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Microsoft Looks to Cut Up to 18,000 Jobs
- samolang 12y agoThat's almost 15% of the company.
- sz4kerto 12y agoMSFT pre-market at $45 at the moment -- higher than anytime in the last decade. There are big expectations towards Nadella -- we need to see groundbreaking strategy changes to justify this. Exciting times.
- chton 12y agoI'm not sure how this fits into a big strategy change. It mostly seems like really eliminating redundancy, that's why most of the firings are in the Nokia department. They've recently acquired that, so there are bound to be lots of people there that do jobs that were already filled at Microsoft. That would be more than enough to justify it, at least to stockholders.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoThis is Mammoth Management - you stomp around looking big and hairy and making trumpeting noises, and then you become extinct.
- anjc 12y agoHe's talking about cultural alignment in the mail, and there's no reason to assume that that's not the reasoning behind the Nokia layoffs. Acquisitions and mergers are very difficult to get right, particularly in terms of culture. If there's a cultural gap between the two companies, then the layoffs for the acquirer probably make sense.
- k2enemy 12y agoAnd now, every day for a year, everyone gets to wake up and wonder if this is the day that they will get laid off. Why can't they wait and make the announcement once they know who they will eliminate and do it in one swift action? Why put people in limbo for a year?
- 67726e 12y agoI'm assuming that an announcement like this could effect stock prices. I have no knowledge of stock trading at all, but I would assume they would announce something like this if they expected it to have a positive effect.
- kabdib 12y agoStock is up over 45 now . . . Getting rid of dead wood is a great idea. Tons of middle management there, just sitting for years and causing obstructive damage.
- TheOtherHobbes 12y agoFrom the content of this email, it's not middle management that's the problem.
- 72deluxe 12y agoPerhaps! It should have read: "We need to cascade memos about our holistic logistical matrix approaches."
- UweSchmidt 12y agoNot a big fan of metaphors like "dead wood" to describe employees. Regarding the "tons of middle managers" (another dehumanizing expression imo.) - I haven't met anyone just "sitting for years" and happily "causing obstructive damage" yet. I have however met quite a few where it took me some time to appreciate their work (looked like nothing/trivial from the outside) and realize their failed struggle with organizatorial constraints on their work. Apologies if I am reading too much into your post. However, there seems to be pervasive contempt for the people affected by layoffs in threads like these that's unnecessary and unwarranted.
- frou_dh 12y agoSubject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture Body: Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction ... Christ.
- sz4kerto 12y agoWhen you fire that many people, then this is the tone you use, unfortunately. It's not specific (so people won't be able to argue that they're really needed, etc.), it does not have any negative statements (no blame on people who're let go), it not personal (Nadella cannot and should not express any strong positive or negative personal feelings about the event). It can be a disgusting read, but everybody does that in a situation like this -- with a reason.
- worldpeace 12y agoEveryone talks like 'Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction'? This guy is trying too hard to sound smart. Everything that's written by him reads like a try-hard freshman English major.
- bshimmin 12y agoIt's just typical big-company-CEO babble, which I think they must teach you when you do an MBA. (And yes, Satya Nadella has an MBA.)
- untog 12y agoCan HN lay off the MBA hate? It's getting really old. It's abundantly clear that no-one even knows what an MBA is.
- RA_Fisher 12y agoYou should write a post on this, I'd be interested to hear the MBA's perspective. Like the OP, I'm jaded towards MBAs due to my personal experience, but I recognize that's limited experience. I'm genuinely interested in the benefits a company gets from hiring an MBA, especially an early to mid-stage start-up company.
- mavdi 12y agoOuch...
- forgotAgain 12y agoToo many words. He needs to drop the self absorbed thought leader babble and communicate in a straight forward manner.
- meowface 12y ago>I synthesized our strategic direction >focusing our innovation investments >our work toward synergies and strategic alignment >Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment >simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster >Thank you for your support as we start to take steps forward in evolving our organization and culture You can't make this shit up. It's straight out of Dilbert.
- pfortuny 12y agoWell, it has probably been overseen in case of Copyright infringement. That is why "synergies and strategic alignment" is repeated. Unbelievable how "We have decided our business requires 18000 less employees than there are now" can be strategically and synergetically rephrased and aligned. Culture, ah, culture.
- mavdi 12y agoIndeed. None of the words in his company wide email meant 18000 job cuts to me. Just a neutral line of babble in that email. Terrible leadership to start with
- Anderkent 12y agoUhm, how about > The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months. That says '18000 job cuts' pretty clearly to me. The rest is general high-level direction because 1. that's probably the only thing they have right now, it takes time to work out detailed restructuring, 2. that's the level at which high level managers operate - fuzzy strategic directives, up to lower-level management to implement them in specific ways.
- Systemic33 12y agoI'm not very impressed with the choice of Nadella so far, he seems too deep into MS culture to be able to see clearly. But only time will tell, it's still to early to give a verdict.
- Infinitesimus 12y agoDo you care to explain more why you think he can't see clearly? I'm curious about your reasons for the statement. From my limited outside perspective, these layoffs are a good idea since there's bound to be a lot of redundancy and inefficiently in a company of this size
- Systemic33 12y agoBased on the letter he recently sent out, it's extremely long considering the intended receiver (everyone), and you need to read it several times before you fully understand it. Which resulted in big newspapers not agreeing how it was to be understood (eg. Was Xbox a core business, or not) This layoff round was kinda expected.
- worldpeace 12y agoHis writing is shit. Compare his writing to anything from Bezos or Cook.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- worldpeace 12y agoI was replying to 'Do you care to explain more why you think he can't see clearly?'
- Mithaldu 12y agoA good CEO needs to know how to make the right decision and delegate effectively. In this case he has proven that he is unable to make the right decision about his writing skills and delegate that task to someone with the appropiate skills.
- brador 12y agoLooking forward to the wave of cool startups this will create!
- domiono 12y agoInteresting, especially since a severage package of $30k-$50k or how much ever it is, is basically like a seed funding round for each employee that is let go. Could be interesting...Microsoft Mafia :)
- shaydoc 12y agoThis is a company with a net profit margin of 27.74% in Q1 2014.
- Infinitesimus 12y agoLayoffs aren't always about profit though. In this case, it is more about streamlining and making MS more agile
- shaydoc 12y agoHow does laying off 18,000 people make you more "agile" ? Products that sell make you more "agile"... Its more a case of, we bought Nokia for their market, but we don't need their staff!
- Anderkent 12y ago> Products that sell make you more "agile" Uh, no, being capable of designing things cooperatively rather than playing political games and supporting status-quo is what makes you agile. Products that sell are the effect, not the cause. It's much easier with a smaller company, though I doubt that's the primary motivation for the layoffs. More likely, they want to re-evaluate their internal culture, fire people most out of sync with what they'd like the culture to be and hire people that are more similar.
- shaydoc 12y agoyou are caviling over the ninth part of a hair, but yes you are right, products that sell are the effect, not the cause. you can't tell me there are not some seriously good staff among that 18,000. Microsoft are a huge company, and very few are more successful than them. Microsoft have the environment to allow things to flourish. IMHO Microsoft are still ahead of the curve and agile, especially with Azure. Microsoft are massive ultimately because what they have done to date has been hugely successful. So its really a case of consuming Nokia.
- whorleater 12y ago
- varelse 12y agoBecause the layoffs at AMD made them the market leader they are today!!!
- ivanche 12y ago"Following the Nokia acquisition, completed in April, Microsoft had roughly 127,104 employees[...]" I don't have knowledge about managing a company, but is it at all possible to efficiently lead 127000+ employees? Has MSFT become a non-manageable behemoth?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- bryanlarsen 12y agoI can't tell if you're trying to be sarcastic or not. A lot of people have been saying for a long time that Microsoft's biggest problem is that its various divisions work at cross-purposes, even competing and fighting with each other.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- kris0r 12y agoIBM has about 3 times this number. But like you say is split up in to 4 or 5 main divisions.
- CSMastermind 12y agoThere are lots of companies with more than 127,104 employees that manage just fine. Boing across the street for instance. The reason for the cuts is two fold. First, Microsoft acquired Nokia and they're going to let go of all of most of the non-engineering staff, as well as a lot of the management. Second, Microsoft just restructured itself. It used to run like a conglomerate with VP essentially running their individual business like a fifedom ala the organizational chart comic (http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/org_structure_google_microsoft_oracle_facebook_apple.png http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/or...). Over the last 3 years there's been a series of high profile executives let go with the intent of increasing cooperation between the divisions, then last year the company restructured going from 9(?) divisions down to 4. As a result there's a lot of redundant people and teams. This house cleaning is in part a result of that.
- smackfu 12y agoHas anyone been inside the process for determining the number of layoffs in a situation like this? Is the goal to cut payroll to a certain number, or what?
- kasey_junk 12y agoI worked for a time doing "transitional project management" read "once we acquire you, figure out what we are keeping and jettison the rest". For a company that wasn't the size of Microsoft but grew through acquisition to be quite large. In that particular case, which may or may not have any similarity to this incident, layoffs were determined in 2 ways A) if you had 2 redundant or similar operational centers you got rid of the most expensive one unless there was some compelling reason not to (huge client demanded they stay, or they were more expensive but dramatically more efficient) B) technology centers the goal was to integrate what had to be integrated as fast as possible. 80% of the time this meant literally telling people they wouldn't have the same functionality after the acquisition and getting rid of the entire support team. Occasionally, you would find some piece of technology that was great and easily integrated into the rest of the systems and that support team would be given good terms to stay until that was done. Very rarely you would find some piece of technology that was newly vital and hard to integrate, in that case you'd keep a skeleton crew to keep it operational, but you knew that it wasn't going to get any new resources and if it ever become non-vital that team was gone as well. For point A) above, I've literally seen the decision come down to the cost per square foot of the office space. I've never been in a situation where they had a predetermined number they had to get to though. The number was a natural calculation based on the above.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- suls 12y ago"[..] In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. [..]" At least on concrete and positive note in his email. Wondering if that tripled the initial estimate of 6k cuts.
- matt_s 12y agoLooks like about 15% of their employees, although 10% will be former Nokia folks. This has to be part of a multi-year effort to reformat the company. I would expect that there are going to be soft costs that have multi-year impacts. People left behind having to take on more work without necessarily any incentive. With numbers this high, there will be some degree of randomness in the people selected for the layoff. This will have long-term impacts on morale. Microsoft has a ton of cash, right? Wouldn't it be smart for them to, once the layoffs are over, incent people to perform in the "new culture"? Give their key people more $, more responsibility, etc.?
- ttty 12y agoLiked this part "window.htmlAdWH('348-14-15-135e', "300", "115", 'f', 'adsDiva81062e1ef'); }); }(this,this.jQuery)); } /* */"
- dschiptsov 12y agoSo, finally, reality reasserted itself, and despite millions spent for brainwashing, Windows is already belongs to the past, the very same way Nokia phones are..)
- sz4kerto 12y agoStephen Elop's email on the same topic, but focused on ex-Nokians: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/jul14/07-17announcement2.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/jul14/07-17an... tl,dr;: - Nokia X is dead - other Devices departments are not affected/the effect is limited
- Zigurd 12y agoThis is a bit of a bad sign. It means Microsoft won't have their own AOSP-based product. Android apps and ecosystem elements will always be second priority, no matter what any management claims. This makes it less likely that "mobile first, cloud first" actually means something different from "devices and services." If Windows Phone fails to gain altitude, it will drag the rest of the strategy down with it.
- kentlyons 12y agoIt isn't just that Nokia X is dead. This says they're killing of all of what use to be "Smart devices" - which is/was the feature phone division. So that includes the Asha series, etc.
- sirkneeland 12y agoMobile Phones was the feature phone division. Smart Devices was the smartphone division. All an academic point since now they're just going to be "the phones division"
- sirkneeland 12y agoAnd Elop burns another platform. I've lost count at this point. This is the THIRD round of major layoffs Nokia has gone through since 2011. I feel bad for my former colleagues.
- aikah 12y agoThere was a previous thread on HN where some users were cheering for MS saying,it was just fat trimming or "actually that's good news". I dont wish it to happen to anyone. Being laid off is never "good news".
- ertdfgcb 12y agoIt's good news for Microsoft if that person was useless and slowing everything down.
- farrel 12y agoThat's a lot of unemployed Fins.
- kiiski 12y agoApparently about a thousand. http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/business/11224-microsoft-plans-cutting-1-000-jobs-in-finland.html http://www.helsinkitimes.fi/business/11224-microsoft-plans-c...
- EGreg 12y agoThis struck me: the layoffs are motivated by two outcomes, one of which is "work simplification". Automation eliminates jobs, I've said this for a while.
- sgibat 12y agoIs this going to bloat the Software Engineer market? Do we know what percentage are developers?
- bigdubs 12y agoFrom reading the email, I looks like the majority (~12k) of the cuts are in the Nokia division, not sure how many of those are developers but I'd imagine not the majority.
- pierreio 12y agoSo MS Bought Nokia and ~30k employees for ~$7.2 billion last April. 3 months later, MS may now be firing ~half of the Nokia group. The executives who drove that catastrophic deal stay. What a testament to how disastrous big M&A really is. Is there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? I'd feel sorry if I was a Nokia guy there, they pulled out the best non-Apple phone hardware in the last years. Probably also a good reminder for Blackberry - dont sell yourself and die trying, it actually can't get worse.
- untog 12y agoIs there any large acquisition that succeeded in the last 10 years? You might have the wrong criteria for acquisition success. I'm sure both Nokia and MS knew these layoffs would come before they agreed to the purchase.
- roc 12y agoI'm sure Nokia itself knew these layoffs were likely-to-inevitable whether that deal happened or not.
- at-fates-hands 12y agoIf that was the case, do you think most of the Nokia employees were actively looking for another job and were just riding the gravy train until it finally pulled into the station? I would think if I worked at Nokia and we were acquired by Microsoft, I'd probably be looking for another job fairly quickly. Considering the writing was on the wall for a while even before they were acquired by MS.
- cpeterso 12y agoIf they weren't before, they will be now that Microsoft's layoffs over the next six months hang over everyone's heads. Microsoft should have ripped the bandaid off in one quick move so other employees will feel secure.
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- kstop 12y agoYikes - "over the next 6 months" => MS will be a disaster area until 2015 as people bicker and fight for a position on top of the human life raft.
- justinzollars 12y agoMicrosoft Metro inspired the new airbnb design.
- discordance 12y agoSome context Microsoft head count: 127k Apple head count: 80k Google head count: 50k Facebook head count: 7k
- 72deluxe 12y agoFacebook has seven thousand people working on one website? Admittedly a BIG website with many users, but still a staggering amount of people. (I joke only partially) How much PHP do they need to write each?
- bnejad 12y agoThey aren't all developers.
- IBM 12y agoApple has 50,250 employees in the US but 26k of them are in retail. Apple is very small for its market cap. https://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/ https://www.apple.com/about/job-creation/
- thinkling 12y agoOTOH, Apple has how many indirect employees in China? 100,000+?
- flurpitude 12y ago"Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction as a productivity and platform company..." Good old corporatespeak. Anaesthetize them with tedious bullshit so you never have to say "You're fired."
- synergies 12y agoCTRL+F synergies
- thejdude 12y agoIs that an Outlook Ctrl-F or a Find Ctrl-F?
- sirkneeland 12y agoAttention Nokia (MS) workers: Nokia (Nokia) is hiring.
- headgasket 12y agoIs it me or this guy is trying hard the SteveJobs look in that picture? Simple solution to all of microsoft's woes: Drop the WINNT kernel and replace it by a unix based variant. Is there any value in keeping the kernel closed source ? Hasn't that fight been lost a long time ago? Windows is going byzantine fast; there's no value in compilers and in os kernels anymore, the open source ones are better but MS still thinks that they have these as a competing advantage while they are a R&D money pit.
- MrDosu 12y agoImplying the WINNT kernel doesn't have the best device driver support in the world by a huge margin...
- headgasket 12y agoThanks for pointing this out! But would you think think that in this post pc era, devices per se that require drivers and dont have their own os that can communicate via standards are kind of going the way of the dodo? As an aside, I'm wondering why every time I try to post something on YC's news forum I seem get downvoted. Is it groupthink that I just cant join in on? Is this community averse to opinions or ideas that run against the current grain?
- MrDosu 12y agoYou should really read up on what a driver is before waffling in on a subject -_-
- headgasket 12y agoI wrote a small driver for the NT kernel, a mini filter driver ( for a project named SyncDisk a thing that did the same thing as dropbox but windows only, in 2007), I was not a device driver per se but I do understand the concepts. What I'm implying is that the architecture of new computing devices such as the surface or ipad, imacs etc, is changing the nature of the interfacing with expansion ports; devices are getting connected via standard connections like usb which is now very fast (5Gb in v3 IIRC?), and now sport their own system on chip with built in drivers to the hardware. At the same time, standards are solidifying, and as such, standard drivers built into the os are getting to be good enough for all the features. For example, my midi usb keyboard connects to the ipad without any drivers. My camera connects to the surface and shows up as a usb drive without any drivers. The last time I manually downloaded a third party driver (not part of a vetted distribution) was to use up the last ounce of performance for a video game on a pc rig, in 2011. So if device drivers are now part of the OS burden, they are at the cost of the os provider; and as such, how are the abundance of unmaintained- semi-maintained pieces of code derived from winDDK samples floating around an advantage? Thanks for reading this far, I'm really interested in this discussion! And I won myself another down vote!
- hyperliner 12y agoIn startups, you can be gone at any time. In large company, you can be gone at any time. So, the lesson here is: prepare to be gone, and be gone before you are gone.
- 72deluxe 12y agoVery wise advice! Keep projects bubbling on the side in case this eventuality hits! And live within your means.
- JasonIpswitch 12y agoAnyone care to bet that within 18 months some Microsoft C-level will be complaining about "lack of company loyalty" over something an employee has done?
- VikingCoder 12y agoIt's a bad time to try to get a job. You'll be competing against all them ex-Microsoft folks.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- dickinurass 12y agotl;dr - looks like a bunch of Internal corporate bullshit I don't care about microsoft employes some brilliant people but maybe in the future they should actually think about what they products are trying to push on people so they stop fucking themselves over constantly?
- solnyshok 12y agoThat's another milestone achieved in Elop's grand plan to bring MS and Nokia heads to the throne of Adobe.
- woi13 12y ago1. Any reason why executive pay can't be reduced and save these jobs ? Why pay stupid executive million and millions dollars and chop jobs of these poor people ? 2. Who determines who gets to stay and who gets to be fired ? Fucked up ranking system ? Ass-Lickers ? 3. Anyone saying layoff are good should really take second look outside during daytime ( 9 - 5). Once you are in battleground of searching job its hell. Really , its hell. People don't fucking respond even though you have many blazing things to show. You know why ? Because , you may not necessarily be good fit ? Your age , Your cool factor , being fucking social comes into play. If you are in 30s and have given up coding , good luck finding something in management. 4. If you are on H1-B , its grand fuck. You get 15 days to leave country or find new job. Overstaying is illegal and you seriously jeopardize green card , stamping process. Many companies ( mine being medium size ) have automated notification to DHS about H1-B status update, cancelling petition, visas. edit : Can't believe so many shills here. Let the downvote brigade begin. Have a good life.
- gfodor 12y agore: #1 point is less about cost cutting per se in a lot of cases and more about creating a more efficient and productive organization by firing people who are a drag on things. of course, this is microsoft we're talking about here, so ymmv.
- woi13 12y agoI understand your point. However, its not necessarily people who are drag will get fired. Many smarties , especially one who keep to themselves will be included as well. I feel sorry for those who are being let go.
- vlunkr 12y agoIt sucks that people have to lose their jobs, but Microsoft isn't a welfare program, they exist to make money, and that drives all of their decisions.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
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- jjindev 12y agoYou know, companies with the size and wealth of MS sometimes employ people just to have them NOT innovating elsewhere. Consider 18K smart people freed of that as the bright side.
- pliptvo 12y agoI find it fascinating that there's not a single comment here regarding industrial action. 18,000 people will have their jobs slashed just like that without any resistance? Instead they're just meant to leave with a smile on their face knowing that it's in the supposed benefit of their former employer? I'm sure Nadella finds the decision to send 18,000 people to the job market much more 'difficult' than they'll find it out there.
- sgedljsgejkl 12y agoDo you even know what the definition of at will employment is?
- amputect 12y agoIf we're being bitchy over definitions, then do you even know what the definition of "industrial action" is? Because it's orthogonal to whether or not the firings were legal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_action http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_action
- pliptvo 12y ago"On the one hand, the doctrine of at-will employment has been heavily criticized for its severe harshness upon employees.[39] It has also been criticized as predicated upon flawed assumptions about the inherent distribution of power and information in the employee-employer relationship.[40] On the other hand, conservative scholars in the field of law and economics such as Professors Richard A. Epstein[41] and Richard Posner[42] credit employment at will as a major factor underlying the strength of the U.S. economy. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment#Controversy Well I'm certainly not a conservative. I think the second point is true. An at-will contract (or lack thereof) is essentially skewed towards the free will of the employer in a way that is massively to the detriment, as these cuts prove, to that of the employee. At will might be the employment norm in America, but assuming a sizeable number of Nokia's workers are actually Finnish where they have far stronger employment laws, I would wonder whether this is all even legal.
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- ulfw 12y agoHow can you fire 18,000 people without seriously disrupting your business (not even considering loss of morale, angst, good employees running away or getting their resumes ready). But just logistically. How do you decide who those 18,000 are? Just random? How do you know which are 'expendable' or the 'bad Apples'? When you are talking this size, I doubt that is even possible.
- kitwalker12 12y agothey're also doing internal restructuring. a friend who works there tells me they are doing away with the QA department and instead relying on unit tests & developers to do the feature testing themselves. IMHO that's a good move. QA departments in MS have moved to a position where every developer hands them the dll to even test that it works at all.
- Scuds 12y agoThis whole thing is a world apart from the kids living six to a room in hacker hostels churning out MVVM frameworks for Erlang.