is the one career where I could have accomplished that. It's basically 'disability proof'.
- trod1234 1y ago
  Past performance generally speaking does not indicate future prospects. I agree with you, but that is only for right now. 7-10 years from now, I see no new tech jobs and the same work shouldered by a decreasing number of people until they vanish with no replacement. Chaotic whipsaws from disruption or other things can break brittle systems. Resilient systems don't have these problems, but they are only resilient because of their decentralization and lack of single points of failure (SPOF). Profit through money printing optimizes for SPOFs, and there are no existing incentives that can produce any other behavior. Its a terrible fate of societies which embrace money-printing.
- sitzkrieg 1y ago
  ive been in tech just as long. im a craftsman who cares about my work. i work for myself. no big tech company will ever prioritize the right stuff ever again, that is pretty clear everytime i make the mistake of updating any software ever. i guess the real message is the boom is over if you want cushy or easy money
oldpersonintx2 1y ago
[dead]

toomuchtodo 1y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_and_unions I know, I know, "union bad." I guess people will say that until all that is left is a person to watch the Machine, and a dog to bite the person if they touch the Machine. Or all the jobs are offshored to the cheapest labor on the globe.

sokoloff 1y ago
10 unions was evidently not enough to avoid this outcome. Perhaps if it went to 11, it would be “unions good”?
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  It took us decades to get to this outcome (since the Reagan era), I assume it'll take decades to get out of it. Mental models are rigid, progress occurs one funeral time (Max Planck), ~2M people 55+ in the US age out every year (~5k per day), so the opportunity is with young folks who will or already are in the workforce, etc. It ain't happening overnight. Solutions such as "try harder," "be more lucky," or "just find another job" are...not very actionable when you consider that ~60% of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life and the current labor macro. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-know-about-gen-zs-support-for-unions/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn... https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majorities-of-adults-see-decline-of-union-membership-as-bad-for-the-us-and-working-people/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie... https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp... https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-The-Middle-Class.pdf https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta... (i am once again asking you to think in systems)
  - sokoloff 1y ago
    If someone wants to work in a union shop, they can choose a job that is unionized or try to unionize their current/next workplace. People who don’t want to work for a union shop should have the same amount of voice as people who do (1 vote per employee). I think unions have struggled to gain traction because it’s obvious that they cost money to run (which is fine and proper) but it’s not obvious that that expense pays off for the typical member. If a median tech worker pays $1300-2600/yr in dues (1-2% of median salary), I think it’s reasonable for them to expect more than that on a net-present-value basis. Plenty of people are strong advocates; plenty are strong detractors; I suspect that a well-run union (efficient in its own ops and partnering effectively for the long-term health of the company and its union members) would be good on balance and also fairly “under the radar” making it hard to know how good it actually was.

daxfohl 1y ago

They're still hiring though. If layoffs are a prereq for hiring fresh blood, maybe it's worth the cost? Especially if hiring is weighted toward new grads and junior engineers, which are in the midst of a historically bad employment market right now. It's a stretch, but just a thought.

heathrow83829 1y ago

the first responsibility of any company is profitability. they have no economic, moral or ethical obligation to keep employees (no matter how well they performed), if it doesn't help them be more profitable. this should not be news. I think "low performance" is typically just a scapegoat. the real reason is they simply don't need that many empolyees to maximize profitability.

dsr_ 1y ago
Let me correct that for you: corporations feel no moral or ethical obligation towards their employees. Whether or not that should be the case -- and I think it should not be -- it is.
CommenterPerson 1y ago
This is Milton Freidman hype and brainwashing. A company profiting in a society has a responsibility towards that society. In Germany, they accomplish this by having one union representative on the board. Profit at any cost leads to a society where workers are paid just enough to prevent starvation so that there are workers.
- heathrow83829 1y ago
  I agree that companies who are monopolies (especially government granted monopolies) have a responsibility towards society. But this does not apply to companies that need to compete to exist. For example, if a restaraunt or airlines (highly competitive industry), did anything to reduce their competitiveness they would instantly loose marketshare. that doesn't work. which one is Microsoft?
  - riffraff 1y ago
    It does not apply if regulation allows it, but this does not need to be the case, and has been debated for decades > [the New Deal architect, A. A. Berle] argued that corporations should "serve ... all society" through legally enforceable rules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate "profit is the only goal" is not a law of nature, it's the outcome of a specific system of laws.

wonderwonder 1y ago

The issue is they are laying off US workers and then importing Indian workers to replace them via 3rd party contractors. I saw a post on X today which essentially said "Ai will not replace your job, an Indian with Ai will replace your job" - this was posted by an Indian and he was completely right. Microsoft is actively laying off people with 150k salaries and replacing them with offshore workers earning a 10th of the salary. At the same time our politicians appear to be looking everywhere for a solution to increasing US jobs except for right where the issue is. Everyone else sees it but our politicians are willfully blind.

trod1234 1y ago
That is one of the issues, yes. The main issue though is one of demographics. Like Japan, we have insufficient young people to do the jobs and produce what's needed to support the old. Worse, the old have utilized money printing and their privileged position to enrich themselves, and in the process it is tearing the country apart, and through economic manipulation force conscripting the young at suppressed wages to pay their debts off (i.e. social security). Thomas Paine would have a lot of similar things to say if he were alive today, specifically about dead men ruling. The economics given such lopsided movement cause chaotic disruption and deflate and are unsustainable. You are wrong insofar as they'll be earning a 10th of the salary. That may happen upfront, but in terms of purchasing power it will reach parity much more quickly given the macro monetary dynamics going on. When reading history, I could never imagine how bad it would need to get to make a multi-generational citizen abandon their home country and immigrate elsewhere. I have my answer today. They do so when there is no reasonable path to a survivable future. There are times where a reasonable person can see and know everything will burn, because there is nothing that can stop it, and the only thing you can do is remove yourself and your family from the path of that burn.
- wonderwonder 1y ago
  While I agree with your overall point, I don't think the current issue with US jobs being outsourced is due to demographics. I think its simply one of cheaper wages. The fact that they are actively laying off US workers proves that there are existing US workers that can and have been doing the job. They are letting them go though so as to boost their bottom line to drive "shareholder value". This is an entirely self inflicted issue separate from the demographics issue that is affecting the west as a whole. We have more than enough qualified people willing to perform the tech jobs that the companies are outsourcing.

heathrow83829 1y ago

a company doesn't keep you because you performed well. they keep an employee because they need them to be more profitable, nothing more, nothing less.

trod1234 1y ago
In fairness they aren't a real company anymore, they are more like state apparatus/granted monopoly. The profitability they embraced was derived from surveillance capitalism which comes from a money-printer seeing as the government is the one paying for it. It was short-term up-front profit, followed by what inevitably comes after where they pay it back and more. They are laying people off because they wanted that short term profit more than they wanted to do business. There is a potential that they may chase this having the same dynamics as deflation, given that free money is largely no longer available suddenly (which pops the bubble). The people making those decisions knew the laws and countries would catch up to them eventually but they still did it.

bitbasher 1y ago

I'm indifferent to layoffs. I dislike layoffs these days because it directly fuels the "AI is replacing our jobs" brainrot and then fuels the "AI is the future" hype train. It's not impossible for this to be Microsoft's way to keep the AI flywheel spinning.

justin66 1y ago
I think we can all agree that the real damage caused by layoffs is their effect on the publicity surrounding AI, not their effect on humans and their well being.
- bitbasher 1y ago
  Correct, people can get new jobs. We are all forced to live through this AI hype for the next decade.

pjmlp 1y ago

Well, it kind of tells why people shouldn't blindly side with their employers. It is a service, one side gives work, the other pays the bills, nothing else. Be a good teammate, that is all.

stego-tech 1y ago

> Thinking about the middle class in the previous generation, it was unions that effectively ensured a labor job meant a secure future. I wonder if that's the solution (again). It is, and they are. It’s why Reagan fired ATC strikers and blackballed them. It’s why private enterprise stockpiled machine guns and chemical weapons against strikers back in the Gilded Age. It’s why companies will spend billions to block Unions rather than just give workers the few million or so more they need over a decade to just maintain a standard of living. It’s why they’ll close down stores, warehouses, offshore jobs and outsource to contractors to penalize Unions. Unions are a direct response to the inequality of Capital allocation and distribution.

wingspar 1y ago
Wasn’t the PATCO ATC strike illegal?
- Group_B 1y ago
  Yes, federal workers are not allowed to strike
- stego-tech 1y ago
  That didn’t make the strike or its messaging any less valid. Employers frequently strongarm politicians to make strikes and organized action illegal, at which point a dangerous precedence is set and violence is often the ultimate outcome. If your job is so important that a strike should be illegal, then that job should also compensate you and your colleagues so well that a strike isn’t even a remote consideration. ATC was being treated like shit, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to strike. And now in 2025, literally everything they struck against (outdated tech, short staffing, high burnout, low wages) is still here, and still causing harm.
- xnyan 1y ago
  The American Revolution, wasn’t it illegal?
aydyn 1y ago
Unions are not effective when there's such a surplus of labor and people willing to break lines. It wont work in today's tech labor market.

deleted 1y ago

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aeternum 1y ago

Not everyone wants to be "upleveled" which often actually means work on something completely different. This idea that companies must be the social safety net is deeply flawed, you want companies to take risks on new business lines that may not pan out. That's how we get innovation. In order to have that, you must not heavily penalize taking those risks.

jimt1234 1y ago

I was raised in a union-supported household. I've posted about it on HN before, but the tl;dr is that I'm still conflicted because: - Pro: My father only graduated high school, yet was able to support a middle-class family - a house, two cars, 3 children, healthcare, etc., all with his union trucking job. That is almost unheard of today. - Con: My father often talked about the corruption, like work being throttled to meet only the minimum output requirements in the union contract, and guys just sitting around, playing cards for half-a-day because it only took them a few hours to meet the requirements. (And new guys would get "talked to" in the parking lot if they tried to do too much work.)

antifa 1y ago
What's really the difference between union guys playing a little bit of cards on the boss's dime and the boss paying you poverty wages so he can upgrade to a bigger yacht? might as well pick the option that's going to have your back.

sydbarrett74 1y ago

Unfortunately, none of this matters to Wall Street, which wants eternal profit growth.

Eggs-n-Jakey 1y ago

it's not even that man, it shows insecurity in their growth and future business, they're terrified they took the wrong bet on their massive investments into Ai, or the perception of those investments. A layoff is a complete and utter failure in leadership top down. Then applying for 6k visas that are going to be compensated well below industry levels is just a complete joke.

DebtDeflation 1y ago

>how do you have a layoff every couple of months for 3 years It has absolutely nothing to do with managing out low performers or managing existential business risk. It has everything to do with managing annual EPS to Wall Street's expectations. There was an inflection point at the end of 2022 where Revenue growth slowed so to maintain Earnings growth, costs had to be cut continuously, and this process is still playing out.

RajT88 1y ago

This was an interesting read which cropped up on LinkedIn for me today: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-timer-creatures-frederico-baumhardt-yn1te https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-time... Layoffs have always been part of the game. There is reason to believe this latest set of layoffs are different (Scott Hanselmann himself said so on LinkedIn recently - "Laying off my staff is never easy, but this is the first time I've had to lay people off for someone else's business goals" whatever that means).

sershe 1y ago

Why do we need a solution to a non-existent problem? Middle class is doing just fine e.g. https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/07/the-middle-working-class-has-not-been-hollowed-out/ https://economistwritingeveryday.com/2025/05/07/the-middle-w...

pllbnk 1y ago

I think you are highlighting the truly important bit here - that megacorporations are economy's cancer. I am on the side that work is work, there should be no emotional connection, except for the personal relationships. It is fine that companies hire when they need resources and fire when they don't. However, a small company might lay off 10 people and they will quickly disperse in the available work pool. However, laying off 30k people at once does serious damage to the market and the prospects of those laid off people.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

1. Over hiring isn't really a thing here. They knew what they were doing and knew they could just kick people out if things changed. I don't like that term to describe the situation. 2. That's how it is for most of these high profile layoffs. They are profitable but do layoffs so they can report record revenue later. It's not about "we can't afford workers", it's about blatant greed in 90% of cases this decade. 3. Yeah, talent retention is gone this decade. They don't care about growth or fostering future labor.