10 ms·

It's actually an attempt to try to be smart about letting people go. Sure, yes, they could come up with a master list and just pull the trigger today. But the

It's actually an attempt to try to be smart about letting people go. Sure, yes, they could come up with a master list and just pull the trigger today. But the odds of sweeping up a huge number of "false positives" grow considerably. The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc. When that happens, there will be a certain number of people who might have been underperforming that start to thrive, possibly because of having a better manager, or because they're more interested in their new group, etc. Other people who might have been coasting by and taking up space but getting decent reviews might suddenly be under a better manager and have no where to hide. But basically, you can do layoffs, restructure, and then in 6 months time re-evaluate. Typically, barring one-off events, they'll do several rounds here, a few months apart. Done properly, it won't be an every day worry, it'll be a concern 2-3 times over the next year.

Gracana 12y ago
Seems like this looming threat/uncertainty might also cause people to leave of their own accord. I don't know if that's the strategy, but I could see it being a desirable alternative to actually laying people off.
rayiner 12y ago
That's plausible, but also plausible is that the drawn-out process causes the better performers to leave while they can. It's easy to say from the outside that the layoffs will hit underperformers and people who are just coasting, but the fact is that layoffs of this scale inevitably involve politics. We're talking about an organization that had so much trouble getting the Office people on the same page as the Mobile people that they launched a make-or-break product (Surface) with a buggy beta version of its killer feature (Office). You think that organizational dysfunction won't extend to the restructuring process itself? At least if you do them and get them done quickly, the people you want to keep know where they stand.
- sz4kerto 12y ago
  > That's plausible, but if I were at Microsoft I'd be sending out my resume right now. No -- most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not. We're speaking about 5% of the original (pre-Nokia acquisition) workforce. You must know whether you're in the bottom 5%, or if your product is in the least critical 5%. Of course there are surprises and some good/productive guys will be laid off because of politics (as the process is not completely effective), but in general that's not the case. I've seen similar things happening inside the financial industry around 2008. Many people left (sometimes much more than 5%), but we could usually guess who's going to be affected (with really high accuracy).
  - rayiner 12y ago
    > or if your product is in the least critical 5% In the brave new world of "mobile first, cloud first" what's the least critical 5%? In a "mobile first, cloud first" world, somehow the newly-acquired mobile division is getting the brunt of the cuts.
  - rondon2 12y ago
    People can become illogical when faced with emotional scenarios. "If I loose my job my family/friends will think that I'm a failure". I was at IBM during a similar situations and it was people that were in the top 40%-20% that were the most worried.
    - 72deluxe 12y ago
      Weren't they more worried about not being able to support their family instead of their "image" in the eyes of their family?
      - rondon2 12y ago
        Assuming their spouses' incomes wouldn't support their family, I would think so
  - smackfu 12y ago
radicalbyte 12y ago
The downside is that the second this kind of thing gets announced, the good people start to jump ship.
- walshemj 12y ago
  No the good people line up a new job and volunteer to take the redundancy package win win!
Scuds 12y ago
> The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc. or people can get re-hired on as v- contractors or moved to other parts within the company. It's not like other MS employees haven't left and started their own firms using MS technologies.

Gracana 12y ago

Seems like this looming threat/uncertainty might also cause people to leave of their own accord. I don't know if that's the strategy, but I could see it being a desirable alternative to actually laying people off.

rayiner 12y ago

That's plausible, but also plausible is that the drawn-out process causes the better performers to leave while they can. It's easy to say from the outside that the layoffs will hit underperformers and people who are just coasting, but the fact is that layoffs of this scale inevitably involve politics. We're talking about an organization that had so much trouble getting the Office people on the same page as the Mobile people that they launched a make-or-break product (Surface) with a buggy beta version of its killer feature (Office). You think that organizational dysfunction won't extend to the restructuring process itself? At least if you do them and get them done quickly, the people you want to keep know where they stand.

sz4kerto 12y ago
> That's plausible, but if I were at Microsoft I'd be sending out my resume right now. No -- most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not. We're speaking about 5% of the original (pre-Nokia acquisition) workforce. You must know whether you're in the bottom 5%, or if your product is in the least critical 5%. Of course there are surprises and some good/productive guys will be laid off because of politics (as the process is not completely effective), but in general that's not the case. I've seen similar things happening inside the financial industry around 2008. Many people left (sometimes much more than 5%), but we could usually guess who's going to be affected (with really high accuracy).
- rayiner 12y ago
  > or if your product is in the least critical 5% In the brave new world of "mobile first, cloud first" what's the least critical 5%? In a "mobile first, cloud first" world, somehow the newly-acquired mobile division is getting the brunt of the cuts.
- rondon2 12y ago
  People can become illogical when faced with emotional scenarios. "If I loose my job my family/friends will think that I'm a failure". I was at IBM during a similar situations and it was people that were in the top 40%-20% that were the most worried.
  - 72deluxe 12y ago
    Weren't they more worried about not being able to support their family instead of their "image" in the eyes of their family?
    - rondon2 12y ago
      Assuming their spouses' incomes wouldn't support their family, I would think so
- smackfu 12y ago

radicalbyte 12y ago

The downside is that the second this kind of thing gets announced, the good people start to jump ship.

walshemj 12y ago
No the good people line up a new job and volunteer to take the redundancy package win win!

Scuds 12y ago

> The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc. or people can get re-hired on as v- contractors or moved to other parts within the company. It's not like other MS employees haven't left and started their own firms using MS technologies.