18,000 Microsoft Jobs Gone... Eventually?
1. Cut Once.
2. Cut Deeply.
And might I humbly add:
3. Cut Quickly.
As of this morning, we're looking to cut 18,000 Microsoft positions including around half of the Nokia destruction-palooza orchestrated by Mr. Elop and Mr. Ballmer.
How does this affect all of Microsoft? Redmond? That's a bit unknown. Just looking at the State of Washington WARN site, I don't see a notification from Microsoft yet: http://www.esd.wa.gov/newsandinformation/warn/ .
And that concerns me because now you have a level of stress and anxiety at Microsoft. First, the selfish stress about whether my job is affected. Then personal circle stress. Then partner collaboration stress. Then way out there general concerns about the company. And guess what: when folks are stressed and gossiping, they are not effectively - er, excuse me, productively (?) - implementing the latest strategy. Physiologically, they have increased cortisol and this time will turn into a fog.
That's why I hope that Cut Quickly happens. Without it, we're back to our first layoff experience. If anything broke the back of this blog, it was the first big Microsoft layoff back in 2009. How? How could the realization of a step towards Mini-Microsoft do that? Because it was implemented so poorly, with constant worries and concerns and doubts about engaging in new ideas due to expectations those would be the easiest to trim during ongoing cut-backs. When was it over? When was the "all clear" signal given?
So if this truly drags on for a year: we need a new leader. This needs to be wrapped up by the end of July. 2014.
One last small comment: yeah, everyone loves to flatten, including me. But to truly flatten engineering at Microsoft we need to decide that people management is actually a well invested career path. Most developers I know that become Leads are invariably harmless as a manager but spend most of their time deeply technical because they know that's where the rewards are. For the others that I know that have embraced becoming a people manager and have excelled there: well, if they get flattened into an Individual Contributor then they might as well leave Microsoft. Bless their hearts, but if they had to reconstitute their Dev skills to match the career ladder level they climbed to as a leader, they are sorely out of luck. I'll be honest with them. I hope all the other leaders out there are just as honest.
So.
Thoughts? Are you affected? The one bit of advice I can pass on from the previous round of layoffs: don't leave any HR 1:1 meeting without being absolutely satisfied you know everything you need to know and have everything to move forward. Because once you're out the door, for all the assurances you're going to get, it's super-hard to make a connection for more information and follow-up.
Now, excuse me, I'm sure I'll have a busy morning. And like all of you, I'm keeping an eye out for a sudden HR Generalist meeting that pops up on my calendar... until I hear the All Clear.
Mini-Microsoft Microsoft
2. Cut Deeply.
And might I humbly add:
3. Cut Quickly.
As of this morning, we're looking to cut 18,000 Microsoft positions including around half of the Nokia destruction-palooza orchestrated by Mr. Elop and Mr. Ballmer.
How does this affect all of Microsoft? Redmond? That's a bit unknown. Just looking at the State of Washington WARN site, I don't see a notification from Microsoft yet: http://www.esd.wa.gov/newsandinformation/warn/ .
And that concerns me because now you have a level of stress and anxiety at Microsoft. First, the selfish stress about whether my job is affected. Then personal circle stress. Then partner collaboration stress. Then way out there general concerns about the company. And guess what: when folks are stressed and gossiping, they are not effectively - er, excuse me, productively (?) - implementing the latest strategy. Physiologically, they have increased cortisol and this time will turn into a fog.
That's why I hope that Cut Quickly happens. Without it, we're back to our first layoff experience. If anything broke the back of this blog, it was the first big Microsoft layoff back in 2009. How? How could the realization of a step towards Mini-Microsoft do that? Because it was implemented so poorly, with constant worries and concerns and doubts about engaging in new ideas due to expectations those would be the easiest to trim during ongoing cut-backs. When was it over? When was the "all clear" signal given?
So if this truly drags on for a year: we need a new leader. This needs to be wrapped up by the end of July. 2014.
One last small comment: yeah, everyone loves to flatten, including me. But to truly flatten engineering at Microsoft we need to decide that people management is actually a well invested career path. Most developers I know that become Leads are invariably harmless as a manager but spend most of their time deeply technical because they know that's where the rewards are. For the others that I know that have embraced becoming a people manager and have excelled there: well, if they get flattened into an Individual Contributor then they might as well leave Microsoft. Bless their hearts, but if they had to reconstitute their Dev skills to match the career ladder level they climbed to as a leader, they are sorely out of luck. I'll be honest with them. I hope all the other leaders out there are just as honest.
So.
Thoughts? Are you affected? The one bit of advice I can pass on from the previous round of layoffs: don't leave any HR 1:1 meeting without being absolutely satisfied you know everything you need to know and have everything to move forward. Because once you're out the door, for all the assurances you're going to get, it's super-hard to make a connection for more information and follow-up.
Now, excuse me, I'm sure I'll have a busy morning. And like all of you, I'm keeping an eye out for a sudden HR Generalist meeting that pops up on my calendar... until I hear the All Clear.
Mini-Microsoft Microsoft
1,345 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 601 – 800 of 1345 Newer› Newest»Those of you posting the racist diatribes here are not Microsoft employees; you are long-term unemployed who desperately need someone to blame for your own inability to cut it in the modern world.
Of course, the possibility that the reason you can't find and hold a job might be because you're unpleasant, blame-shifting jerks with a profound sense of entitlement, severe anger management problems, and an apparent propensity toward violence never seems to cross your minds. Oh, no, it must be because the all-powerful Indian Mafia(tm) is conspiring to hold you back!
News flash: If every foreign worker in America disappeared tomorrow, you would STILL be the absolute bottom of the human barrel, and the all-American folk who remained here still wouldn't want to hire you or work with you. Not because of any arbitrarily-defined group you belong to, but because of who you, personally, are. Because you are toxic. Because you are a net minus to any environment you're put into. Because you just fundamentally can't DEAL with shit, be responsible for yourself, or get along with the other human beings around you. That's the minimal, baseline skill set needed to succeed in today's working world, and you don't have it.
But sure, go crack some skulls. That'll land you a highly-skilled tech job in no time. Morons.
P.S. As a personal aside, since you inexplicably brought the subject up, I actually went to an Indian guy's house and fucked his wife for a few months recently, and it was pretty awesome. The country that wrote the Kama Sutra ain't all bad, you know.
P.P.S. That Indian food you keep bitching about tastes GOOD. Trundle your fat ass farther than the nearest Jack in the Box once or twice a year and you might learn something.
Signed,
White Guy Over 40 With a Job
Any job cut happening at India Centre
I heard recently WinSE (a big team in India) shutdown their business and most of the moron DEV/TEST got chance to get L1/L2 visa and work for US division. The other highly ranked politician and people with no talent aka senior management to different roles. The PM quality there is worst then Infosys newbie who just do a time keeper job. Riyaz and Siva are the best example of worst PM. Dev effort mostly revolves around the politics between Govinda, Anubhav + some mediocre Dev Leads. And test with no testing sense Shilpa promoted to Principal.
Midst this people are now moved to Remond to eat our jobs. If those 150 people of those division were cut out that could have saved many brilliant people from holocaust.
Let wait when the AXE fall on these people and save brilliant people life and career.
Seriously you a-hole. You must be one of those white trash. Do you know that your ancestors too took away this land of America from the natives. So once you go back to you original country these H1Bs can go too.
It's pretty funny. Native Americans on the Mexico side of the border are call illegal if they try to come to the US side of the border. Before the arbitrary lines were drawn up, their ancestors freely roamed back and forth between what is now the US and Mexico. Now they're considered "illegal".
I heard someone comment today that some top people are getting "stay" bonuses. Is that true or folklore?
"Those of you posting the racist diatribes here are not Microsoft employees; you are long-term unemployed who desperately need someone to blame for your own inability to cut it in the modern world."
Does your shit stink over in your version of liberal ignorance-land?
You are actually the worst of the worst. You want to feel superior so bad you pull the wool over your own eyes. Just because you don't approve of something doesn't mean it isn't happening.
The rest of WA knows that Redmond is "little India". Meanwhile all the newly jobless American citizens can be glad that MS is supporting diversity by pushing for more H1Bs.
Can't walk through Bellevue square without getting caught in a thick cloud of acrid curry-tinged BO. Guess the land of Kama Sutra couldn't figure out how to roll on some fucking deoderant, huh?
As long as we keep the Jews and Arabs focused on fighting over some useless plots of land, the oil is ours for the taking. Amirite or amirite?
if 1351 were riffed on Thursday in WA and 13000 will come from Nokia, when and where will the other 3700 come from?
1350 is included in 18000. 5000 more cuts to come. I guess mostly PMs and some devs. Some groups were not affected yesterday, they are next.
Regarding health insurance, Microsoft is likely self-insured, but with re-insurance for larger claim amounts over a certain dollar value.
Perhaps I lack the super-sensitive nostrils that allow you to identify the nationality of body odor from a block away, but I'm still reasonably sure that my shit does stink. I'd be happy to provide you with a sample if you need to confirm, though. (And if you think white Americans are immune to B.O., I cordially invite you to spend five minutes on any bus in Seattle.)
"Just because you don't approve of something doesn't mean it isn't happening."
Just because you do approve of something doesn't mean it actually has any hope of solving your problem, which as I indicated has roots a bit deeper and closer to home than you think it does.
Meanwhile, the even moderately competent and talented among those "newly jobless American citizens" (which in the case of ex-Microsoft employees, I might add, means nearly all of them) will do the same thing that I and hundreds of thousands of others have done in the past when our employers laid us off: namely, FIND A DIFFERENT FUCKING JOB. You know, the way grown-ups with highly-sought-after skills generally do when they need a new source of income.
And they are sought after at the moment. This isn't 2009 in the depths of the crash, when the overall shittiness of the macro economy really did cause large numbers of good people to find themselves well and truly fucked for a while. Honestly, if you can't find a tech job in America THIS year, it's because you suck. And if you've been working in the tech industry all those previous years and still haven't figured out that you ought to save up a portion of your abnormally high salary to cushion those inevitable between-jobs dry spells, it's because you're a fool. For everybody else, this is not exactly the worst time in recent history to be a job-seeker.
Yeah, Redmond kind of is Washington's version of Little India. And as I pointed out in my previous post, that does have its upsides. ;)
I may be the worst of the worst and pulling the wool over my own eyes, but strangely enough, I'm also much, much happier than you are, and have been for many years now. Including during the multiple occasions when I've been laid off from various software jobs. Why do you think that is?
>>I may be the worst of the worst and pulling the wool over my own eyes, but strangely enough, I'm also much, much happier than you are, and have been for many years now. Including during the multiple occasions when I've been laid off from various software jobs.
>> Why do you think that is?
Because you suck dick?
On the H1B's, it isn't just about being a racist scumbag
on one side and an idealistic liberal pushover on the
other.
1) There IS a problem with cronyism, especially among the
Indians. Indian hiring managers disproportionately hire
other Indians. You all know this.
2) And there's the problem with fake resumes and fake
phone interviews.
3) And then there are the studies that have been done
showing that yes, as a matter of fact, the US does
actually produce lots and lots of STEM grads every year,
supposedly more than enough to fill whatever openings
there are among tech firms.
4) But lots of those people are tied to their local areas
whereas foreign tech workers are willing to relocate
thousands of miles.
5) And then there are statistics that claim 800K or more
foreign tech workers have come to the US in the last 10
years and tech companies keep saying they want more, more,
more. As an American, you start to wonder what's going on?
Is it really the case that none of those jobs could be
filled by a qualified American worker?
6) And then there's the common sense eyeball test. Just
take a walk across campus.
7) My own personal anecdote: I've worked with Indians at
MS on H1Bs through Tata, Advaiya, etc., that barely knew
how to use a computer. Granted, that isn't usually the
case, but when you see that sort of abuse of the system,
it sticks with you.
8) The vast majority of Indians and other foreign workers
I've worked with have been great.
9) It's good for all of us to bring the best and brightest
to the US, but given what we know, how likely is it that
this is what's really happening? Why isn't there room for
reasonable people to talk about removing abuse from the
system?
By the way, when comparing oneself to people who post racist rants and spend their days praying for the government to make all the bad brown people go away because that's the only thing that might give them a shot at being gainfully employed again, it doesn't really take all that much effort to feel superior. No eye wool required; just eyes.
Also by the way, aren't people who use "liberal" as an insult supposed to be AGAINST the idea of the government interfering in the free workings of the marketplace? A philosophy as deep and well-developed as yours is couldn't possibly be wildly self-contradictory, so help me out with this one, please.
Folk, stop feeding that one bitter racist troll. He seems to have no better use for his time than to jump on every post and keep spewing his hatred.
So are they finished with C+E? Unlike Terry, ScottGu hasn't sent out an 'all clear' message, but I think his initial mail seemed to imply it all happens this week for C+E.
Yes, people that use "liberal" as an insult are normally on the right side of the political spectrum. I was trying to contrast the two positions. I think there's room for a reasonable policy that curbs some of the abuses that we all know about, but also allows tech companies to bring in the people they need. But the conversations on the issue are all at the extremes and nothing gets done.
"On the H1B's, it isn't just about being a racist scumbag
on one side and an idealistic liberal pushover on the other"
This guy summed it up perfectly.
Mr sensitive needs to stop embracing his ignorance. The abuse is rampant and obvious. No wonder he's been laid off multiple times
I'm not sure why ICs are More expensive than Managers, especially when they are so many questionable managers who defeats companies core values such as TWC. I have witnessed 2 such persons from my Xbox team who can shamelessly edit a month back emails and reply on those threads.
If your brain is not working or dead, you can donate organs to others and expect them to function in different bodies with full capacity, but not the other way around...
What a shameful thing to edit previous email and force you to leave.
If India is so full of genius engineers, why can't they make their own successful product?
The level of ignorance expressed on this forum is astonishing. India is a POOR country (look up the per capita GDP ; India is at $3000 or thereabouts where the US is at $52000 or so). There is a huge disparity between the purchasing power of Indians vs Americans. Every wannabe entrepreneur (or established businessman for that matter) looks at the potential market before diving into product development. Highly innovative products are a no-go in India because virtually no one can afford them. So any engineer or entrepreneur who wants to build (or contribute to) innovative technology has no option but to work for people in rich countries. And last I heard, MS claimed to be a company that tried to build innovative products.
Inspite of this, a large number of products get built in India. But they are targeted at ordinary (and poor) Indians, tailored to their specific needs. By your standards, there is nothing innovative about them. So you never hear about them.
P.S. As a personal aside, since you inexplicably brought the subject up, I actually went to an Indian guy's house and fucked his wife for a few months recently, and it was pretty awesome.
Do you remember the address?
Has anyone of you, ever, asked an end user about anything relating to the software he bought from you, and on how it could be improved? Just checking!
Indian hiring managers disproportionately hire other Indians. You all know this.
No we don't know this. If this is true post the names of the managers whose orgs are disproportionately made up of the same race.
M1- manager of ICs
M2- manager of M1s
I left MSFT after great 15 years. Main reason was lack of risk MSFT was willing to take in cloud and mobile. Every move was done with protecting Windows/Office legacy in mind, we were leaders in nothing new. That was not MSFT I joined, that was not even SteveB of old. Now MSFT is just another blue chip company. If you don't like 24/7 politics, layoffs (public or shadow), and overbearing administration - leave. If you have the talent you will thrive. There is so much going on in the outside world. 18,000 layoffs will not change MSFT, just make the atmosphere worse this year. Satya is great leader and right CEO choice, yet the task to change the toxic introvert culture back to market making force seems too steep. I would love to be wrong about this, as we would all benefit from once again hungry MSFT.
Anonymous said...
What I want to know (being in SMSG side as an engineer) is what/when will come for those of us outside Redmond? My leadership team is making it out like we are all safe
================================
I am a business manager in SMSG and let me tell you that nobody is safe in our org. Deep cuts are coming after the review. If you are remote... I'd say start looking for a billable, field role. The deepest cuts are coming to CTS support org. I gleaned this off of documents passing by me which talk about outsourcing vendor hiring.
"Satya is great leader and right CEO choice".
But he won't even reply to the open letter calling for the VB6 programming language to be open sourced.
To all the race baiters out there: Microsoft has always been an international work place, lots of East Europeans and Chinese and Northern Europeans and Canadians.
There were competition but balance.
You are angry about South Asians angry about Indian partners and Indian vendors and Indian contractors bringing H1bs with fake resumes by planeloads and failing to deliver.
That's fair But try not to make more enemies by screaming racist comments to other international people who might actually help you organize an effective resistance. Alright?
Focus or fade away.
As of today, contractors can only work with a Microsoft badge for 18 months, then they have to not be a on a MS for 6 months. So if you come to the US, you'd better be planning to go back. It is not a permanent assignment.
Cut them all. Get lost. Drop Infosys, Tata and HCL immediately. Or they will find some other way to abuse the system, by becoming FTE or managers to provide more valuable services for our Great Brahmin in the Sky
Microsoft should lose the ability to hire H1-Bs.
Microsoft actually sponsors few H1Bs, 2000 of them spread over many different nationalities.
It's Indian vendors like Infosys, Tata, HCL, Mindtree who hire like 90% Indian and brings over almost 150,000 H1b a year to America and eat the America's IT industry (total 2 million jobs) from the bone. Some of them are being investigated for discriminating against Americans and visa fraud.
Microsoft awards huge contracts to these Indian vendors. All the other vendors, East Asian, East Europeans, barely scratch a living.
If diversity is real, then wouldn't East Asians and East Europeans be more competitive? Nope.
Fake resumes, fake interviews, visa factory and nepotism in the Indian subcontinent drives out all the competitors.
Woops, I made a mistake 150,000/year Indian H1b visa is wrong.
70,000/year, 150,000+ current H1b Indians in America, ~1 million IT H1b Indians brought over the last 15 years. total 2 million IT jobs in America.
Americans, get angry. The abuse and invasion is quiet and mind boggling.
We need to cancel the H-1B program all together. If they really can't hire Americans for the job, then bring them over with green cards, not H-1B.
In 2012, the 10 employers receiving the largest number of H-1B visas were all in the business of outsourcing and offshoring high-tech American jobs to India.
http://www.epi.org/blog/top-10-h1b-guestworker-offshore-outsourcing/
http://www.businessweek.com/table/08/0305_h1b.htm
Similar in 2013, 2014, this has been going on for 10-15 years.
People chanting mantra of diversity, please do the eyeball test as another poster suggested.
Microsoft diversity is approaching Mumbai diversity is approaching 0.
As in many high tech campuses: VMWare, Intel, Cisco, Qualcomm, Oracle and IT departments across the nation in big financial and insurance industries and retail. The 1 Million IT workers imported from India really are eating America's nerve and brains, inside out. And what diversity?
When it comes to issues of immigration, citizenship, and borders, there are no real principles other than that of Might Makes Right. Whoever has the most weapons defines where the borders are. Whoever has the most weapons enforces the borders. Whoever has the most weapons decides who gets to come and who gets to go. Whether it's South Asians who have to come or go, whether it's European Americans who have to come or go, whether it's Asians who have to come or go, whether it's Native Americans who have to come or go, if you're the one who has to go, it just means your side doesn't have enough weapons yet.
For people calling me racist, I'm not racist. I welcome diversity, but
what I see at Microsoft and at the other tech giants, is not diversity. It's organized invasion of the worst
kind: going straight for the brain and information security of Americans.
For example:
Target outsourced their IT department to Bangalore and got hacked. Connect the dots.
Ebay outsourced heavily to India, and got hacked.
Symantec outsourced their call center to India, and their customer credit cards were sold for pennies.
On and on. These Indian contractors are in the business of fake resumes and human trafficking and information stealing. Microsoft has been their enabler.
Americans be very angry.
Whether you're a European American who supports immigration or opposes immigration, whether you're a Native American who supports immigration or opposes immigration, whether you're a South or East Asian who supports or opposes one type of visa, posting about it here isn't going to be as useful as finding people who already agree with you, and helping them get weapons.
American jobs belong to Americans whether we have the necessary skills or not. If the foreigners weren't here MS would be forced to hire us.
Americans be very angry.
anyone checked out the belred cafe's ethnic composition?
Media goes bombastic about gender inequality in high tech. they haven't figured out the biggest diversity issue in high tech is the
quiet invasion of Indian H1b visas and management.
The Indian managers even pat themselves in the back for "paying forward" to their community (meaning hiring and promoting only Indians), that is their Indian community. While singing the PC tale of diversity at the same time.
Action:
go to Microsoft Alumni network, convince 10 Microsofties or ex-softies to come defend Microsoft from the power grab by Indian contracting companies, and Satya's protracted layoff and driving best people away.
Ask each of the 10 to convince 10 more. Pretty soon you have a movement and a rally. And get the media and politicians on notice: This is the real crisis.
Or call employment lawyers
meaning hiring and promoting only Indians
Liar, how about some evidence. Post the names of the managers whose org consists disproportionately of one race.
If you can't you are a liar who thinks he should be given a salary just for being white.
Are you an idiot? Just go checkout the org chart and you'll see almost all Indian manager have mostly indian teams, it's reverse discrimination really
The upcoming PM cuts will force a 10 to 1 Dev:PM ratio.
Regardless of whether you're in the majority or in the minority, whatever rights you believe you have, as long as the weapon in your hand is still loaded, you still have those rights.
Just go checkout the org chart and you'll see almost all Indian manager have mostly indian teams
Ahole, if there are so many, why can't you post one name. You think you should be given a salary just for being white.
I remember there are over 12,000 managers at Microsoft. If we really want to flatten the org, that will be more than 10,000 layoffs of managers alone.
There have been some cuts in STB - just fewer in number and widely interspersed among levels and disciplines.
Microsoft is a multinational corporation and will do what is best in the interest of shareholders - or so I am told.
"American jobs to americans" - nothing like protectionism to kill innovation.
All the racist posts against Indians reminds me of this bit from Chris Rock's stand up bit.. "America man.. it is only for Americans.. fuck the terrorists...fuck the arabs...guess who is next? Jews and Blacks...."
I guess Indians as well.
Indian managers with Indian reportees - how do you know they are all Indian brah? Did you get lost on your way to the tea party rallies against central american kids crossing the desert?
If we simply deport all the H-1Bs, there will be no need for layoffs. In fact, there will be a hiring boom.
The more I reflect on this, the stronger my view becomes that this all is just basically rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Microsoft has never been and probably never will be an innovator of new and creative ideas. The circumstances that led to their dominance in the desktop and server arena just don't exist today. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft has produced great products and Microsoft will make a lot of money selling into these markets for a long time to come. But really they have been a company that has "stood on the shoulders" of existing products like forever and now they will not be able to do that quite so easily. There are many reasons that are well known. One though that seldom gets mentioned is Microsoft's unfriendly practice of usurping products from third party software companies that wrote products for their Windows platforms. Think about it, what company in their right mind would develop a metro app that Microsoft could duplicate, add some new features, and sell it at a fraction of the cost?
It is clear from the new CEO that Microsoft is going to focus its efforts at selling into the enterprise in the on going transition to mobil computing. The iPad office release clearly is a recognition that accommodating Enterprise requirements will take supporting products that run on non windows based platforms. I look for Microsoft to eventually shed business units that just don't fit with their focus on the enterprise.
Arguably x-box may be one innovative product that Microsoft has developed that had been a big success. So not sure what the plans are that product. I suppose x-box is insulated enough, autonomous enough to be left to run basically on its own.
Why Microsoft has solution deliver role? They don't have any work and Program manager can easily do whatever SD's are doing. First Microsoft has to layoff all SD's and think about others ....
> I remember there are over 12,000 managers at Microsoft. If we really want to flatten the org, that will be more than 10,000 layoffs of managers alone.
Mr Nutella could show his sincerity by cutting off the giant Indian contractors like Tata, Infosys, HCL. And firing 90% of the Indian managers and their bloated Indian servants' headcount. For the good of the company.
Instead, he's cutting a lot of nonIndian performers and nonIndian managers. I call it a racist powergrab. Call me a racist if you like.
> If we simply deport all the H-1Bs, there will be no need for layoffs. In fact, there will be a hiring boom.
H1Bs come from all over the world Asia and Europe.
But 60-70% of ALL H1Bs come from this one magical subcontinent, via giant contractors like Infosys and Tata and HCL. All Mr Satya's Buddies.
Deport them, we will have a hiring boom.
The retail customer is finicky. Figuring out the retail customer is literally reading people's minds.
To top this off, the margins are extremely slim in this segment.
Only a few among many products succeed in the retail market due to this reason. Hence to find success, a company has to risk releasing a few different products.
The Microsoft model of gigantic orgs with overarching themes are not exactly conducive for this.
Enterprise on the other hand wants predictable, reliable and familiar software and Microsoft is poised to cater to them.
>Enterprise on the other hand wants predictable, reliable and familiar software and Microsoft is poised to cater to them.
You drunk Mr Nutella's CoolAID?
IBM is allying with Apple to deliver enterprise mobile solutions.
Mr Nutella is the wallflower holding up a pipe dream in comparison.
He has no choice in partnership except with Blackberry/Google. But these companies have way better partners than him.
Mr Nutella IS a JOKE! An empty pathetic vision outlined in a rambling memo, protracted layoff, and intentionally driving good people away from Microsoft.
Sure, let's get rid of all the (first generation) immigrants. When do we get rid of Mason Morfit? Or are we more scared of Mason Morfit than we are of those stinkin Indians?
>>IBM is allying with Apple to deliver enterprise mobile solutions.
OOOOO scaaaaaaryy... IBM and Apple are together.. (and the irony that this is seems to be lost on you).
>>Mr Nutella is the wallflower holding up a pipe dream in comparison.
I dont know where to go with this. I am not sure if I should reply to your racist ass.
>>Sure, let's get rid of all the (first generation) immigrants. When do we get rid of Mason Morfit? Or are we more scared of Mason Morfit than we are of those stinkin Indians?
Just dont let the hate consume you, lest you have no brain power left to compete with immigrants, including Indians.
18,000 to go in this round.
But how many in the next round ?
If it is no more than 3,000 more in 6 months time that may show Microsoft will survive. If it is greater or sooner, survival will be less likely.
I am expecting an offer from MS, but I am in the mood of rejecting that. lay-off killed my passion and dream with Microsoft. also I am wondering they will offer me at this point as I am in H1 B valid another 2 years. Microsoft won't file any GC for another 1 year or so.
Got saved!
Well, now you know what it's like to be shat upon by a nut, fella.
But at least now we are finally One Microsoft. Previously were were 1.0736 Microsoft, but we've taken care of that. And our senior leadership is SO EXCITED FOR THE FUTURE! Ra Ra Ra! And we should be too! Don't let the flensing of that 0.0736 part bother you or taper your enthusiasm, it isn't bothering theirs! They have so many exciting times and challenges ahead for us, so don't worry, be happy! And don't forget, be excited too! And work harder, because Microsoft Cares!
A bit weird to see so many comments on race and even dumb crap along the lines of "thanks, Obama!" or mixing up this sentiment with unions...
But it reminds me of the old mini comments to see people insisting that none of these fools are MS employees. Are you guys that stupid? Do you not know your share of sociopathic liars and narcissists at MS? Does it really surprise you that some of them may also be racists?
I left MS a few years ago. I think it's pretty clear that Mini did too. He's even more out of touch with current stuff than I am. For years I thought Mini was SteveSi, who by the way I am not a fan of. (Look now how he pals around with Silicon Valley douchebags. Why they would listen to and respect him after his blatant failures is beyond me.)
FWIW when I was in Windows there were a lot of do-nothing SDETs who very honestly may have been nice folks but were completely worthless to the product. Then maybe 5-10% of those I knew were really good at what they did and valuable. Similar story for PM. Come to think of it, similar story for Dev too. The teams were just bloated with C and D players sitting around collecting checks, and occasionally shipping poorly thought out, mediocre software.
With this WinRT/modern bullshit it's really clear that the company is completely incapable of reproducing its prior success. In 2014 they cannot ship with the same quality as Win2000.
Wow, so many offensive people here. Anonymity sheds new light!
My indian BU manager while at MSFT was a worthless POS who got parachuted, did nothing for the unit and saved himself by jumping ship just before the whole team was laid off in 2009, landing a cushy new role at Mobile where i'm sure he participated in the fate of *that* ship.
But that's not a reason to generalize to all the people who happen to share his skin color!!
@"go to Microsoft Alumni network, convince 10 Microsofties or ex-softies to come defend Microsoft from the power grab by Indian contracting companies, and Satya's protracted layoff and driving best people away."
Sad. These people clearly know nothing about how contractors are used in our engineering orgs.
Let's be clear here: which are the organizations that have voiced the most strong anti-H1B and anti-foreign worker rhetoric? That's right, labor unions. And which unions have been trolling Mini-Microsoft in the past? That's right, WashTech (http://washtech.org). Now, there's no direct evidence of course, we're all anonymous here so this is just speculation. But just ask yourselves who would think they can benefit from anti-H1B postings?
Come to think of it, doesn't that "HEY HEY HO HO - H1Bs GOTTA GO" from earlier posts sound like one of those picketing chants? Something to consider.
Follow the logic and speak the truth as you see it. Microsoft engineers are highly skilled at critical thinking and problem solving and can draw their own conclusions. That is our best chance at silencing these trolls so that we can discuss MS in peace.
You know what One Microsoft really means don't you? We're going to lay off everyone until there is only one guy left. Then we'll finally have true unity of vision and unity of purpose.
Everyone knows that the people who read http://reason.com are the most reasonable people around. It says so right in the name.
Satya dropped words like "source control" and "build break" which made him sound like he understands the software development process. He may understand the mechanical aspects but none of the creative aspects. To rescue Microsoft you have to really understand the creative aspects -- like Steve Jobs did.
2 to 3 years from now, if new versions of Windows and Windows Phone are seen as successes then the board should reward Satya with his own private jet. If not the board should fire his ass.
In our part of OSG it was a mix of nationalities let go: American, Indian, Chinese, Romanian, and someone from part of Africa (can't remember where exactly and don't want to make an ass of myself and guess). Also a mix of performance apparently, including some who were in promo buckets.
Face it, we hire a lot of poor performing white guys too and for all the abuse of the system, without the visas we'd just open more offices abroad. Heck maybe that's what we really need to do to breath that collaborative remote working we try to sell other enterprises on but don't do ourselves. Thank you racists for the great idea!
Another white dude.
"Folks, folks, folks, listen to me." --You are an idiot. Your view is absolutely wrong
What is ''corporate services''?
Numbers tell their own story. Companies like VMWare, Cisco, Qualcomm dare not publish their ethnic composition number (because they are 70+% Indian in engineering). They'd rather claim gender equality by hiring more Indian H4 housewives.
LOL. Check out resume of Cisco's Indian lady CTO. Her project flopped on bad data, yet she was promoted to CTO of Motorola, another Indian occupied dead company.
Microsoft is next.
Word I'm hearing is first wave of layoffs happened, many 5.0s getting job-in-jeopardy notices.
Now that this has become racist commentary - can I ask how to identify a racist -- Just to be away from them when you see em.
This country should only hire First Nations people. All you pilgrims should get back on your Mayflower and paddle back across the Atlantic.
To the racists:
for your information, we Indians are just paying forward to our billion-people community. What's wrong with that?
Words in the Silicon valley startups are: you can't get funded if you are not Indian founded. Take that, whiteys!
And you can't get hired unless you are Indians either. hahaha
Are all the folks getting laid off being given corporate and maybe building access for 60 days to help find another job internally?
I'm hearing different things on this matter.
Im guessing she is older then...maybe getting within 5 years of being able to pull the trigger on all her stock awards at 55. MS seems to be going after the older people so they dont get those stock awards and their hugher salaries. I know it happend to me. Considerably longer years of service than your wife and previous 5 years of review scores in top 10% to 20% of company. When they told me they put me in the room with several other folks...basically a very oublic thing. Hardly respectful. Word was out at that point. Every knew I was out at that point...staryed looking at me different un the halls etc. Then its tough to find another job at MS because everyone knies you got laid off and there must be some reason why it was you...yiu must suck right? Not in my case.
>I' guessing she is older then...maybe getting within 5 years of being able to pull the trigger on all her stock awards at 55.
Time to explore lawsuits against MS and their Indian contractors faking resumes, abusing visa program, discriminating against Americans on age and race.
I'm a dev lead in OSG and yes the SDETs got hit hard on Thursday, but the dev team and anyone saw this coming for years due to several core problems with the OSG test org.
First, we simply have too many testers. Prior OSG test leadership (Grant George, his reports) drove a 1:1 dev to test ratio. This is out of touch with industry and with many other parts of Microsoft so OSG looks like it's test heavy.
Second, we have far too many testers who aren't great testers. The job of an OSG SDET was to buddytest dev fixes and approve for checkin, write new test automation for new stuff and fix existing automation as Windows changes, find bugs, reduce repros, selfhost and file bugs. We have many many tests and duplicate test frameworks. For years SDETs wrote new frameworks, ported tests from the old ones to the new ones, analyzed the failures, maybe filed a few bugs, and selfhosted. No real testing going on after a while.
Some SDETs really have a great aptitude for testing, but most are no better at "test aptitude" than your average dev. And too many are just downright terrible. Your grandma could write a better bug report on Connect. I worked with one tester who filed bug after bug and assigned them to me without anything actionable. Literally the bugs were "I started the program, used it for a while, it crashed". No dumps, no traces, no repro steps, not even the Watson bucket number. He was laid off Thursday.
Third, we have too many testers who are poor coders. We have a longstanding problem of doing campus interviews and if the candidate passes the dev questions with flying colors, we flyback for an SDE interview. If they pass but just ok, we fly them back as an SDET interview. This has created a major league of coders (SDEs) and a minor league (SDETs). Everyone knows this is true - SDETs and SDEs. Recruiters dangle "if you're great at coding, you can transition to SDE later" as a carrot to take the SDET job.
Through my career some of the best devs I've worked with started as SDETs and did that transition. But it's not the norm. Instead I see SDET written code that's just crap, and interview SDETs trying to transition to SDE and they don't pass interview loops.
Fourth, the existence of the test org itself makes the dev org lazy and inefficient. Too many devs have a throw it over the wall mentality where devs don't do enough self testing because they hope the tester will do it. The coordination and hand-holding for buddytesting is just pure overhead for everyone. Some testers can't even build from a DPK, they want you to give them private binaries that match the week-old build they are sitting on.
And if the dev doesn't hold the testers hand, then the tester complains the dev is uncooperative, and the test lead comes to me to whine about how my dev "works poorly" with his tester.
All this crap has simply got to go and that's clearly the direction Microsoft and OSG are headed. We need a unified engineering org, every dev can write code and write tests for it, using modern development methodologies like TDD. Perhaps the dev can be better at one side or the other to start, but not for long.
As someone who was laid off from Microsoft in a post-2009 pre-2014 restructuring: Yes it sucks BUT they do treat you well on departure. They scheduled your release to ensure your one final review stock grants vested. Embrace your departure, take your severance, enjoy the rest of your summer. Take your COBRA that they pay for you for a non-neglible period of time.
Spend time with your partner, kids, hiking, breathing, being - decompress, find time to be kind and relaxed rather than a bundle of stress. As many others have said, many companies are hiring. Jobs are out there where 40 hours is not just the norm, it's expected!
The reality is for 90-95% of you the important work you were doing at Microsoft will pass into the sands of time and have little to no impact a year from now. The work our old group did slowed down with our departures but for 99.99999999999999999% of the people out there, the work we did for our customers mattered not one whit. Yes it was nice for many years to trade my time for Microsoft's money. I found I could trade my time for even more money with other companies. The praise I get for the job I do now is sincere and I am truly judged on the value I bring to my job. It was eye opening.
"Microsoft engineers are highly skilled at critical thinking and problem solving and can draw their own conclusions."
Too bad they couldn't figure out what shitbombs they were releasing with Win8, Win Mobile, Win Phone 7, Office Ribbon, Xbone, Zune, Kin, or any of the other countless spectacular failures. Microsoft engineers are not inherently smarter because they are hired by Microsoft. You can't even say MS hires "smart people". Standards haven't been that high for 15 years. shit in=shit out.
Anonymous said...
Indian hiring managers disproportionately hire other Indians. You all know this.
No we don't know this. If this is true post the names of the managers whose orgs are disproportionately made up of the same race.
-----
I'm not part of the H1B discussion, but it isn't hard to just come up with examples of teams with 30-50% East Indian members. The team members may be H1B or US Citizens, have no idea. This is just looking around. their names aren't important. Just like our Senior Women Execs have more Senior women than other teams, I'd say the observation that we tend to pick people like us is accurate.
In his 3100 word email Satya mentioned that changing jobs internally will become easier. Any word on what the plan is? Will there be no interview loops?
"There's only two things I hate in this world. People who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch."
There is a certain type of person (mostly white men) who have been sheltered against competing against anyone but other people like them. When they suddenly have to compete against women or minorities, they think it's "reverse discrimination." News flash: it isn't.
There is definitely a lot of racist comments here, but let us be honest here, the different races in Microsoft are not getting along all find and dandy. As someone who was once from the subcontinent but naturalized now for a very long time, I can totally see where lot of the resentment is coming from. To be frank, the employees and contractors from other countries have made no effort to assimilate at all, want to hand out in their own circles all the time and act as a complete pain on the others.
1. Majority of people from the subcontinent have no body hygiene and they do stink. It is a fact. Anyone who denies it does not have an Indian member in their team or probably got used to the smell, like some old ladies get used to cat pee in their carpet.
2. The Muslim people from the subcontinent are the worst, they want to do their prayers multiple times a day and they do make a stinking mess in the restrooms for their prayer and other religious rituals. It is true, no one is making stuff up here. It is also a health hazard because these people don't use toilet paper, use hands instead and then they go and touch the water fountain and coffee/tee machines in the kitchen and cafeterias. How is it fair to the other employees to be exposed to this health risk?
3. The Chinese people don't stink but their food does stink . Imagine having to use microwave in the kitchen after a chinese person cooked his dish there. Phew!!!
These are facts and these employees need to be self conscious about how they are perceived by others, it is for their own good and everyone else.
All these racists should have left the company a long time ago.
"The level of ignorance expressed on this forum is astonishing. India is a POOR country"
Who said Indians had to create software for Indians? With 4x the population of US and supposedly some of the best engineering schools, they can't create a single major software success?
I have seen some smart Indians at MS, but they are 1 in 1000. The rest are a complete drain on resources. So why are we outsourcing to these underskilled workers? Because on paper 1 Indian engineer is cheaper than 1 American engineer?
"I'm a proud black man," said the black man.
"I'm a proud Mexican woman," said the Mexican woman.
"I'm a proud asian man," said the asian man.
"I'm a proud gay man," said the gay man.
"I'm a proud transgender," said the transgender.
"I'm a proud Native American," said the Native American.
"I'm a proud white man," said the racist.
Moderator could you please ban the IP of racist commenter? Topic is getting side tracked due to one individual's ignorance to accept hard working immigrants.
On Topic...
It was devastating for OSG SiGMA Quality team. 6 of my teammates(few 100s at SIGMA level) were let go including a lead who has been in at Microsoft for 20y+. Clearly it was not due to performance but I agree with others it seems HR had a formula with variables such as: future potential, number of years in the level, total salary, and past performance history.
I believe Leads didn't know however we were told to do Connect couple of weeks ago hence it seems Partner managers and above would've known. Note: other discipline didn't do Connect at the same period.
Already our Main branch is not self-hostable because Devs are not writing nor running Tests. Yet senior management thinks they can trim Test org. I blame Michael Fortin who decided telemetry is what the whole SDET needs to do. This is crazy because we don't need 8000+ inserting markers into the code to create BI reports when main branch is broken. How can he not foresee this? He should be gone!
I feel extremely bad for those affected, they are my colleagues/friends with family who need to provide meal. Even though I wasn't given the slip, I'm going to starting looking out because a) Lack of job security b) Projects is at risk c) More work/person
Good luck to all those affected.
"In his 3100 word email Satya mentioned that changing jobs internally will become easier. Any word on what the plan is?"
At the Q&A, LisaB said that HR is "thinking about" how to make intra-company transfers easier. No details on what that means.
(Usually when HR says they're "thinking about" something, it really means, "We hope you'll all forget about it if we stall long enough.")
" they think it's "reverse discrimination." News flash: it isn't. "
Please, don't be so naive. Have you seen the national news stories about how company X doesn't have enough women on their board? There is some kind of "white guilt" being pushed by the media and the blue states eat it up. There is absolutely a push to inflate the number of women hired at MS.
Here's a newsflash for you: during calibrations HR would dictate which individuals belonging to minority groups (yes, including women) get promos that they didn't deserve.
If you want to get from entry level to senior IC in the shortest time at MS your best strategy is to be a black woman.
"reverse" racism is racism. It exists, and it's here.
That's absurd. I've been in plenty of calibrations at Microsoft and have never had HR dictate a promotion. It's obvious you aren't part of Microsoft and know nothing.
Kerry Park will change into Curry Park unless we do something quickly.
Kick all H1Bs out of the country NOW!
To the sensitive libtards who like to fuck Indian housewives and enjoy curry and keep asking for a name, here it goes. And this also proves that not all of us are bitter unemployed racists who don't even work at Microsoft.
Go to GAL or Headtrax on Monday (or RAS in over the weekend) and look up Madhavan Kesawan. He's a Dev Manager. Including the leads, their ICs, and non-FTEs, he has over 50 reports, over 95% of them are Indian. And he himself reports to an Indian as well.
That's just one name, there are literally hundreds of similar examples in Dev, PM, and SDET organizations throughout the company. Only a fucking brainwashed Seattle liberal would look at a 95-98% Indian team reporting to an Indian manager and scream "Diversity is our Strength!" Fucking morons, every one of you. Now go back to eating your Indian food you leftist vermin.
"Clearly it was not due to performance but I agree with others it seems HR had a formula with variables such as: future potential, number of years in the level, total salary, and past performance history."
Most likely, HR's formula was based on being able to pass statistical tests of discrimination. Remember always that HR's primary function is to avoid lawsuits -- especially class action lawsuits. "All other priorities are rescinded."
"Already our Main branch is not self-hostable because Devs are not writing nor running Tests. Yet senior management thinks they can trim Test org. I blame Michael Fortin who decided telemetry is what the whole SDET needs to do."
Agreed that Fortin is a boob, but refocusing on telemetry over test is actually a Satya initiative. He tried it in Bing, and stability and search-result quality plummeted. So of course, now he's doing it with Windows. (For someone who claims to be "data driven", Satya doesn't seem to pay much attention to the consequences of his choices.)
It's foolish to think that we can roll out lower-quality software, and then correct the problems through more and quicker updates. Consumers probably won't tolerate that model, and Enterprises certainly won't. (Not to mention that most Enterprises don't allow any telemetry data to leave their corporate networks. So just where will all the precious feedback come from?)
All it's going to take is one serious bug finding its way onto a computer used by Walt Mossberg. (Or will we have a dedicated, high-quality flight just for him?)
Those of us who are or were MSFT need to boycott this thread as unfortunately it's been hijacked by a racist imp.
"There is absolutely a push to inflate the number of women hired at MS."
===
We only have 25% women (on ms.com), and only 2/3 that %number of managers that are women. So, in order to rectify the number of women managers, we have to force a distribution of for a couple of years, and then when it is fair, we can move on.
You can't get women executives, if you aren't promoting talented women into the pipeline, fact. Fix the inequity, at least make it more deliberate. However, the notion of Women's conferences are appalling. Women don't need "fixed" in the workplace... is that what the sponsors of such events intend? Women aren't broken.
I hope that we didn't undo any small progress with the lay-offs.
Excluding all the racist comments, and comments on foreign workers, for a moment, the amount of trash-talking by Microsofties about other Microsofties is astonishing. Devs think SDETS and PMs are useless; SDETs think devs are useless. Everyone thinks the leads and managers are useless. But amidst this sea of incompetence, the person in question is the only hard-working and qualified employee.
With this level of narcissism prevalent amongst its employees, is it any surprise how crappy Microsoft has been for at least a decade and a half? Learn some humility, folks. And become team players instead of constantly (mis)judging your peers. You'll get through life and work better.
In reply to 10:07:00 AM comment - there's a lot of truth to your statement, but it's only half the story.
The very unfortunate reality is that OSG is full of B players on dev, test, and PM. There is no shortage of devs who belong in the "minor leagues" and no small number of SDETs who are "major leaguers" and if you were to break it down proportionally, the ratio of great:good:average:poor across all the disciplines is probably roughly the same. It's really a wash.
The saving grace for dev orgs is that, even if you're a bad dev, at the end of the day you produce something that goes into a shipping product, so many can (and will) argue that you contributed a positive dollar value to Microsoft's bottom line, regardless of what impact a poorly coded feature actually had. Whereas a bad tester (Or PM, for those worried about what could be up next) will have contributed a negative dollar value because they wrote nothing that shipped yet were paid a handsome salary to do so. This is the mindset driving these cuts. It's a much easier methodology for reducing OpEx than sifting through every employee to find out which ones are actually worth what they are paid (And many across all disciplines are not).
The trouble is that it's a poor methodology because it does not address the core problems:
1. Bad employees are getting hired in the first place because our interview process is an easily-gamed farce.
2. Bad employees are retained because our promotion culture is based largely on visibility and political favoritism rather than direct value contribution. Note that says "value contribution", not skill because skill is necessary but not sufficient. I've seen firsthand that this is a problem in some hardcore dev orgs today, where the few dev managers not swayed or driven by politics are instead focused on pure technical skill and promote based on that rather than the value those skills create for the company. Would you promote the genius dev who writes beautiful code all day in his silo and can debug the .0000001% edge case that nobody else can? Or would you promote the good-but-not-excellent dev who possesses business competency and identifies ways to do things better and make the company more money? Ideally you promote both, but in many orgs that is not what happens. And don't even get me started on all the bullshit tools that drive promos in the test orgs.
3. Bad management is retained because there is no good way to get rid of bad leads, and getting rid of bad managers and directors is nigh impossible. This is because there is no accountability. If your project was a massive success, it's because you're a management pro who led the team to victory. If it was a massive failure, it's because your direct reports aren't pulling their weight and it failed in spite of your awesome managerial skills.
4. Good ideas cannot flow and risks cannot be taken because the culture does not facilitate them. There are too many cooks in every kitchen, too much backdoor dealing, and too many career politicians at every level. What this has to do with testing and quality is anyone's best guess.
Management needs to be significantly compressed, scrapped, and recycled. Get in fresh blood who didn't grow up in this political minefield and are focused on customers and business value.
Shake things up. Let people scout out and move between projects as necessary to help things out.
Educate engineers about how we really deliver customer value, make sure they all understand the bottom line, promote people based on that, and make everything about three things: autonomy, accountability, and results. Maybe then we can treat everyone like capable decision makers who make good choices about what's best for the company, as we should have been doing for years, and there will be no surprises about who gets what or about how you advance or how you get shown the door.
Memo came yesterday. a- and v- can work for 18 months and then building and network access is cut off for 6 months. FTE's leaving MSFT have to wait 6 months to come back as a vendor. They say many vendors don't need access to do their work and they cite shuttle drivers and food service workers. This will make it tough to advance the business when you have to retrain all your key vendors every 18 months. Outsourced BPO vendors are exempt. They need to have another class of vendors then that can work longer and need access. They state this will help to protect our confidential information but it will only weaken the vendor supplier pools if they all know they can only work 18 months. Whoever signed off on this is a complete idiot...
And you can't get hired unless you are Indians either. hahaha
If you are an Indian, you should be on a reservation. Otherwise, get the hell out of the country.
I wonder if the blatantly racist and unconstructive comments are a deliberate effort to derail what otherwise would be a valuable discussion of the layoff.
My 2 cents: the layoffs were quick, with a reasonable severance package, humane timing, but impacted some of the wrong people, didn't impact others that should have been laid off and proved badly detrimental to morale.
Who said Indians had to create software for Indians?
Who would they create software for? You? Aren't the Chinese manufacturing stuff for you? And aren't you screaming bloody murder over that?
Where we are:
I read here that
Windows
OSG
Services
LCA
A few in CMG
... have been affected.
What groups today have no one affected, still to come? Dynamics? Operations? Finance? HR? Field? Office?
RACIST WHINERS: stop crying and feeling sorry for yourselves and work on yourselves instead. It’s much easier to blame others – and people of a different race are a convenient target – than except responsibility and face up to your own shortcomings.
There is basically FULL EMPLOYMENT for college grads in the Seattle metro area right now. If you can’t find a job, it’s not the fault of Indians and Chinese: IT IS YOURS. If you can’t compete it’s because you are: a) lazy; b) have a bad attitude, c) have a poor skill set; possibly all of the above.
Go have your racist circle jerk/pity party somewhere else, losers.
"yes, as a matter of fact, the US does actually produce lots and lots of STEM grads every year, supposedly more than enough to fill whatever openings there are among tech firms"
Two things.
1) Graduates from U.S. colleges != U.S. citizens. A large number of foreign students study and graduate here (and this is especially true in STEM fields).
2) STEM != CS. Somebody may be a kick-ass physicist or chemist or topologist when they graduate, but it doesn't qualify them to write software. The number of American computer science grads seems like it would be the more relevant metric if you're going to try to pursue this quota argument, which you shouldn't anyway because it's stupid.
Okay, three things.
3) "Looking Asian" or "looking Indian" does not, in and of itself, mean that you were born and raised in Asia or India, or that you only arrived in the U.S. after you'd landed a job. For some reason, Americans seem to have serious trouble grasping the concept that white people and black people are not the only people who are born here. My friend whose grandparents immigrated from China 50 years ago still gets complimented occasionally on how well he speaks English. No shit, he grew up in Redmond. Your "eyeball test" may not be giving you quite as much information as you assume it is.
Ultimately, what these layoffs demonstrated is that you may be a strong contributor with a good track record valued by your coworkers and management in one of the major cash cows of a profitable division, and yet you can get let go in untroubled times with two days notice.
Ask yourself how motivated this makes you to work long hours, go above and beyond and invest in the company for the long term.
The term racist is so over-used that I no longer pay attention it. I have read most of the comments in this post and yes, there have been a few that were downright racist, no question. But I ask, how is pointing out simple facts "racist"? In our insanely PC country, I guess we must ignore facts so no one is offended.
It's a fact that Indian leads and Indian managers hire their own. This fact can easily be ascertained by doing a simple, high level look-up in GAL. It's a fact that the great majority of vendors on most organizations at Microsoft are Indians employed by the Indian outsourcing firms Tata, Infosys, HCL, and Wipro. It's a fact that Muslim employees take cups with them into the stalls in the bathrooms for their religious rituals prior to prayers. It's a fact that the majority (not all) Indians have terrible BO. It's a fact that you cannot go anywhere in the Commons on campus, Redmond or Bellevue without feeling like you live in a foreign country, because the Indians have somehow managed to bring their parents here, so often times it's multiple generations walking around.
This country was made into a first-rate, first-world superpower by the white-European immigrants who came here from about the 1880s-1920s. Not by Native Americans, not Somalians, not h1b Indians, and most certainly not the illegal invaders from Mexico and Central America. The latter groups are doing the exact opposite, turning this country into little sections of hellholes from whence they came. Travel to Tukwila or Auburn sometime to witness what the Somalians have done there since they started arriving 20 years ago.
Enjoy our descent into a third-world hellhole. That is the end of my "racist" rant.
Indians - the Mexicans of the Software. Industry.
>>Go to GAL or Headtrax on Monday (or RAS in over the weekend) and look up Madhavan Kesawan. He's a Dev Manager. Including the leads, their ICs, and non-FTEs, he has over 50 reports, over 95% of them are Indian. And he himself reports to an Indian as well.
Your point is what? Did he refuse to hire a qualified person because if their race? Is he not delivering any results? If neither of these are true, you are just trying to libel someone. You are either associated somehow to this person or you went hunting in the GAL looking for someone who meets your confirmation bias - traceable back to you in either case. Or you just pulled out a name and posted it on an anon forum, which makes you a douche bag.
For every supposed Indian manager with supposed Indian reportees, there are three White American managers with White American reportees. Microsoft is a multinational company and diversity is expected and it is what gives strength to Microsoft. If you have trouble with this situation, feel free to leave Microsoft and join the nearest xenophobic organization that supports your cause.
I seriously hope people like you dont work at Microsoft or at least are few and far inbetween, irrespective of race and nationality. I cant imagine anything good coming from small minded people like you.
I have had enough of the hatefest on this blog. I hope all of that bile sends the hate mongers to early graves. Have a grumpy day sour pusses.
For the people really working for MS I'd like to hear more about the layoff distribution between groups/teams/divisions.
>>>
This country was made into a first-rate, first-world superpower by the white-European immigrants who came here from about the 1880s-1920s. Not by Native Americans, not Somalians, not h1b Indians, and most certainly not the illegal invaders from Mexico and Central America. The latter groups are doing the exact opposite, turning this country into little sections of hellholes from whence they came. Travel to Tukwila or Auburn sometime to witness what the Somalians have done there since they started arriving 20 years ago.
This is a "I am not a racist, but..." talk from a racist.
I'd say the observation that we tend to pick people like us is accurate.
That should not be tolerated. Name and shame managers who do that. Email Lisa and complain. People should be hired based on merit, not what their race or ethnicity is, etc.
Another person said: non-FTEs, he has over 50 reports, over 95% of them are Indian
If you outsource testing to a foreign vendor, then it shouldn't surprise anyone that a large number of them are the same race/ethnicity. But if a manager only hires his own race for FTE position then email LisaB anonymously and complain. She is paid to fix it.
Is there a way to split the discussion into several threads?
1. People who what to talk about the layoffs and its implications without spewing hatred
2. People who want to talk about it and spew
3. People who want to talk about the new CSG policy and it's implications
Did anyone else notice while Terry's email to OSG mentioned affected US employees were notified on the day by 11:30am, Qi only said for ASG "some" will know the same day, but it could take 6 months?
Liberal douchebag complaining about the name, the apologists kept screaming "one name, give me one name" so a name was given as an example of cronyism. And his/her point was proven perfectly. Only a simpleton like you would at least not raise an eyebrow that 60 of the 65 people (or whatever the number is) working for an Indian manager are Indian, and that is perfectly acceptable.
You are the enemy, and the sooner you hit the grave, the sooner this country may return to something resembling a sane, normal nation.
Microsoft will rise like a phoenix from the ashes of this disaster.
Anyone cut from SQL Azure Test?
60 of the 65 people (or whatever the number is) working for an Indian manager are Indian
But nearly all of them work for an Indian outsourcing company! The manager didn't hire these people, the outsourcing company did.
It doesn't make sense for Microsoft to stop outsourcing to foreign companies because Microsoft needs to be competitive relative to other American companies who outsource. Maybe the solution is to ban outsourcing nationwide. Then there is no competitiveness issue. But wait, SAP from German will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative German companies. So the solution then is to ban outsourcing on a worldwide basis. But wait that won't work either because we'll suddenly have to pay higher prices for everything we consume (because a worldwide outsourcing ban will affect more than just software.) When the prices go up 3x to 10x for everything, we'll no longer be able to survive.
What then is the solution, racists?
Seriously you think H1B's or for that matter anyone from oversees is taking your jobs? Lets have round table with Native Indians.
If 60 of 65 people in an org are of the same ethnicity as their manager (as is claimed by one of the commenters), that should definitely raise eyebrows. Please advertise that as much as possible.
Otherwise, some imbalance of ethnicities in orgs is not necessarily an insidious attempt at cronyism and empire building. Often, managers from a particular country are sent to their native countries for recruitment. (Now a lot of people here may oppose this practice entirely, but it exists and is done openly as part of HR policy.) The people these managers end up hiring (if any) naturally end up working in their orgs, at least in the beginning of their Microsoft career. Why so many from India? For the same reason that a lot of the IT business has been going to India (as opposed to China) in the past 2 decades; their graduates can speak English.
>> Only a simpleton like you would at least not raise an eyebrow that 60 of the 65 people (or whatever the number is) working for an Indian manager are Indian, and that is perfectly acceptable.
Or a simpleton like you accepts things at face value. The GAL numbers dont mean shit. The reportees could be in India for all I care. You have any other proof? Did you intreview with him? Why dont you follow through and take this up with HR? If you are right - we will get rid of a discriminating SOB. Microsoft will not tolerate this kind of behavior.
You are just pasting a person's name on an internet forum and making big accusations. If you are doing it at someone's taunts, you sir, are a true moron.
Switch the races in your statement and I am sure it is what you would call "normal".
>>You are the enemy, and the sooner you hit the grave, the sooner this country may return to something resembling a sane, normal nation.
The good old "if you are not with me, you are against me" argument. Dont worry. All the hatred oozing out of you will somehow put you out of your own misery.
Customer Support in US has lot of deadwood in the middle management. They have 3 kinds of managers for an IC (who is the one who actually does the job). There are group managers and directors to manage those 3 managers. These are non technical, BS overdose individuals who just do politics. This is Marlena's org and every group managers and directors under are like that. Get rid of those compared to skilled, technical testers who can actually code and do something productive.
Windows Server got hit too. It was sad to see hard workers pushed out while they retain the Director of the partner and customer team that jet sets around the world and surfs the web and posts on facebook as her job. she never writes a spec or paper. she never creates and presents a presentation. she never writes an email other to complain that her people are not being recognized enough. she never hosts or supports a customer. she just likes having a fancy title and get promoted every year. I guess her boss must have a crush on her.
This is a message to people who are complaining about Microsoft outsourcing to Indian outfits such as Infosys, Tata and HCL.
If Microsoft stops outsourcing to foreign companies, but other American companies such as Oracle don't, then Microsoft will no longer be competitive relative to other American companies. Maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing at all American companies. Then there will no longer be a competitiveness issue.
But wait, SAP from Germany will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative to German companies. So maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing on a worldwide basis. We'll then be able to enjoy 2x or 3x our current salary.
But wait that won't work either because we'll suddenly have to pay higher prices for everything we consume (because a worldwide outsourcing ban will affect more than just software.) If our salary goes up 3x but the prices for everything goes up 10x, the net result is poverty.
So stopping outsourcing doesn't work, does it?
For everyone out here who thinks others jobs are not worth and they better got the cut, try remember to every time you were helped by someone in that role. Every job existed for a reason or vision or purpose. Just because it is not valued anymore in Microsoft doesn't mean the people were bad. People moving on have a ton of skills and a ton of other places where they will be more valuable. At this moment it would be nice for people to lend helping hand than bitching. "Thou Shalt Do Unto Others As You Would have Them Do Unto You".
I'd like to know more and hear perspectives (constructive) on the vendor policy change:
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/internal-memo-microsoft-cut-external-staff-18-months-requiring-six-month-break
Too much hatred here. Can anyone point me to a forum where the policy change is being discussed?
Mini -- we know you're busy, cut could you please remove the unproductive hate-filled comments of the trolls?
When I heard OSG changed people's title to QE and ask them to do telemetry, I knew they are in trouble since other teams are changing to combined engineering model which at least give testers a change. One girl asked me what do you think about tester own telemetry. I told her that it does not make sense thousand of peoples own telemetry, and most of today's SDET has little chance to be data scientist.
Yes, there is at least one cut in SQL Azure Test. I think it is not based on performance, but age.
Remember, last time Microsoft did the layoff in 2009, it killed all labor certificated from 2007 onward, they had to refile and restart the green card in around 2011.
I was a SDET and at any moment if I was not thinking holistically about product life cycle and customer satisfaction, I was not feeling comfortable. Said that as an SDET the role is infact quite challenging along with heavy responsibility. An SDET is a developer and a Quality assurance driver. An SDET has to has to has to understand what product code is written and then smartly lay out test strategy. I took pleasure in cranking good code, infact many a times actually doing product development and fixing bugs. We infact built a model where we wrote the cross partner integration libraries while the devs wrote the core feature with mocks and then by the time they come to plug in the integration, it was all validated and verified and the code was also ready to plug in.
I feel bad and Sorry for the SDET folks who had to leave. But I support the move as this role was abused a lot by many. Some just sat like a hen and got their work done from others. They took pride and privilege of being a part of the team with 0 contribution. As a technology company, it needed to cut this "FAT". No offense to anyone, but if you are an SDET, be a developer, take pride in writing code, bring some good value addition to the chain.
I left Microsoft about 4 months back as overall the direction was not looking great. As a developer in heart and passion for Quality, the company was just off the track. I am Happy where I am as now I am cranking quite a lot of code, useful code and adding tremendous value. Yes, and the other best part is that I am not stuck with some crappy internal framework or just MS technology; but using the amazing array of opensource stuff and doing the real work. Simple things like source control, CR tool, build framework - they are all there and very nice opensource tools and feeling great while using them.
So all in all, if you are a good SDET, I'll say - SMILE and be Happy. You have got an amazing opportunity. There is life outside MS and trust me if you take it the right way, it's way better. This is true for everyone irrespective of where you come from and what you eat. Just keep doing the right thing and you'll get the right reward. All the crap discussions are noise. I am indeed looking for smart and talented SDETs and yes, you need to be really great in coding. So I'll ask you to shine your LinkedIn profile (no, I would hate to see you faking there and you'll be caught), get your network reconnected and go strong. I'll be looking for you.a
Warn in Washington lists it now
Company Location Layoff Start Date # of Workers Closure Layoff Type of Layoff Received Date
Microsoft Redmond 9/15/2014 1351 Layoff Permanent 7/17/2014
Not to feed the racist IMP, but "Madhavan Kesawan" does not exist in the GAL. There are a surprising number of trolls here, looks like MSFT folks have left the room.
Mini please consider moderation. Seattle Times folks, please don't ever imply that this thread represents Microsoft employee views again.
This is a message to people who are complaining about Microsoft outsourcing to Indian outfits such as Infosys, Tata and HCL.
If Microsoft stops outsourcing to foreign companies, but other American companies such as Oracle don't, then Microsoft will no longer be competitive relative to other American companies. Maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing at all American companies. Then there will no longer be a competitiveness issue.
But wait, SAP from Germany will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative to German companies. So maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing on a worldwide basis. We'll then be able to enjoy 2x or 3x our current salary.
But wait that won't work either because we'll suddenly have to pay higher prices for everything we consume (because a worldwide outsourcing ban will affect more than just software.) If our salary goes up 3x but the prices for everything goes up 10x, the net result is poverty.
So banning outsourcing doesn't work, does it?
What then is the solution?
The way to wealth is simply, to buy low and sell high. Buy commodity products and services, from foreign countries, at low prices and sell innovative new products at high prices. This is how America became wealthy in the first place. There was huge demand for American products such as Boeing airplanes and Intel chips, and asians didn't know how to make similar things themselves. So we demanded a huge premium for those products. And then we imported stuff everyone know how to make at low prices. Once foreign countries figure out how to make something we can no longer demand a premium for our version of that thing. Instead we should let them make it and import it from them at commodity prices. We should move up a notch and make something they don't know how to make and sell it to them for premium prices. This is the only way to wealth.
Wealth is not our birthright. Wealth can only be obtained by being smarter than the foreigners and making things they can't. This is how we have always done it, and if we are going to continue being the wealthiest nation in the world this is how we are going to do it.
The solution is simply, stop the H-1B program all together.
Fuck the focus on Indian H1B's.... I want to see a culling of the Mormon population at MSFT. They are the kings of cronyism.
Microsoft says it can't find enough skilled IT workers to fill open positions, but critics say the company is merely trying to justify hiring foreigners.
Microsoft has thousands of openings for computer scientists, programmers, and other IT pros that it can't fill due to a shortage of skilled workers, a company executive said Thursday.
"We are creating unfilled jobs," said Microsoft chief counsel Brad Smith, speaking at a forum on immigration policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. "We have a shortage."
Smith said Microsoft currently has 6,000 openings, 3,400 of which are for software engineers, developers, programmers, and the like. He said Microsoft can't fill many of the positions because it is unable to find enough applicants with the high-tech skills it needs in key areas like cloud computing and mobility.
I am beginning to think that all the foreign/domestic discussion is here with the explicit purpose of detracting from a discussion of last weeks' events.
That explains why there are always so many pubes all over the urinals every day, its the closest the Indians ever get to a shower!
It's Madhavan Kesavan, with a v, and the OP seems correct, looking at the GAL entries you would think it's some org in Hyderabad, but nope, they are all here in Redmond, aka Little India.
looking at the GAL entries you would think it's some org in Hyderabad
The reports are all vendor employees, not Microsoft employees.
Pls send ur partner, will make her day...as ur day is already made...will definitely make her enjoy front to back...
"We only have 25% women (on ms.com), and only 2/3 that %number of managers that are women. So, in order to rectify the number of women managers, we have to force a distribution of for a couple of years, and then when it is fair, we can move on."
This unquestioned assumption is every bit as appalling as the ones being bandied about by the "American jobs is fer Americans!" quota crowd. No, we don't have to do that. Women are graduating from college and obtaining advanced degrees at the highest rate ever, and at a much higher rate than men over the past few years. Recent hires are overrepresented among that 25% because this is a relatively new trend; that's why the management ranks (which take more time to climb into) haven't yet caught up with that overall proportion. Rather than trying to forcibly impose "equity" by promoting people who wouldn't have otherwise been promoted, how about just giving it some time and letting it happen naturally among those who are actually qualified to work their way up the ladder?
If you want to both kill morale AND set back the growing acceptance of the reality that women can do this stuff just as well as men can, give people legitimate reason to believe that the women they're working for didn't earn the right to be there the way the men at the same level had to. Great idea. This industry runs, to a great degree, on respect for one's peers and immediate managers. What you're proposing would poison that well for another generation, just when it's finally starting to get cleaned.
Before the accusations start flying, let me add that my lead of the past 2+ years is a woman and she runs a kick-ass team whose members are happy to be working for her. She got the job because she's a fucking great dev who also has solid people & organizational skills -- pretty much the same way everyone else around her got that job, at least in my particular org.
There are MANY more women like her joining this company every year, at an increasing rate. Give them the time it takes to work their way up, and the respect to assume that they're perfectly capable of doing so. Don't retard people's careers by treating them as if they're broken, and encouraging their coworkers to view them that way too. The road to hell, etc.
PMs worst technical illiterates I ve seen so far in india...seen them I names like BA Technologists, Project Managers....
Comments in an interview "I like to buy more Books than I can read" what for a***.So, that u can give hope to people before u hang with a rope....Reading shud light knowledge & knowledge shed light lives...than destroying them....may god give strength & save families who got affected by these layoffs...let devil kiss u Satya for reading Jack Welch, Sballmer...Saluting CEOs & leaderships who stood by their employees in hard recession & took a $1 bill....
Anonymous said "I am beginning to think that all the foreign/domestic discussion is here with the explicit purpose of detracting from a discussion of last weeks' events."
Exactly. This is just getting weird. The reality is that Microsoft can't compete in a global environment without playing by the same rules as everyone else. I want to figure out:
1) if 1351 were cut in Puget Sound how many Microsoft were cut outside of Washington?
2) I assume that the 80% number of cuts on Thursday = Nokia (12,500), Microsoft Washington (1351) + Microsoft outside of Washington.
3) Am I right to assume that managerial cuts are going to be included in the remaining 20% between now and the end of the year or is that separate?
No, the 1351 is included in the 13,000 announced. So 5000 more cuts to come.
Then after reviews, a new wave of cuts will be announced.
The most trick thing is MS has a big lay off of workers, but then give bing contract to India consulting firms such as Infosys, tata, why? there are more than enough India workers already and the India CEO shut want more jobs to India people than american people
I'm interested to know what the opportunities are for the RIF'd SDET. Startups looking for developers will not likely gravitate towards someone from the test discipline unless its through a personal network. And large shops most likely have already moved to "combined engineering" in some shape or form. If test was second class at MS, its probably fourth rate elsewhere (1st: service dev, 2nd: javscript dev, 3rd: markup/CSS). I find it hard to believe there are enough open positions for MS trained SDET's or a pathway to become an SDE.
Any thoughts?
Did anyone recognize a real FTE at the Q&A session? If they weren't actors they were bigger stooges than friggin Mo, Larry and Curly.
I couldn't believe how excited and happy everyone there looked. I'm safe, but still absolutely gutted for some folks on our quality team.
If you are over 40 and have only worked at Microsoft, good luck finding a job elsewhere. No one from the Open source shops will touch you. Even if they hire you you will be reporting to a 25 year old. I had gone thru this and the experience was painful. So while you have a chance and are still young diversify into open source. Very few companies outside of Microsoft use Microsoft technologies
Entire MCS test teams in the UK were let go Thursday, so the remaining 4700 is partly accounted for there and I'd think the SE closure in India would add to that too.
"Then after reviews, a new wave of cuts will be announced."
But certain departments already had their reviews last month and there were small cuts in certain departments on Thursday. How could they go back and justify cuts based on a review that is over a month old.
Was the entire 12,500 from Nokia included in the first 13,000? Reading between the lines indicates that the 12,500 number is like the 18,000 overall and that not everyone there has been notified yet.
the ceo's talk about middle managers is ironical and crony. Let's not forget that he is the result of this same system and many of the mid managers are his buddy.
Partners, Principals, Directors will be the main target, excpected to happen in Sep 3rd week. Unfortunately already some GMs and VPs are giving headsup and trying to move them around in order to protect themselves. Look in Bharat Shah's team, one of it.
"Entire MCS test teams in the UK were let go Thursday, so the remaining 4700 is partly accounted for there and I'd think"
Exactly. No one seems to have taken into account the large cuts outside of Puget Sound in Microsoft.
I thought it was 12500 Nokia http://bgr.com/2014/07/17/microsoft-layoffs-18000-employees/
+
1351 Microsoft Puget Sound
+
? Microsoft outside of Puget Sound
I think the number outside of Puget Sound is quite large from what I am hearing both in the US and oversees.
Some Indian troll said:
>If Microsoft stops outsourcing to foreign companies, but other American companies such as Oracle don't, then Microsoft will no longer be competitive relative to other American companies.
That's BULL. Target outsourced their IT to India to be "competitive", and got hacked while Bangalore sleeps on the job. Ebay outsourced their IT to India and got hacked. Motorola, Nokia outsourced to India, where are they now? While Apple,FB,Goog rarely outsource to India or bringing them back. That tells you the Indian snake charmers are selling a lie of competitive advantage,
>But wait, SAP from Germany will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative to German companies.
That's hilarious. The Indian big head of SAP America just got the boot from SAP after he dropped 1 billion bucks to buy a 300 Indian startup run by his Indian buddy. I guess the Germans found his BS less than convincing. LOL
Spot On. The CEO played this exact same game to come up through the ranks and now cries foul. He is gonna protect his buddies which is a long list. Hypocrite.
"Partners, Principals, Directors will be the main target, excpected to happen in Sep 3rd week"
Why the third week of September? Where does this information come from?
Can we stop with the anti-India nonsense? Isn't there a white supremacist forum somewhere for these people? People were saying the same thing about Jews in Germany almost a hundred years ago and we saw where that ended up. Please go away.
Third week of September would be the 15th, bonus pay day. Makes no sense when everyone let go this week is going to vest in August and get their bonus too. Waiting till September just means paying people two extra months more than we needed to. Probably just scaremongering.
But if this did happen in OSG, I think you'd find more of us left seeking pastures new as why would we trust Terry after he already told us we were done?
The reality is that conservatism is backwards. The good old days that the United States remembers after the second world war was rather artificial. Look at the technological superiority of Germany in the last stages of the war. There was a brief lull between 1945 - 1970 but then Germany regained its supremacy. I don't think Americans should blame Indians for what is going on in this country. If anything they are helping keep up appearances. The general population is rather ignorant, more interested in becoming a contestant in a singing contest rather than actually studying and working hard. I don't say that to antagonize the racists who visit this blog. It's just a fact. America never prized education in the way Germany did and does. God is supposed to perform miracles to sustain this nation - at least this is what most of the people have always believed and will believe in the future. Good luck with that. I'd rather count on highly skilled foreign workers to keep up appearances until reality comes crashing down twenty years from now.
What is going in Bharat Shah's organization ? Can you shed more light and also does anyone know if there were layoffs in windows finance and smsg?
Thank you to all of the racists posting here.
I was feeling bad about being fired (12+yrs). You made me realize that the hatred I had towards Microsoft is senseless. If I kept it, it would just consume me forever and I'd turn bitter like you. Thank you for teaching me that is NOT a way to live.
Now, on to something better I hope!
"I am beginning to think that all the foreign/domestic discussion is here with the explicit purpose of detracting from a discussion of last weeks' events."
This cartoon about sums it up
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--zWIZNX9mBE/UjShHQNBJrI/AAAAAAAAPq0/rQ_jAh1RiR0/s1600/carlson+income+inequality.gif
Want another deadwood partner level? Lookup Glen Wood... the GM of Exchange and O365 support in CTS. The guy is a complete buffoon yet knows how to kiss the right people's ass...and while we are at it... lets throw his boss Matt "pretty boy" Fingerhut into it.
Hey Glen, Matt... the morale in your teams is in the toilet and these guys supporting Office 365 have no career prospects. Stop misleading the troops.
Do us all in CTS a favor and take your "leadership skills" to infect Google or Apple... so Microsoft has a shot at catching up to them. The days these vermin are canned cannot come soon enough.
In response to the one who said......
Anonymous said...
Want another deadwood partner level? Lookup Glen Wood.
You must be from Exchange support? Right on the money... Glenn Wood and all the group managers there are scumbags who have their own favorites.
Heck there's a team of people in Exchange called Technical Advisors (all L63 or up) whose only job is review cases of frontline vendors and then funnel that $hit to us... while we drown in work. Why are these idiots still around?
The display ad mentioned right before your post is in Qi Lu's org. Why r u so interested in Dr. Lu?
We have many money sinks like WP. Bing is not bad as you think. Your thought about must be at least 3 years old
There are far too many TAMs (technical account managers) who seem to take the problem from the customer to the Dev team with zero value add. Perhaps the are all people persons.
In the middle of all the discussions here, including the trolls, the racists, the kool-aid drinking brainwashed liberals who celebrate the diversity of 98% Indian teams, let's not forget there are many real human sides to these layoffs, here's one story:
http://www.daringyoungmom.com/2014/07/19/layoff/
Cuts were so random, axing some top performers. Rough math shows comp ratios might've come into play- MS trying to save on severance packages paid out. Transparency is such a BS for these layoffs. Good luck staying motivated, for those spared.
MSIT coming. 30% in Redmond. ENTIRE test org.
Any impact in ECIT? BJM is too busy with his affair with his vendor M. What about all the dead weight Solution Managers - McK, Kristy, Ulkekul? Having worked in other MSIT, ECIT is the worst political org. God all the VP talks about is young girls. Somebody......
First and foremost, my sincere concerns for all those who lost their jobs over the previous 2 days. It does SUCK. I can feel your pain. Hang in there, the tides will soon change again for you guys.
I am an SDET soon to be joining OSG. With all these news, I am now worried about how the job will be there.
For me I, personally, love to code. I believe, in order to be a good SDET, you should have a passion for testing. Yes, it requires good coding skills (at least, you want your code to be perfect as well), but what it also requires is a different perspective. A perspective to look at things differently.
I don't mind the data mining part of the job, but if that's the only thing I am forced to do, I will be pissed off. Because whatever bs people might come and tell me, in order to be a "data scientist" you need to have a different perspective of understanding/analyzing data and that cannot be attained overnight. So, it seems that we'll do a crappy job there as well. And to the SDEs out there, it's a fact that they have become comfortable in throwing the code over to the test side. Admit it. No, I am not saying that they cannot write tests, rather I am saying that not all SDEs are able to change their mindset completely and start thinking from a different perspective. They have written a code as a matter of fact and their perspective will always be driven by the logic they have implemented in writing up the original code. So, I am not blaming them, if they have missed scenarios there.
However, what I wanna really ask is that is there anyone here (other than haters) who knows how the mentality in OSG will be going forward for the test org? If not, I will have to start looking for a dev position, but sadly I'll have to wait for 18 months more ... because under MSFT policies you can't normally change a role until you are 18 months in a position.
"Are all the folks getting laid off being given corporate and maybe building access for 60 days to help find another job internally?"
All of the people I know from OSG who got laid off lose corpnet and building access on July 20.
I've always loved reading minimsft (thanks, mini!!), but I think this particular post has been dragged off of the rails by asshat trolls. I worked at Microsoft for over 15 years. I worked with a ton of different people during my years there and never once did I hear (or hear of) an MS employee disparaging someone on the basis of race, country of origin, religion, gender, age, whatever. (I'm not saying it's never happened -- I'm saying I never experienced it and that I think it's pretty rare.) I've only heard employees and managers getting after others about things like output, throughput, genius, bug counts, broken builds, and sometimes even spending too much time at work, away from family. I never knew employees to talk about things that are personal; things that are fundamental to who people are, because none of those things are about creating software and services. Those of you who are ranting about H1Bs, Indians, Chinese, etc, you don't and never have worked at Microsoft. You are trolls (and, really, assholes) who are trying to capitalize on a really unfortunate situation to make Microsoft and its people look nasty and evil. Stop being posers and crawl back under your rocks. I'm going to have to abandon this particular thread because it has become unproductive and hurtful. Thanks for coming back though, Mini, and I hope to read more of you.
Regarding the comments on H1B etc.
The racism here is despicable, and cowardly. Would you say any of this to your co-workers? Or just on the internet where you can hide behind anonymity?
Also, I think blaming "H1B" for everything is an oversimplification. H1B has some pretty strict quotas. I think vendor companies like Infosys, "L1" visa and the "manager" categories for GCs are how H1B quotas are (legally) circumvented.
Having said all that, I do understand where the frustration comes from. I'm originally an immigrant myself (though European, not Asian) but I think it's a fact that by allowing thousands of engineers from India to work here, wages are driven down significantly. That's just supply and demand, and I don't think anybody can deny that.
Also, I'm all for diversity, immigration etc. but what we have at MS is not diversity, even though they keep saying that. Diversity means a variety of races, ethnicities, nationalities, cultures, etc. Not all from one country - that's not diversity. And I admit, I do sometimes feel a little uncomfortable at work - being in the minority as a white guy and American (in my org).
However, I would never blame the (in large parts hard-working) guys from India for that - they are just trying to be successful, like most of us. If anybody's to blame for it it's the companies and politicians who participate in this or allow it to happen.
I am confused with what happened on Thursday/Friday. Does it mean 1351 people are already fired and it's done in WA?
It's very quiet in Bing org but we are all scared and we check emails all of the time.
btw. I am really sorry for all folks that already got envelopes. I wish you all best!
I am a Microsoft engineering manager. In the last 4 years, every time I have opened positions on my team, the VAST majority are applicants born outside the US. And the largest chunk of that is Indians.
Believe me, I *have* tried several times to poach my US-born friends, ex-colleagues, and other talented individuals in the industry. My success rate has been low; generally they have been happy doing what they were doing.
So those complaining about the number of foreign (and especially Indian) employees in Redmond, learn to get over it. Jobs go proportionally to those who apply.
Got 3 'Gold Stars' and then got the boot on Thursday.
Just shy of 15 years of commitment to the PM role, ended in a 10 minute conversation.
What org/area were you in? Sorry for the pain! 15 years and 3 gold stars. What was the dev:pm ratio in your team? Were you remote?
Diversity is good, too many microsofties of any particular race is not diversity, be it Europeans Americans, Indians, or Chinese. MS has too many Indians now. This needs to be changed to achieve a more balanced workforce.
Does it mean 1351 people are already fired and it's done in WA?
My God please stop with the Nazi inspired rabble rousing.
I sincerely hope that my Indian colleagues reading this blog do not for one second believe that the racist comments are coming from anyone who has ever set foot on a Microsoft campus. I am so thankful to work in such a diverse place and have loved learning about and building friendships with people from across the globe - it's been a really fulfilling experience. Many of the smartest people I know at Microsoft (and some of my favorite coworkers) are Indians and I really don't appreciate the hateful comments.
I hope and pray the MSIT news is true. Why stop there? What about ECIT? VLIT? Why just SDETs? What about Devs, PMs, and SDs? The entire IT org needs to be canned. It's easily the most bloated and worthless organization in the entire company. And yes, a quick trip to the Sammamish or Millenium campus, and you're instantly transported to Hyderabad.
So maybe there's some good news to these layoffs, I just want to see as many scum-sucking curry eaters to get the boot and go back to the shitholes from which they came. And they can take their liberal apologists with them so they can all celebrate diversity together.
Yes, like countries other countries in the world America has its fair share of stupid racists. Nevertheless as this is a country which guarantees free speech the morons come to a blog like this in order to stir up trouble. Beats the reality of working at checkout at Walmart.
Amy org (Finance) will have huge impacts. Consolidation will kill all of SMSG finance. Frank B team highest impact (RE&F, GPG, Programs, MSCIS, Operations, Business Intalligence). Next 2 weeks.
As others have pointed out, H1Bs are all colors. So, why is being against H1Bs racist ... I think you mean protectionist, maybe.
In any case, I, and I think most would like to know more first hand accounts of layoffs instead of hearing more about H1Bs.
Curry-eaters? You have an issue with turmeric? Really? Please go away.
"Next 2 weeks"
Where does this information come from?
Maybe the street knew about this? Was wondering why share price can hover around $44. Now we know.
Too many "Principals" drawing fat paychecks and did little or nothing over the years, especially in the Windows group. They who "made" VISTA are still vesting and collecting paychecks. It's disgusting, hope that they get what they desired in this round---7 years too late!
> So those complaining about the number of foreign (and especially Indian) employees in Redmond, learn to get over it. Jobs go proportionally to those who apply.
Many recruiters are Indian and many Indian resumes are doctored, fake, even interviews are sometimes by different people than actual person.
They also come in as Indian contractors' backdoors through their Indian middle managers' favors.
I sincerely hope that my Indian colleagues reading this blog do not for one second believe that the racist comments are coming from anyone who has ever set foot on a Microsoft campus.
Are you kidding me? These comments come overwhelmingly from MS employees who wouldn't say them to someone's face but who reveal their true feelings on this website under the cover of anonymity. Read any article on immigration, or high-tech visas, on any online forum (even one as liberal as the NYTimes), and you'll see such feelings been expressed, though not in such asshole terms.
I guess it's good that the Indians remain oblivious to what many of their white co-workers think of them. Otherwise no work will get done.
Maybe the street knew about this? Was wondering why share price can hover around $44. Now we know.
Too many "Principals" drawing fat paychecks and did little or nothing over the years, especially in the Windows group. They who "made" VISTA are still vesting and collecting paychecks. It's disgusting, hope that they (including Rolanday and Richard Clayton) get what they deserved in this round---7 years too late!
Sure. If you look at Nazi propaganda you'd see the same thing said about Jews.
"I guess it's good that the Indians remain oblivious to what many of their white co-workers think of them."
I hardly think the opinions of idiots here at the blog are reflective of MSFT employees. A group of people are trying to stir up trouble, probably from Google or one of other competitors. Don't believe this stuff. This is a classic disinformation campaign.
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