In many ways this is bigger news than the layoffs. At Microsoft vendors are supposedly accountable for managing their own workforce and providing milestone or

In many ways this is bigger news than the layoffs. At Microsoft vendors are supposedly accountable for managing their own workforce and providing milestone or service level based work products for pay, not staff augmentation. Of course many managers game the system and many ex-employees come right back as vendor staff. This seems to be aimed at getting the company off of the vendor addiction. If successful, it seems reasonable to expect another round of layoffs of the couple thousand employees whose primary responsibility is setting up and managing vendors. When your "team" is over half vendor staff, your job isn't building software, marketing, or event planning: it is setting up and managing vendor contracts and measuring vendor performance. It is also worth noting that this is US-only. Tata, Infosys, Wipro etc. need not worry too much...