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 801 – 1000 of 1345 Newer› Newest»I bet the same people are taking the 'for' and 'against' Indians side in order to sow dissent. This is complete nonsense. Don't believe that your American coworkers really believe any of this.
Guess Indians in the Seattle area need to be careful. Such attitudes as have been expressed here cannot be restricted to verbal insults on online forums and could be expressed in more (physically) harmful ways. After all, the PNW is no stranger to racist violence against Indians. Take care, folks!
Gosh.so much hatred. Is this about H1B folks in general? Like the folks who have come from the best universities in US and have gone through the same level of interviews as all the other folks here? Or the over use of H1B for contracting purposes? If the first one is indeed true, can you explain the rationale behind it? Me as an Indian worked hard, got good grades in a much tougher environment, got through a good university here on merit (Or you think the professors at CMU and Stanford favors Indians too? ) and then gave the interviews and now working at Microsoft? What have we done wrong to deserve such hatred? I would be very obliged if someone can explain.
Are you kidding me? These comments come overwhelmingly from MS employees who wouldn't say them to someone's face
You don't work for Microsoft. You are not an FTE. Losers like you will never work for Microsoft.
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.
While I totally agree there are many B and even C players in dev, test and PM, it's not a wash at all between SDEs and SDETs.
First, as SDETs develop their coding ability at Microsoft, they simply aren't held to the same standard as SDEs. SDET code doesn't ship in the product - from that simple fact derives all the other reasons why SDET code has a lower bar than SDE code.
SDE code in the DEV depots in Windows has to be "production quality". It has to pass peer code reviews. It has to past OACR's automated static analysis tests. It needs to pass Client Perf Gates and Appcompat Gates. If a selfhost blocking or other RI blocking bug gets in, then the dev gets an unhappy RI driver and unhappy dev lead in their office asking WTF. Ultimately it ships in the product. If it's an unreliable feature, then dev leads have to add resources to the feature to get it to RTM quality, or cut it from the product. Not good at review time. Most SDET code checks into the TEST depots (non-shipping code). Most test changes have no code reviews and it's not held to any systemic coding standards. No pre- or post- checkin automation runs on the quality of the test code. It doesn't have to pass RI gates. If it's an unreliable test, it gets shut off and maybe turned back on later. Not nearly so bad at review time.
Dev and Test jobs are not the same. On a good feature team, SDEs are evaluated on their ability to turn PM spec into dev spec into working code that ships in the product. During Dev review meetings and talent planning, no lead can defend a dev on their team that can't do that cycle well. Words like "checked in" and "fixed" and "resolved" are used. During Test review meetings, things like "participated in", "wrote automation for", "found N bugs, 40% resulted in fixed product bugs, only 10% no repro, 20% won't fix". The latter criteria is about quality of bugs found by the SDET, which is one reason SDETs hate no repro resolutions - too many make them like they file crappy bugs. So over time too many SDETs start emphasizing the T part of SDET instead of the D part, which is what SDEs have been emphasizing all along.
And remember that "coding ability doesn't pass SDE bar but does pass SDET bar" mistake that got too many SDETs hired in the first place. So SDETs likely started out with weaker coding skills, they are held to a lower coding quality bar to pass as they do their jobs day to day, and they are not evaluated at review time on the same set of criteria.
All this adds up to Dev is the major league team and test is the minor league team. It's why it is very uncommon for an SDE to want to move to SDET job. Instead it is common for SDETs to want move to SDE. As good SDETs grow into great SDETs they interview, get the SDE job, transition into good SDEs and then hopefully grow into great SDEs.
Poor SDETs at best grow into average SDETs and stick there. Average SDETs often fail to make the transition to dev if they try (they fail their SDE interviews) or they get happy as L62-L63 SDETs with 10 year time in level and never think to leave.
The above points are factually and objectively true, yet without a doubt there are many people in the Test org that will dispute them as a load of crap. And many people in the Dev org that will agree with each of them.
Is there a way to talk about the "Indianization" of Microsoft without it becoming scapegoating or racism? There are huge cultural differences between the U.S. and India. Within India, even more than within the U.S., there are big differences between regions. Most people born and raised in the U.S. have no idea the scope of the cultural divide. One big problem, from my perspective, is the different way Indians and "traditional white America" relates to authority. Another is the type and degree of corruption that is tolerated and/or expected. These things are never talked about but they create real problems. I supposed one reason they can't be talked about is that it is so easy to slip into racist, accusatory, and scapegoating speech and behavior.
'Racism' is by its definition the act of appealing to race as an explanative tool for social phenomena. It doesn't belong in a discussion about the recent layoffs at Microsoft. The purpose of this post is to help people get information about what happened and is happening at MSFT. It was not supposed to serve as a recruiting effort for the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.
To SDET soon to be joining OSG, find another job. It'll be better for your life expectancy.
MSIT will be canned, it's part of that $100 million outsourcing deal with Infosys.
One big problem, from my perspective, is the different way Indians and "traditional white America" relates to authority. Another is the type and degree of corruption that is tolerated and/or expected.
Ever considered that the miniscule number of Indians (among the 1.2 bn population) working for Microsoft in the PNW don't have hierarchical notions of authority? And may want to be in American precisely because they are sick and tired of the corruption in their native country? And also that spending a number of years in an undergrad or grad school in the US makes them almost as American in attitude as you?
Having come here from Canada I can tell you first hand that all the Indian immigrants to the area will be beneficial to the overall life quality. Absolutely beautiful women who in the second generation will assimilate perfectly into the greater society. India has a rich culture and the young up and comers truly love learning and will bring a great deal of sophistication to an area which until Microsoft came along was little more than a swamp filled with local yokel losers (go to the Maggiano's lobby and see what kind of farmers used to live in these parts).
On the white paper cups used by Muslim men in the toilets to wash their penis, I too have seen these cups and now that I know what it's for, it is ABSOLUTELY GROSS.
There is also someone on my floor who has perpetual diarrhea. Every day, it looks like fireworks went off in the toilet bowl. Super gross for those who have to share a toilet. They don't even have the courtesy to clean up their mess.
Same goes for the open cartons of milk left in or around the fridge. No one's going to share your milk because we have no idea how long it's been open for! Just use the entire flippin carton!
"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."
Well said. It's well known that H-1B is a dual intent visa wherein there is a possibility of applying for permanent residency. The reason companies want H-1B and of course the so called broken immigration system is indentured labor. The H-1Bs need to wait atleast 10+ years to get a Green card. Can they make an American work for 10+ years in a company and throw $hit at him ? Simple answer 'No'. H-1Bs need to put up with all the $hit thrown at them with a dream/hope that if they stay for 10+ years in one company, they can get permanent residency. This "Hope" is what makes hiring H-1Bs lucrative. If you look at Europeans or any other nationality apart from Indian and Chinese, the wait for green card is significantly less and the smarter among the lot leave the company for greener pastures after getting a Green card !
I'm not so sure that most of the vitriol against Indians isn't coming from MSFT employees, past and present. There's too much information about organizations, names, and various campuses for a total stranger to have knowledge of. My guess is that a sense of resentment has been building over the years as there has been an overwhelming increase in the number of Indians on campus, far exceeding their share of the population.
There are huge cultural differences between the U.S. and India.
You are a loser who wants to be paid a salary just for being white. Get off this site, get a programming book and learn something. Maybe then you'll get a job.
> Is there a way to talk about the "Indianization" of Microsoft without it becoming scapegoating or racism? There are huge cultural differences between the U.S. and India. Within India, even more than within the U.S., there are big differences between regions. Most people born and raised in the U.S. have no idea the scope of the cultural divide. One big problem, from my perspective, is the different way Indians and "traditional white America" relates to authority. Another is the type and degree of corruption that is tolerated and/or expected. These things are never talked about but they create real problems. I supposed one reason they can't be talked about is that it is so easy to slip into racist, accusatory, and scapegoating speech and behavior.
Quite true. They managed to get away with discriminating against their own low caste people, for two thousands years. Now they are bringing the same discrimination to Americans, to become masters of universe for the next thousand years.
"I am an SDET soon to be joining OSG. With all these news, I am now worried about how the job will be there....because under MSFT policies you can't normally change a role until you are 18 months in a position."
Look buddy, Let me get this out straight to you. 18 months will definitely include a review year. If you are found to be really smart (smarter than your lead), your rating will be screwed. If you are an average Joe, your rating will be such that you can stay in the same team. Which manager/lead would like to see you leave their team ? Either ways you are screwed.
WARN shows microsoft now .. layoff starts sep 15th
"Does it mean 1351 people are already fired and it's done in WA?"
No its just the first wave, specifically for WA. This is not talking about layoffs outside WA.
// WARN shows microsoft now .. layoff starts sep 15th
Did you just wake up, buddy. We have moved on from layoffs and WARN to abusing Indians who abuse contracting companies who abuse H1Bs
Hatred against indians is totally uncalled for. I am personally an indian engineering manager (not in MSFT) and i have US born reporting to me and i have asked them to refer their friends and i have tried a lot to get more diversity, however for a position if i get 100 resumes 45 are indian, 50 are chinese and 5 rest. Most of the US resumes are 30+ years experienced - for an entry level position - I have even got them interviewed (but non indians) and the result always is that they are overqualified, they don't want to do coding etc. How can i find a fit and also make my workplace more diverse, what am i missing.
>> "I am an SDET soon to be joining OSG. With all these news, I am now worried about how the job will be there....because under MSFT policies you can't normally change a role until you are 18 months in a position."
>> Look buddy, Let me get this out straight to you. 18 months will definitely include a review year. If you are found to be really smart (smarter than your lead), your rating will be screwed. If you are an average Joe, your rating will be such that you can stay in the same team. Which manager/lead would like to see you leave their team ? Either ways you are screwed.
Man, this sucks!! I got good ratings (2) in my past review cycles. Got tired of the work there, as the scope of working on good stuffs were ending and that's why I decided to change teams .... Well, I know it's a new team and everything and I have to start from scratch there, prove myself once again. And my prior ratings don't mean a thing. I guess, I'll start looking again.
MSIT is being canned? Best news I've heard all day. White, Indian, Chinese, the whole lot is rotten and their comeuppance can't come soon enough.
Agreed on the MSIT part. I've never had any luck having them solve any problems. The vendors at the local help desk are zombies - one always brings her dog to work and shoves the dog under her desk (and it's definitely not a guide dog). And in terms of full time staff, I've had some P0 issues with spam in my mailbox flowing in at a few pieces a minute at peak, and MSIT told me since I wasn't director level, I wasn't eligible for their help... what? It could overload the server!
>> >> >> "I am an SDET soon to be joining OSG. With all these news, I am now worried about how the job will be there....because under MSFT policies you can't normally change a role until you are 18 months in a position."
>> >> Look buddy, Let me get this out straight to you. 18 months will definitely include a review year. If you are found to be really smart (smarter than your lead), your rating will be screwed. If you are an average Joe, your rating will be such that you can stay in the same team. Which manager/lead would like to see you leave their team ? Either ways you are screwed.
>> Man, this sucks!! I got good ratings (2) in my past review cycles. Got tired of the work there, as the scope of working on good stuffs were ending and that's why I decided to change teams .... Well, I know it's a new team and everything and I have to start from scratch there, prove myself once again. And my prior ratings don't mean a thing. I guess, I'll start looking again.
Dude, if your title is SDET you have a target on your back that won't come off regardless of what org you are in. Your only safety lies with the dev team. You can rescind accepting your last offer given the new circumstances in OSG and no one in HR is going to argue with you. Make peace with the new reality and get moving.
Man up and go find a dev job. In dev interviews emphasize what you wrote, how you wrote it, what you did. Talk about your review scores is useless because very few dev leads respect the review ratings given by test leads. Refer to earlier posts about how test is second class and their explanations about exactly why it's second class.
>Hatred against indians is totally uncalled for. I am personally an indian engineering manager (not in MSFT) and i have US born reporting to me and i have asked them to refer their friends and i have tried a lot to get more diversity, however for a position if i get 100 resumes 45 are indian, 50 are chinese and 5 rest. Most of the US resumes are 30+ years experienced - for an entry level position - I have even got them interviewed (but non indians) and the result always is that they are overqualified, they don't want to do coding etc. How can i find a fit and also make my workplace more diverse, what am i missing.
Nice try, Master. BTW, Indians get 8 times more H1b visas than the Chinese (favorite Indian scapegoat), through the extensive abuses by vendors like Infosys, HCL, Cognizant, Tata Consulting, Wipro. Together these companies brought about 1 million Indian IT experts into the USA, where total IT jobs are 2 million. Do the math, master. And now you beg for diversity.
Many of these companies are familiar sight at Microsoft and we expect to see more of them as our jobs are cut.
>> Gosh.so much hatred. Is this about H1B folks in general? Like the folks who have come from the best universities in US and have gone through the same level of interviews as all the other folks here? Or the over use of H1B for contracting purposes? If the first one is indeed true, can you explain the rationale behind it? Me as an Indian worked hard, got good grades in a much tougher environment, got through a good university here on merit (Or you think the professors at CMU and Stanford favors Indians too? ) and then gave the interviews and now working at Microsoft? What have we done wrong to deserve such hatred? I would be very obliged if someone can explain.
anyone care to shed light on this?
>>Dude, if your title is SDET you have a target on your back that won't come off regardless of what org you are in. Your only safety lies with the dev team. You can rescind accepting your last offer given the new circumstances in OSG and no one in HR is going to argue with you. Make peace with the new reality and get moving.
Yeah .... it's true that in test we don't follow the same coding gates like dev. I mean, it makes sense not to follow all the gated check-ins and everything. But I have also seen cases when nothing is followed. I was fortunate to work with a group of devs and actually had my automation dev-reviewed and was glad to have the feedback. But it's not at all a common practice, I donno why. Not even test reviews.
Well, I guess I am going to rescind .... I try not to talk about prior ratings, because those are all bygones. What you do currently is what matters. But, it's also sad to have that "T" target on your back and people not taking you seriously enough. Personally, I think I need 6 more months to be transitioned into SDE. I can try for sure now, but the rejection is something I was worried about and hence I applied for another SDET role. Well, as I said, I will start looking.
i am an indian and i got layed off today :(
While I can't speak for others, I find the "diversity" of my team to be quite peaceful. Sure, there's a large number of Indians, Chinese, Russians, Israelis, but we all get along. Or maybe I'm blindsighted?
To the Indian manager who is trying to reason with these morons - it is pointless to reason with the morons here. You will be called a liar or worse.
India has a lot of engineers as does China. These idiots cannot comprehend such big numbers till they see the people and "feel like minority".
IBM is now an Indian company, if one has to judge by the ethnicity of employees. I will not be surprised if the same is true for other companies.
You can kick all of the foreigners out of the country and the jobs will simply move offshore. Entire divisions. However we would lose business access to these markets. Securing this kind of access is key to future growth and cannot be sacrificed. Just look up the number of orders put in by Asian airlines with Boeing and consider the possibility that they will go to Airbus or Embraer. This is tens to hundreds of billions of dollars, in case you have trouble with the math. This is not accounting for 30+ year maintenance contracts for the planes. Think of every American company losing market access to the fastest growing economies in the world. This may seem insignificant in your own narcissistic bubble, but this is deemed critical enough by American businessmen and politicians that they allow foreigners in.
Calls for violence huh - looks like internet tough guys are here!
I am an Indian and I want to give a different perspective.
- Yes, you will find lots of Indians reporting to Indians. This is not because they want to. The Indians who are naturalized understand that they can bully, abuse and extract work from us.
- Most qualified Indians prefer to work for an American manager. They understand work life balance and almost always care for their direct reports.
For teams that have already made the change to combined engineering how is it working out?
@What groups today have no one affected, still to come? Dynamics? Operations? Finance? HR? Field? Office?
MBS (Dynamics) was unaffected by this week's layoffs. No talk right now of restructuring or anything, either. If you're cloud, you're golden.
Not the OP, but here is my response.
>>
BTW, Indians get 8 times more H1b visas than the Chinese (favorite Indian scapegoat), through the extensive abuses by vendors like Infosys, HCL, Cognizant, Tata Consulting, Wipro.
Please explain with citations. "Favorite Indian Scapegoat"? Did you just pull that out of your hindside or were you looking to incite a flame war between Indians and Chinese?
>>Together these companies brought about 1 million Indian IT experts into the USA, where total IT jobs are 2 million.
Again - total made up stuff spouted here by someone who knows nothing. H1B does not mean a person is in the US. In fact in many cases the H1b visa holder never comes to the US. Many Indian outsourcing companies have employees with H1B, but working in India, ready to go to the US on a moment's notice. The employees also leave US at a moments notice and go back to India. That is how these companies make money.
US has 2 million IT Jobs? A fixed number? That's it? Are you out of your mind?
>>Do the math, master.
Yep - do the math. Of course, your world view doesn't seem to have a place for facts.
To the person who pointed out the obvious:
India has a lot of engineers as does China. These idiots cannot comprehend such big numbers till they see the people and "feel like minority".
Unfortunately your argument doesn't hold water. Indian outsourcers imported 1 million Indian "experts" into America high tech in the last 10+ years, way more than other nations, including the Chinese.
The Chinese developed their own IT companies, which may not be perfect. But they did not steal other people's companies and jobs, through corruption, nepotism, discrimination and layoffs at the same time as outsourcing and abusing H1b visas.
As an SDET at a fairly high level why can't I choose to take an SDE job at 3 levels below my current so I can try to compete, prove myself and build up my pure development skills again? They force you to move across to the SDE discipline at your current level which makes failure much more likely (and probably passing the interview will be where you are blocked).
regarding "It's very quiet in Bing org"
A couple of years ago, when I left Bing, OSD overall and Bing + AdsCenter specifically had the worst retention rate across MS. I guess all one needs to do there is slow down hiring and headcount will drop naturally.
- Most qualified Indians prefer to work for an American manager. They understand work life balance and almost always care for their direct reports.
Are you the sole voice for all Indians? There are good and bad managers of all kinds. In most cases that I have seen, the leadership drives the culture in an org. Blame your leader, not your manager.
Working at Microsoft for over a decade the racist comments here aren't from MSFT or ex-MSFT. Our coworkers be they French, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Brazilian, or from South King County are our friends. (Yes that last category could shower more often.)
Don't bother with a sideways move of SDET to SDE within MS. Your compensation won't change and you still have to go through the interview rigmarole. Why not try applying to other tech companies in the area (but not Amazon... *shudder*). I moved on last year from an SDET position at MS. Doubled my compensation, and have a much more interesting and fulfilling job.
>>"Mike’s team introduced many engineering system improvements that became a standard part of the Windows engineering process, including a system known as “The Gates.”
I don't think having different classes of tests that block source code from moving between branches is rocket science.
"Did they ever give a Technical Recognition Award to someone in the test org, like they did to Michael Fortin?"
Yup, the guy who wrote Fiddler was an SDET when he wrote it to test the up-and-coming online version of MS Office.
>>The Chinese developed their own IT companies, which may not be perfect. But they did not steal other people's companies and jobs, through corruption, nepotism, discrimination and layoffs at the same time as outsourcing and abusing H1b visas
I have no idea about the Chinese software firms, but I refuse to believe blanket statements like these. I am not delusional to believe that there will be no competition from Chinese citizens or Chinese firms. Which is why I don't take my job or my skills for granted.
The layoffs now are made by Microsoft, which is a multinational company. Only a fraction may be outsourced. Now tell me why an outsourcing firm - American, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican- should not take this opportunity up? Are you saying that it is the fault of the outsourcing company that the jobs were eliminated? Or is it the fault of the prior management that made poor choices in hiring so many people? Or may be its the ever changing customer taste or the greedy share holders.
There is a human cost to this process and I am acutely aware of it. I have survived this round of layoffs and may not be so lucky the next time around. Anyone would be angry at losing a job they love. However one thing I will not do is to place the blame on an entire nation of people for my predicament.
>> "Did they ever give a Technical Recognition Award to someone in the test org, like they did to Michael Fortin?"
>> Yup, the guy who wrote Fiddler was an SDET when he wrote it to test the up-and-coming online version of MS Office.
That'd be Eric Lawrence, and if you read his LinkedIn profile you'll find his titles at Microsoft were never SDET and he was never in a test org. And if you visit bldg 37, I recall they have the awards there and Fiddler got an award for Engineering Excellence. That's different.
Why are you guys thinking they wont need SDET's ?? Ofcourse the plan is to move into One Engineering team but someone still has to write E2E automations, scale testing, telemetry etc. etc. Roles will have to be there but its only the title change.
There is no way in teams like Windows Server you can have devs to those complex testing while shipping on time. Impossible if you are a part of such group !
Finally some sane comment. I guess everyone should take lessons on business management. You cannot run a software company without test its as simple as that. Why do you think there are a billion conferences just dedicated to Software reliability and testing. Roles are evolving but not disappearing
>If you are an SDE and you think success is writing product code with no tests for it, you're going to get your ass handed to you.
I can just see next year's headline now "REDMOND HIP-DEEP IN DISEMBODIED ASSES; SCIENTISTS BAFFLED". (Yeah, who am I kidding? That headline has been true for years.)
Seems like Nadella and co. are trying to follow the Google dev model. The problem is that they might have the ICs who are up to it but they don't have the leadership by any stretch of the imagination. Rots of ruck.
Google has a lot of Testers too. Infact they consider them super important
Obviously written by a man .... "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?"
Time? OMG. Women have gone through full career life cycles, unable to break the glass ceiling at Microsoft. Microsoft is 39 years old. How many senior women have we had in even senior roles? Just a handful. Not proportionate to the number of women that have made a career here. Just for trivia: ScottGu is 39, Microsoft is 39. A woman that was on the team when Scott was hired as an intern, is still a Director.
In 4 years I've only seen one woman go to GM in my whole non-engineering division of 300 people. I'm sure there are more in other groups, I'm not saying none, but pretty sparse. Yet, in the US 60% of the Marketing graduates are women, and that number doesn't match our distribution of the top marketing & business executives. Women aren't new to business degrees, good grief man. We don't need to give them more time, we need someone to say we will find the best women, and help them fight the good-old-boy network. We had four women in EVP leadership, and our new CEO sent two of them down.
By the way, it looks like 40% of the folks at Microsoft are not in engineering, that is the strange thing about this thread - not many comments from those folks.
Speaking of movement, what is with the former GMs in MSIT that are now showing up in the GAL as Sr Directors? What is the back story on that?
IT out sourcing cost more. I am working in a big consulting firm. Saw many examples in recent several years. Bunch of cheating.
I don't want to key in my name because the leadership is bought by India!
WFH is wrong with these thousands of lines of emails sent by these execs - Esplly msft. Corporate shit!!!! ITs hard to parse..now I should create a tool to parse the shit out and get meaningful 2 lines out of it..
Refering to nadella's and Mr.Nokia' Elop
Bing started the crazy stuff across Microsoft. Hiring, promoting people and meaning less work life balance (WLB) like crazy. By eating 11Billon over the course of years.
All the data scientist and cosmos stuff is a plague and who ever worked on it shouldn't be hired else where because you are inviting plague!!
bing might suck but cosmos is awesome technology.
"Ask yourself why Michael Fortin, longtime dev, never test, in charge of the new Quality org? Because Terry (and Satya) want sweeping modernization across the board - tooling, processes, engineering org."
When Terry took over, he put "his" people in key positions. Fortin was part of the old Windows Core organization, so he was displaced. They had to put him somewhere (because he's a CVP and they never get fired), so he was given the Test organization. Make no mistake; it was a demotion for Fortin.
"Those tools, processes, and people org worked for Win7 but Microsoft and OSG are in an entirely different competitive landscape than when Win7 started. We re-ran the Win7 movie for Win8 (in terms of tools, processes, engineering org) and look at the tremendous success that resulted. NOT!"
The commercial failure of Windows 8 was the result of Sinofsky/Larson-Green's attempt to push Metro down everyone's throat. If they'd just left the damn Start menu alone, the outcome would have been very different. It had nothing to do with the engineering processes used during Windows 8 development. Nothing.
"WARN shows microsoft now .. layoff starts sep 15th"
The way the WARN act works is that employers are obliged to give 60 days notice of termination of employment. So all the people who were notified on Thursday will stop being employees on Sept 15th. Until, those folks are still on the Microsoft payroll -- even though they no longer have access to the buildings, assets, email, etc.
That WARN notice doesn't mean that another round of layoffs will happen in September. (Of course, that could still happen, but it has nothing to do with the WARN notice that's just been posted.)
When Terry took over, he put "his" people in key positions. Fortin was part of the old Windows Core organization, so he was displaced. They had to put him somewhere (because he's a CVP and they never get fired), so he was given the Test organization. Make no mistake; it was a demotion for Fortin.
It may or may not have been a demotion for Fortin, but when he got the job Grant George and Jon DeVaan were still Microsoft employees and both CVPs. Neither are now Microsoft employees. Definitely a demotion for them.
In order to be a good tester you'd need to have a different perspective to how things "should" work. What is "expected" and how things can and should "behave". I think, it's a different perspective than writing up smart codes to create gates. Yes, gates and processes are required always. But not all great devs are good testers. Spare me the bs. I am, in no way, undermining the role of a tester or a dev, just pointing out the difference in perspective.
And, yes, a successful business model requires great test as well as dev. However, in lieu of the confusion of the test (SDET who's joining OSG), yes it's a valid point if the test role is supposed changed to "data-mining" role. He/she has stated that overnight people can't be data scientists. That is true. And btw, I don't think that he/she has mentioned anywhere that coding is not important in a test role. Rather, he has pointed out the reverse fact.
Yes, the test standards currently may be different than dev. But MS, as an organization, needs to bridge that gap. They need people to work diligently on that. However, based on the comments that I am seeing (I guess from the devs), that bridging of the gap will take time. Just because someone is a dev, does not mean he/she is a better coder than someone who's a tester. These are two different roles with different perspectives. Yes, a strong gating is required in test side as well. However, if their role is just being so called "data-scientist" then it will not help MS products/apps in the long run .... just my $0.02
Anon at 7:50 PM with stats and figures, do not bother these Seattle libtards with such mundane details. The one French, 2 Russians, 5 Americans, 15 Chinese, and 125 Indians on a given team are our friends and co-workers. Diversity is our strength. These dimwits go to their homes in 97% white neighborhoods, observe diversity from a safe distance, and then pat themselves in the back for being progressive and shame everyone else for being racists. And when Rajeev and Kumar move to their neighborhood, they are amongst the first to leave.
You bums are the main reason this company and the USA as a whole is on a fast track to third world hellhole status.
The sick SOBs using the Bellingham riots' reference; are you stupid, or what? So, you think that'll just scare everbody to pack up and leave? If you cannot help people who are going thru a difficult time, don't make it any worse for them. BTW, you might also want to note that it's not 1907 right now!
To the poster who said test code had a low bar. I left MS 4 years ago. The teams I worked on all required reviews for automation and tools prior to checking. The EDU team's more senior SDETs thoroughly scrutinised each DPK for enforcement of best practices. So I am not sure which teams permitted free checkins without accountability.
I've been a dev lead/manager in Microsoft for many years. I've always worked collaboratively with my test counterparts and always looked at both disciplines in a homogenous fashion.
However, I must admit thoughts about the difference in bars needed for promos had occurred forever. The level of risks, the innovation initiative & depth needed to grow in the dev discipline can often be higher than that of the test org.
Microsoft has a lot of smart individuals in the test team. If we're not going to ship CDs any more it's perfectly ok to reimagine the SDET role and leverage the full potential of a lot of SDET folks.
I guess it's also perfectly necessary for our devs to inculcate extreme customer empathy and not be dependent upon their tests for doing what they'd have done in any startup.
Personally I look forward to the era of nimble and innovative Microsoft.
I am an Indian-American. While I am appalled at the racism, I can understand frustration with seemingly incompetent H1-Bs. My relatives (from India, who themselves are H1-B workers) warned me about resume fraud. They said this is very common for Indians from one region of India and they were upset that this was giving Indians as a whole a bad name.
Sure enough, I interviewed two candidates from that region of India over several months. Later, while cleaning my desk out, I realized they had the same exact resume!
Not everyone from that region of India is a fraud, but it is a failure of the interview process if you cannot detect and weed out such incompetence.
If this round of cuts is anything like 2009 there will be a good number of people who get terminated for cause without getting any severance package. Half the people on my team were fired in 2009, all at the same time.
If Microsoft is taking the opportunity to fire some people in addition to the lay-offs the number of people impacted might be greater than generally realized.
One piece of advice I would offer to anyone being fired, DON'T SIGN ANYTHING! HR tries to get you to sign a non-disclosure and non-compete agreement in your exit interview. Don't sign it. If they aren't giving you severance there is no reason for you to sign anything.
The HR person kept insisting I sign it when I was let go, but I just walked up and left without signing a thing. Nothing bad ever happened to me.
What were they going to do? Not fire me out of spite for non-compliance?
Do you know if the layoffs are over? Where is the fucking transparency Satya? Can you tell us what groups are affected and why?
The current H1B quota for Indians are way more than the other nationalities (80%?). Indians have much more influence in many walks of life in America already. This is the trend, in another 10 years, America will be the new India, which is not a bad thing, America will become a 3rd world nation anyway.
It's pretty sad that a lot of good, talented people were on the list, but it's quite disturbing to note that a lot of people, mostly new college hires, and some very bad industry hires who have absolutely no passion for technology or even have the right skills were not on the list. I really hope that management will begin to weed out such scum, and BTW they are pretty easy to identify too, because they are always whining about work, always asking about promotions without even putting in minimum effort, always bad mouthing managers, and basically pretty much self-centered, selfish, and extremely conceited - pretty much just parasites, and should be exterminated!
I can't believe I am seeing Neo-Nazism in this forum.
Whoever came up with the CPG bonehead policy of 18 months for CSG staff must have too many heads. You should be cut straight away. This only promotes IP to go outside and does nothing to reduce our reliance on vendors. Also means one needs to spend time playing musical chairs.
>>I can't believe I am seeing Neo-Nazism in this forum.
You dumbfuck, kool-aid drinking liberal. Anything short of screaming "Diversity is our Strength!" equals Neo-Nazism, right? I'm not surprised, though. Your pea-brain has been washed since kindergarten, all white people are evil and Nazis, non-whites are wonderful, we must all appreciate the wonders of diversity and multi-culturalism.
I hear that within the next five years, in places like Kent, WA, Somali will become the number one language. You better buy a house there and move now, so you won't miss your golden opportunity to be culturally enriched by those wonderful people.
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.
If you are over 40, and want to be an IC, two things are true regardless of whether you've only ever worked at Microsoft.
One, you have to keep your skills razor sharp. You don't need to learn all the new hotness (since no one can), but you need to be able to show serious chops with at least one new technology. Always. And yeah, that means things that apply across multiple platforms. Someone who is 25 and doesn't know new technology is learning. Someone who is 45 and doesn't know new technology "used to be good, but hasn't kept up".
Two, you are going to work for people younger than you are. Someone who wants to be a team lead or manager and has the skills to do it is going to be managing ICs long before they are 40. If you can't cope with that, well, that's your problem.
Azure Senor PM here.
13 years, several promotions, 2 gold stars, good reviews pretty much every year.
Re-orged 2 years ago, got a new manager who (seriously) didn't understand our technology. Got a 5 on that review. That manager got kicked out of the org a few months later - but our review numbers still stayed.
New manager, and this years review rating was going to be back to normal. Didn't get taken in to account - neither my manager nor my skip-level manager were consulted. They were simply informed of the decision.
My position was important (owned reducing expenditures) and people that found out I was let go were all shocked and confused.
Not sure of the dev:pm ratio, but it was very high.
The commercial failure of Windows 8 was the result of Sinofsky/Larson-Green's attempt to push Metro down everyone's throat. If they'd just left the damn Start menu alone, the outcome would have been very different. It had nothing to do with the engineering processes used during Windows 8 development. Nothing.
Totally agree with this. Sinofsky was fired, but Julie Larson-Green, after f?cking up Windows 8, has been made Chief Experience Officer? WTF? The other person responsible for Windows 8 experience is Jensen Harris. It is unbelievable that they decided to obsolete the desktop. Such unbelievable cluelessness!
But here's the thing: there is no reason to believe Terry Myerson is going to be any better. He was responsible for WP7, wasn't he? I am pessimistic about the future of Windows as well as Windows Phone. Windows and Office may have been the cash cows so far, but we need to find new cash cows. It is worrisome that Satya has decided Platforms and Productivity are our core!! That was our old core, Satya. We need to find new cores to survive.
Bharat Shah did get rid of some partners and kept the star ones.
"If this round of cuts is anything like 2009 there will be a good number of people who get terminated for cause without getting any severance package. Half the people on my team were fired in 2009, all at the same time."
Don't confuse termination for alleged poor performance with termination for cause. For cause is stuff like abandoning your job, threatening a co-worker, sexual harassment, criminal acts, etc. For cause termination is reported to the state and it means no unemployment benefits. Termination for alleged poor performance doesn't get reported to Washington State.
>>I guess it's also perfectly necessary for our devs to inculcate extreme customer empathy and not be dependent upon their tests for doing what they'd have done in any startup.
When I worked in Bing, PMs, Devs, and Testers all the way from IC to functional VPs were so far removed from real customers that we had no idea what to do. We were building all kinds of random-assed, hair-brained things and spending many millions to do it. It is hard to build great features from your customer, much less have empathy for them, we you don't really know who they are. That combined with lots of Partners engaged in finger pointing in Qi Lu's live site reviews, cooking licking, and political gamesmanship made it a very unrewarding place to work. I'm in Azure now and while Azure has its issues it's a lot better than Bing.
The easiest way to reform the H1-B system is to remove the tie to company. Once the company sponsors a visa, the rights should vest with the visa holder. If they can afford to live in America without public benefits, they could even not work.
Companies don't want H1-B employees because they are cheaper, they want them because they are serfs, chained to the company. If they had the same ability to move in the labor market as other workers, they'd be a lot less attractive to the corporate world.
Somebody please tell me that the a-holes who thought that the Surface was the most brilliant idea, have been shown the door! Surface (the tabletop version) was already a v2 product in the market, and they not only confused the users by renaming/reusing that brand name, but also were so overconfident with the mediocre product that they built. BTW, they even claimed that it took them 3 years to come up with that horrendous design; seriously? Oh, and let's not forget the article about the marketing guy who had no experience, but was going to lead the division for marketing it, and well we all know how that went. Anyway, the point is, if these guys who totally messed up our opportunity of getting into the tablet market, have not already been shown the door, somebody needs to explain why!?
SDET is an amazing concept- if executed right.It takes sharp skills and great intuition to get to the right issues. Devs\SE can definitely and should do unit or module testing. Everything else which has to do with testing absolutely cannot be part time job as it conflicts with the software delivery and timely release goals.Unfortunate day for testing discipline. WE NEED TO REDO IT, RIGHT WAY THIS TIME.
Some of the most wickedly smart and humble guys I ever worked with at Microsoft were Indian. I'd work with them again in a heartbeat. Some of the worst were also Indian. I worked with some really smart Americans too. And some bad ones. Some super smart and effective Russian men and women, and some not-so-effective ones. Same for Chinese.
For all of you that have been layed off, American, Indian, Chinese, Russian, whatever, I hope things improve for you soon. For those of you that remain and are worried about your future at Microsoft, there is a hot job market for developers. Get a couple interviews done even before you think you are ready. It is a good experience and you are probably more ready than you think you are.
The SDET, as we know it, is an amazing concept. We would have a shipped kick ass OSs if SDETs were given the proper tooling and infrastructure.
The next OS will make Wista, I mean Vista look great. Azure better stick to Windows Server 2012 as subsequent OS releases will be unstable.
HEY HEY, HO HO, H1-B'S, GOTTA GO!
I have been jobless with a family for quite a long time, I know how hard it can be when you can't meet the simple demand of your family or the little kid that wants something from the market that's beyond my reach,instead of spreading hate try to be compassionate with those who have lost their jobs as they were from all corners of the world and also the nokia employees, hope you get a good job and move on in life. good luck
Mini, please consider deleting these racist comments, as well as comments specifying people's names. Lets' please discuss the actual topic instead, there are folks who lost their job here.
IMHO, the TRIO and QUAD model should be abolished, and it should just be a crew of engineers assigned to solve a customer problem/requirement, and everybody should be able to spec/code/test. If you cannot, then you should not be in the engineer pool, and that'll help to make the org flatter. In fact, the titles should be just software engineer or non-engineering, and that'll help to move engineers around the company where there is a requirement or interest, without having to worry about discipline based interviews. BTW, why do we even have interviews while moving groups? I hope the org flattening plan that's coming up will take such things into consideration; looking forward to that commotion.
Any one planning to start testing services company? This is the great opportunity. 1351 employees readily available. In current market its not difficult to find investors and customers..thoughts?
Reading these comments on my Surface RT I am amazed at the rampant bigotry. Seriously? I can only hope that Mini is sending the IP addresses of these racist losers to Dr. Satya Nutella so he can track them down and fire them personally. I have been a fan of Microsoft since the Zune days (let's remember the Zune was created by Indians) and had no idea things were this bad inside the company. Then again, the anti-Semitic hate speech I have been subjected to over Xbox Live should have been a clue.
For those interested in how this stuff is going over outside Microsoft, check out the thread on the Microsoft Personality Cult forum: http://mpcdot.com/forums/topic/8041-the-microsoft-lay-off It's eye-opening stuff.
> Mini, please consider deleting these racist comments, as well as comments specifying people's names.
+1. Both issues completely got out of hand on this thread.
On the racism front I think most of it is coming from a single individual judging by the tone and terminology he uses. (yes there are also some people who wrote measured criticisms of the H1B program. That's different)
And about naming names... I personally don't have much problem with some publicly known figures (== VPs, GMs) being criticized for specific acts, policies or attitudes. Because their acts are publicly known, and somebody could still come in and say "but hey things didn't transpire the way you wrote"...
OTOH, it's absolutely wrong to post anonymously here to name virtually unknown mid-level managers (or even ICs) and accuse them without citing verifiable examples of misconduct. It's just damaging to those individuals, and there's no way to tell if the anonymous poster is doing that simply out of grudge (or misplaced dislike).
Please, please, please mini. Start moderating. Like, now...
This forum is dead. The only MSFTers left commenting are calling for comment moderation. Trust me if 90% of these commenters actually worked for the company they would be fired within the week - for cause.
Hey.. Y'all should just go into sales. It's party time over here!
"mostly new college hires, and some very bad industry hires who have absolutely no passion for technology or even have the right skills were not on the list. I really hope that management will begin to weed out such scum"
Wow seriously? Such a hostile attitude to new talent makes absolutely no sense.
ICC H1B abuse
1) Cognizant Technology Solutions U.S. Corporation (22,599), 2) Wipro Limited (10,021), 3) Cisco Systems Inc. (4,256), 4) Deloitte & Touche, LLP (4,161), 5) Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLP (4,136), 6) Infosys Limited (3,409), 7) Mphasis Corporation(2,980), 8) iGate Technologies Inc. (2,635), 9) IBM India Private Limited (2,228), 10) Mindtree Limited (1,901).
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/06/26/amazon-com-catamaran-idINKBN0F128F20140626
Infosys co-founder Murthy plans India JV with Amazon - paper
http://www.itbusinessedge.com/blogs/from-under-the-rug/former-u.s.-infosys-employees-allege-discrimination-on-basis-of-national-origin.html
"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"
This is b0llocks. Interviews are subjective and its only about whether the interviewer thinks the interviewee is capable or not. They can always reject even a brightest candidate saying he doesn't know certain things and hire a medicore guy saying he is very good. The H-1B programme is a farce.
Racial comments, especially towards people of Asian origin, is very unpleasant and uncalled for, and naming names, that's just downright ugly. However, it looks like people are also becoming defensive about other general things too, and in fact threatening & intimidating such posters, so who is moderating them right now? If people who are trying to "keep it productive & insightful" and if that is perceived as harsh to some folks, and those people don't like it, then Mini needs to kick them out first, lest they stifle the bitter truth.
what I see here on the board are 3 types of people:
1) those shouting "H1-B" out, at the first sight of a white American lost his job.
2) those shouting "racist", at the first sight of someone stating the mere fact of Indians are taking over American's IT industry
3) those trying to go through the garbage and find useful info here.
type 1: take the legal course if you have enough evidence. if you don't have evidence, keep quiet.
type 2: you are most likely Indian, who work for some IT company. You are fighting back on this board, but please don't fool us and yourself that think we don't recognize you. oh, also, you were the ones asked for a name, 5 times, before a name was posted. now you are saying calling people out is disrespectful? you asked for it.
for type 3), well let's ignore those fools, and share some useful info.
I work in Bing. The combined engineering there is rolling back. Teams begun to suck after the combined engineering, and slowly but surely are rebuilding the test team. Perhaps with different fancier titles.
To the poster at 11:54, there are threats of violence made against Indians here. It is not merely "uncalled for". These are Neo-Nazi tactics.
You are trying to sound like there is a great truth that is being hid by big bad Indians. Not sure if serious. Most of the crap in here is typical propaganda against a minority to somehow make them all out to be villains. If you wish to seek out the special brand of truth that you think exists, go to any number of xenophobic websites and you will find plenty of it. You may find that stink bubble acceptable.
"I work in Bing. The combined engineering there is rolling back. Teams begun to suck after the combined engineering, and slowly but surely are rebuilding the test team. Perhaps with different fancier titles."
combined engineering isn't new, and certainly isn't a silver bullet by the furthest stretch. I guess anything goes around, comes around. what is definitely true, though, is that tester as a title and sole type of job is gone!
>> "Wow seriously? Such a hostile attitude to new talent makes absolutely no sense."
Reading thru that original poster's remaining content, it looks like you've just chosen to take selective out-of-context content for your response, so maybe you are just here to incite the crowd, rather than help the company actually retain the right talent?
Poster at 12:04
I like how this went down in your head but nice try. For all I know, you are the idiot who posted some poor schmuck's name and want to play innocent now.
There were references to Bellingham riots in the comments above and the general undertone in the rest of the racist comments is not any different.
I dont see anyone denying the presence of Indians in the US, nor anyone calling "hey ho h1b" guy a racist.
I want useful information as well, but lets not pretend that the discourse here has been civil.
test
It looks like the posts at 12:18 and 12:34 are trolls, and keep bringing up topics that we really don't want to continue, and maybe Mini can set a filter of keywords?
"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."
As an Indian - from India - MSFT FTE recently let go, I highly doubt any Indian would fall for it.
Now as for the festering sewage posting the hatred: you're roadkill near the sunny beach - no one gives a shit about you. You're comments are just a nuisance, mostly showcasing your own depravity. Nothing more.
poster @ Sunday, July 20, 2014 12:34:00 AM
there's no denial of some bad comments, but that's what it is, bad comments. if violence happens, there's law enforcement to deal with it.
the point is there're racists on this board, there're organized responses to any criticisms of how Indian managers behave (when I saw bold texts, highlights, used to compare MS and SAP, i smell PPT skills). none of those are worth responding.
yes, it's tough to filter out those ridiculous comments, but again they are just that, comments. ignore them!
on that note, anyone has info on where the rest of the 5k cuts are going to be?
What avenues/resources are available, outside of Microsoft, to seek assistance for affected families, especially for folks who may have extended family from home country visiting or staying with us? Will their status be affected in some way?
For sure no one knows anything about next 5k layoffs. All response's are just guess. I guess next round will be mostly performance based and few small group of people. Any one may get laid off at any time no matter how well they are performing and critical project..
btw, I have good performance reviews but not feeling secure. Should I focus on project work or finding better job out side MSFT?
poster @ Sunday, July 20, 2014 1:19:00 AM
do both. do a good job for your work project, and put in extra time on brushing up your skills, and get ready when the axe comes. Or better, take the initiative to find a better job.
what I learned from this whole thing is make sure you have plan B, and marketable at any time, if you want to provide some stability to your family.
In new Microsoft devs will have a lot of time for testing. All new ideas from last decade like Windows Phone, Xbox, Bing or tablets or this huge R&D failed miserably from profitability point of view. So all what is left are old cash cows and those do not need that much new features, actually features may piss off users if they do not offer significant productivity gains as proved by Win 8. Old cash cows need to be gradually ported to Azure and offer as subscriptions. In that model cost cutting is paramount so last week layoffs did not come to me as any surprise. Actually I expect more to come as Mr. Nadella needs to drive share price up or face Ballmer demise because shareholders do not show patience anymore. This change in v- a- policy surprised me a bit but is consistent with cost reduction strategy to drive H1B’s back to India and employ them there much more cheaply. So trolls enjoy if that is what you wish for but do not expect any jobs offers from that.
Can someone expand and/or give examples on how the converged engineering concept hasn't gone well in Bing?
I am one of the layoff survivors in the OSG SDET team and it would be nice to know what to watch out for.
Cuts like this are very bad both for Americans and Rest of the world ( because this is the way you like to think)
And for those who were trolling migrants and feeling happy about them selling their newly purchased house some where, let me give a a few pieces of reality
- If you were worthy enough none of the people from other countries could have taken your jobs. Low cost doesnt translate to low skill set.
- You just got fired by an person from non US origin person and he is Leading a US based giant.
- And never ever speak that America is build by Natives. If you still insist read the real history books and you will all of sudden become and outsider yourself.
"Reading thru that original poster's remaining content, it looks like you've just chosen to take selective out-of-context content for your response, so maybe you are just here to incite the crowd, rather than help the company actually retain the right talent?"
Sorry, what part of his or her post contains the context to make that quote okay? As far as I could tell, OP was basically saying that layoffs should have targeted new hires because they are "scum".
Mini: why do you have comments policies if you do not intend to enforce them?
Or perhaps you don't really care? This latest post of yours comes almost a year after the previous one.
As one of the commenters suggested, it looks like you no longer work at Microsoft, so you are happy with posting once a year and letting morons run riot in the comments section.
I work in the Commerce Team in OSG and whatever is being done now was already attempted there and failed miserable. In 2011, dev PM ratio was reduced and some PMs were let go. The org was flattened and managers were made leads and leads were made ICs. Some of these ICs left. The others did not or were not capable of doing the IC work so more people had to be hired and within 6 months the leads were back to manager and ICs were back to leads. So the flattening happened and within six months more fat was added. Recently the team started the combined engineering model. Unfortunately it hasn't worked out and now the team is a mess. There is no way test/dev managers/leads are capable of writing any code in Microsoft. This company has no future
Please don't steer the discussion into racial slur.
What is coming next? Performance based layoffs?
>All new ideas from last decade like Windows Phone, Xbox, Bing or tablets or this huge R&D failed miserably from profitability point of view.
Another way to look at it is that we tried to follow an established leader and failed.
Just means that the company needs to focus on path breaking innovation and not merely chase the leader.
Most of our competitors have succeeded in a short time frame and so can we by focusing on innovation.
This layoff is a disaster for MSFT make no doubt about that. I will say that it is a disaster that was necessary though. Microsoft needs to change the development culture. It is a great place to work but results matter and the results aren't satisfactory. Microsoft is way behind the curve in mobile computing and they're processes don't fit in to development in the mobile space. Microsoft has a lot of developer talent and that is a tremendous asset. Leadership and vision are the keys to turning things around. To me the biggest problem in changing the culture is vision. I was not impressed with Nadella's memo outlining his vision. This is something that could change and I think Microsoft needs to reach out to visionaries outside the company and empower them with tools and clout to implement their vision.
Almost twenty years ago, when I started my career, Indians were already present, and most of them were top-notch engineers and nice to work with. The Indians/non-Indians ratio was about 10%. Twenty years later, I work at a "ware" company (that hires many ex-softies), and have become amazed that Indians are now everywhere, from engineering to PM to test to management. Their work quality has gone downstream, and younger ones are truly subpar. The ratio now is more than 95% as this company has swiftly transitioned from an American company to become a full-grown Indian company during the 5 years I've been here. What makes the "ware" company an Indian one instead of of American? The unbearable level of micromanagement, non-stop political infighting that results to more Indians moving to the top, long and unfocused meetings, bureaucracy, and the lack of creativity and innovation. Everybody now plays nice and safe by the book, not to mention speaking broken English with the lacks of "a/an/the" and the confusion between "few" and "a few". The internal mailing list is occupied with more and more inquiries demanding top quality goods and services for the lowest possible prices.
I have no problems with Indians in the workforce as long as their ratio isn't too astounding that it jeopardizes diversity. This is a real problem in the tech industry nowadays, especially in Silicon Valley. Even more disturbing, the overwhelming of Indians isn't merit-based, but largely from their in-network efforts of helping one another. The system is being abused yet others have failed to see it for being politically incorrect or being afraid to speak the truth. I don't endorse the racist crap being spewed here against Indians, but I would encourage others to speak up the abuse of the system put forth my the old network of corrupt Indians.
Hi there,
As a non-Microsoft employee I wish all those people being laid off my best.
For those devs and testers that really like what they do it could look very good to get some Linux/BSD commits on your resumes. Help improve existing functionality or new functionality where you see a need.
Linux kernel, Redhat/Centos, Debian, OpenBSD and the many derivatives of those would love to have assistance from you, and in the changing software landscape it can't hurt to show your diversity.
Top users of H1b program 2013:
INFOSYS 6298: Indian, Microsoft vendor
TATA 6258: Indian, MS vendor
COGNIZANT 5186: Indian,
ACCENTURE 3346: Former bankrupt Arthur Anderson, now more than 50% Indian
WIPRO 2644: Indian, MS vendor
HCL AMERICA 1766: Indian,MS vendor
IBM 1624: more than 50% Indian
MAHINDRA GROUP 1589: Indian
LARSEN & TOUBRO 1580
DELOITTE 1491: Lots of financial jobs being piped to Indians
IGATE 1157: Indian
MICROSOFT 1048: 50% Indian soon!
SYNTEL 1041: Indian
This has been going on since at least 2000s, over 16 years, probably 1 million IT "experts", fake resumes on hand, came to save our primitive culture and displaced 50% of American IT workers to flip burgers, sell shoes and flip real estate.
Check out Jack Dorsey, founder of twitter, who was unemployed and almost took a shoe salesman job.
Go look in Silicon Valley, beneath the
swagger of great companies, see the devastation and "diversity" of 80% Indians post the Indian occupation.
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 am well over 40 and I left MS last year after being an IC for 10 years. When I started applying for jobs people were eager to interview me. In a few cases they even skipped the phone screen. This is because the I.T. job market is really hot right now. Also, even at MS almost all of my leads were younger than me. Most were good and treated people with respect while a couple were horrible.
How does Satya plan to "Flatten management"?
Like antibiotic resistant germs and bacteria, the management teams in place that survived and thrived under the adversarial stack ranking system are going to be very challenging to root out. Through years of selective culling, only the most self serving and skilled in the politics of corporation aware managers have survived today.
Short of a management level Stalinist purge, I don't think it will be possible to rid Microsoft of the management infestation it has today.
LCA also was hit hard. 10% across teams, more than half of which targeted 65 and above. One big group asked 2/3 of its level 67 to leave. The reason is totally unclear. Very few joined LCA from Nokia. Those who were affected apparently are not for performance reasons.
But Windows 8 is the best OS!
First: Microsoft is absolutely getting rid of older employees. Several in my group were let go about a year ago, and it was definitely age-based. They were stellar performers even in their 50s and 60s. Of course they signed the "will not sue" clause to get the severance package. What choice did they have?
Second: Go to the internal Who site and look at Satya's numbers for open positions, employees, vendors, and CSGs. Very interesting ratios.
"LCA also was hit hard. 10% across teams, more than half of which targeted 65 and above. One big group asked 2/3 of its level 67 to leave. The reason is totally unclear. Very few joined LCA from Nokia. Those who were affected apparently are not for performance reasons. "
We can not explain this protracted layoff for cost-saving reasons, for performance reasons. Only explanation is political: Satya wants to drive out the best Microsofties to prime a zombie shell (with massive cash hoard) to house his massive subcontinental invasion army.
"All the data scientist and cosmos stuff is a plague and who ever worked on it shouldn't be hired else where because you are inviting plague!!"
Please explain to me how you run an online business like Bing and cloud based tech without looking at data andbuilding proper infrastructure
Glad to see the Test Gravy Train crashing into the wall and playing field getting leveled. Can't wait till next years review.
Satya planned this protracted layoff to accomplish following objectives:
1. Get the Americans,Russians,Chinese,Ukrainians, Romanians, French to stab each other for the next 6 months. Drive out the best performers and weaken the survivors.
2. Assure his Indian buddies that he will "pay forward" to protect their collective ass. So his Indian buddies will wait out the bloody nonIndian infighting, to take over Microsoft. Microsoft will be 90% Indians just like many other tech giants like VMware, Cisco and Qualcomm.
Is it true that Microsoft has thousands of Indian vendors working on premise with H1b visas? Are they affected?
18 months contract is a long time, enough for them to enter Microsoft FTE backdoor left open by Mr Satya.
Microsoft's Achilles Heel is it's middle management layer. Many are rabbits in their holes afraid to pop their heads out for very long and actually lead and risk failure to innovate. Hopefully this effort will address such and put Microsoft back on a path as an innovative company. Let's hope so!
How quickly people forgot about Terry and his WP7 coffin parade.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/10/microsoft-celebrates-windows-phone-7-rtm-with-funeral-parade-for/
"bing might suck but cosmos is awesome technology."
If you have worked in or with Cosmos/Bing team, you would know how many Indians work there.
Point being, Bing and Cosmos both are heavy on Indians. One sucks, the other rock. It is not so much about race.
"bing might suck but cosmos is awesome technology."
If you have worked in or with Cosmos/Bing team, you would know how many Indians work there.
Point being, Bing and Cosmos both are heavy on Indians. One sucks, the other rock. It is not so much about race.
"bing might suck but cosmos is awesome technology."
If you have worked in or with Cosmos/Bing team, you would know how many Indians work there.
Point being, Bing and Cosmos both are heavy on Indians. One sucks, the other rock. It is not so much about race.
Yes, America is going down the tubes, but for reasons different from what you may expect. The inconvenient truth is that while you may think that working hard or smart will help you get ahead, that being an innovative company will make it succeed, that is only true in the short run and within a small scope. In the big picture, both you and your company are dominated by financial wizards. They control not only companies that think they're important, but the future of large nations.
Take a look at http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2012/01/20120103_JPM_reserve_0.png
What do these nations have in common? They were the major colonial powers of the world. Their financial wizardry basically allowed them to print money, and use that to buy military might, and therefore political domination.
So yes, you can fight over immigration or performance reviews all you want, but in the big picture, that will soon be overwhelmed. The BRICS countries (yes, India and China included) are making moves against America's reserve currency status, and the US is too over-extended and relying on too much vapor wealth to do anything about it.
I am an outsider and I find the comments to be most fascinating.
I do have some terminology questions though, what is an IC and what is the LCA team?
IC - individual contributor
LCA - legal department , lawyers not engineers
Can someone share their thoughts on why not fire PMs? How many of you think that PMs are really useful? Most of the PMs I have worked are the ones who just look at the status of TFS work items, bugs and time frames. Seriously, I have rarely seen any PM who has a complete vision of the feature, understanding of the customer pain points. Most of the PMs can't even coordinate the devs and test well!
Like any other humans in engineering, Indians have bottom-feeder unskilled paycheck-grabbers, and also those that carry their weight admirably.
However, after many years on campus on several teams in several buildings, I haven't met anyone that disagrees we would have a much better workplace (regardless of the nationality, though 98% seem focused on one...) without:
- lack of showering after what seems like weeks in a locked closet of year-old curry
- leaving pubes all over the urinal every day
- the open 1/2 milk cartons in the refrigerators
- the abandoned water cups in every bathroom
- the low-talk mumbling response when asked a direct question
- and of course the handshake with the same firmness and conviction of a wet-paper-towel
PMs are more like secretaries to lazy dev leads.
There should only be product managers, no program managers. What is there to manage and which program are they managing.
You need PMs for user facing products. But they are product managers not program managers.
How many of you think that PMs are really useful?
Some PMs have domain expertise. Those PMs are useful. PMs that just run the process, that are not technical and have no domain knowledge just get in the way. They tend to waste too much time in unnecessary meetings so that they can feel like they are contributing. I hope those are the next to go. Dev leads and managers can run the process and triage bugs instead.
What about those over-level-ed employees in Microsoft? Someone told me about a Chinese girl in Azure team who climbed up to senior level super fast as she shared personally close relationship with her Spanish test lead.
Before we became OSG, MrFortin was Director of Windows Core. If director to CVP is a demotion, I'd like to be demoted please!
I didn't know what the cups were all about till now. Why don't they pour them out and place them in the trash? It's beneath people to do that, or flush the urinal, but it's ok for the Russian vendor who cleans the bathroom to have to do it? How does it work at home?
Someone told me about a Chinese girl in Azure team who climbed up to senior level super fast as she shared personally close relationship with her Spanish test lead.
And someone told me about an idiot who can't talk about someone else without mentioning their races even when it has no relevance in the discussion.
Why exists Karen djoury windows test team? 0 technical contributions from her/her team. All fluff and PowerPoint.
In older model, SDEs and SDETs used to work pretty much in parallel. SDEs would focus on just product work, SDETs would do test and other crap like infrastructure, build etc. This at least helped SDEs, to be more productive. But with new model, where SDEs would drive feature, product work and test as well, surely it would increase pain on the SDEs degrading product quality. Also shipping will be delayed.
In older model, SDEs and SDETs used to work pretty much in parallel. SDEs would focus on just product work, SDETs would do test and other crap like infrastructure, build etc. This at least helped SDEs, to be more productive. But with new model, where SDEs would drive feature, product work and test as well, surely it would increase pain on the SDEs degrading product quality. Also shipping will be delayed.
When is the performance related cuts coming? It is unfair that people of good standing were let go, but there is a lot of unwanted fat that still needs to be reduced both in the FTE and non-FTE pools.
014 Green Card Report: Top Citizenship Country
1 - 50 | 51 - 100 | 101 - 150 | 151 - 200
Category: All | Case Status | Country | Visa | Job Title | Occupation | Industry | Sector | Work City | Work State
Rank Citizenship Country Green Card Petitions Average Salary
1 India 25,375 $100,673
2 China 2,502 $94,512
3 South Korea 2,044 $73,024
4 Canada 1,881 $116,716
5 Philippines 1,340 $66,793
6 Mexico 1,299 $63,420
7 United Kingdom 644 $117,752
Its hard to keep growing in SDET ladder. There are very few Principle SDET ICs in Microsoft. Most tend to become leads and enter a cruising mode. Worse than that they being stealing SDET IC ideas and present to upper management as if it were theirs. Pathetic. I just wish leads go away.
What is up with Microsoft requiring a 6 month break for contractors and vendors? By forcing such a long break from service at Microsoft the company is effectively forcing these people to work at the competition. That seems counter to the supposed goal of protecting Microsoft IP.
I was hoping to apply for an SDE position in the Azure division or MS Dynamics division. So you guys think my dreams of working for MSFT is toast? And I will be turning 40 this december.
Stock price has been stagnant, or rather, extremely sluggish, over the last decade. I wonder what else needs to be done, than just lay-offs? I mean, being innovative and building the next generation products is implicit, but wondering what other steps are being taken to continue to push the stock price up?
"Before we became OSG, MrFortin was Director of Windows Core. If director to CVP is a demotion, I'd like to be demoted please!"
Fortin was already a CVP when he was Director of Engineering for Windows Core. He didn't "become" a CVP with the new job. His current position is at best a lateral move.
"I was hoping to apply for an SDE position in the Azure division or MS Dynamics division. So you guys think my dreams of working for MSFT is toast? And I will be turning 40 this december."
Microsoft still wants great SDEs. They don't care how old you are or what nationality you're from.
"Stock price has been stagnant, or rather, extremely sluggish, over the last decade. I wonder what else needs to be done, than just lay-offs? I mean, being innovative and building the next generation products is implicit, but wondering what other steps are being taken to continue to push the stock price up?"
Listen to the quarterly earnings report come this 22nd.
Stock price has been stagnant, or rather, extremely sluggish, over the last decade. I wonder what else needs to be done, than just lay-offs? I mean, being innovative and building the next generation products is implicit, but wondering what other steps are being taken to continue to push the stock price up?
Thanks for your comment, Captain Obvious. Did you just wake up from 2 years of cold storage somewhere?
What do you think took the stock price from 28 to 44?
The Win8 modern design mistake? Rapidly being fixed, and we are showing progress on that publicly.
Those responsible for Win8 debacle? Sinofsky and all but three of his direct reports from Win8 era are NO LONGER MICROSOFT EMPLOYEES. Two of those remaining are effectively no longer in charge of much of anything.
The CEO? Replaced with Satya.
Too much deadwood people and job overlap and bloat in various orgs? 1351 gone now, more to come.
The siloed org? Replaced with One Microsoft, which clearly has teeth. People are feeling the bit now.
What else would you like? Rapid release cadence? Coming. More focus on key products, less deadwood projects? Coming. Less middle managment? Coming.
Whatever happened to OSG feels weird. Lot of top performers let go including me.
Close to 8 years in MS, three gold stars, mostly 1 and 2 ratings (some 3's), couple of patents. Never had a 4 or 5 rating in the whole tenure and had a really good year this year too. I have no idea why I was let go, still hasn't sunk in.
But overall I liked being in Microsoft and windows division the whole term and no big regrets for me leaving. But seeing all the other top performing SDETS who got the axe who I know would make really good SDE's(There are lot of 4's and 5s in dev org who could be easily replaced by some of the people who were sent today) is the most frustrating part. Not sure what happened to Microsoft's motto of retaining top talents. I know someone who had a promo approved, was let go as well.
Hearing all the personal stories of everyone let go is way too emotional. I hope the people making these decisions think about the human side of things. I can understand the need to downsize and form the right org, but keeping low performers in lot of divisions/disciplines and sending home a lot of top performing SDET's does not make sense.
I am puzzled by the puzzled reaction to cutting high performers in a job role the organization is eliminating. I find it encouraging that the cuts are blind to performance. It implies that the company is maturing and simply cutting whole roles, products, teams, etc. rather than just cutting low performers. Cut deep means cutting high performers in jobs you've decided you no longer need. If they are really high performers with fungible skills they will land on their feet.
"Thanks for your comment, Captain Obvious."
This poster's attitude is a great example of why I'm glad I left Microsoft a long time ago and why I and many other people root against Microsoft today.
Did anyone watch Satya's Q n A session on Friday?
Responding to "Sunday, July 20, 2014 10:58:00 AM"
Mumbling responses and lack of firm handshakes are valid stereotypes of Indians. But that's how many people in India are conditioned to behave. If you go to India and talk in a loud voice, you'll be considered a rude person. But these people are in America and ought to adjust to American norms, which they do given some time. So bear with them. And never be afraid to tell someone that you can't hear what they are saying. Communication will improve immediately.
What's wrong with half-open milk cartons as long as they are left in the refrigerator? At that temperature, the milk isn't going to go bad, especially when another consumer will pop by pretty soon. Using only as much as one needs ought to be considered good behavior, no? I am genuinely puzzled why this is an issue with people.
I agree with the rest of your gripes.
For those folks asking the question "who will they cut for next 5000, will it be role-based or perf-based?" , that's exactly what management wants you to think. They are trying to create the tension so that employees will leave voluntarily with 0 severance. There was no official layoff in my team around 2009; still 3 of 7 team member left in a matter of a few months.
- an x microsoftie.
I am interested in hearing more about the future of MSIT and when the cuts are coming. I'm surprised at how long the clock-punching old guard has hung on there. Too bad Stuart Scott couldn't keep his zipper closed or he might have cleaned stuff up. Or maybe not...we have him to thank for the genius move of creating a whole new org called Solution Delivery, a resting place for MBAs and other PowerPoint bullshit artists who have never made a solid contribution to creating or delivering a solution in their lives.
For those thinking the $100m Infosys deal is about outsourcing all of MSIT you are way underestimating MSITs budget. $100m is a drop in the bucket.
Are we going to take a hit on Surface3?
At the current price, is the stock a hold or a sell?
> For those thinking the $100m Infosys deal is about outsourcing all of MSIT you are way underestimating MSITs budget. $100m is a drop in the bucket.
You've just pretty much summed up why the InfoSys deal was made in the first place.
Good god.. what a bunch of whiners on here. Is your sensibility affected by a pube on the urinal or a cup in the toilet or a clogged toilet with turds floating? Call the frikking facilities management. Is someone's personal hygiene subpar? Have a word with their manager.
You lily-livered pansies are the reason why there is deadwood around. If you cant get a dirty toilet cleaned without getting your undies in a bunch, what are you going to do about real interpersonal problems?
I have seen many folks on visa let go. Some very senior people were let go as well. The main common factor seems to be that these folks got comfortable in their positions and took it a bit easy. I am not sure how this information got presented to the upper management, who made the layoff decisions.
"The Win8 modern design mistake? Rapidly being fixed, and we are showing progress on that publicly."
Really? Fixing the Win8 mess is helping drive the stock price? If that's true, why are there still millions of Win7 and even XP users still undecided to convert, and not rushing to embrace the progress we are showing publicly?
What happens to H1B approvals/transfers of new hires?
yes, you can still join microsoft with H1-B. The H1-B approval/transfer will go through without problem.
A high performing SDET cannot necessarily fill the shoes of a low performing SDE. Reason being is because how each one is reviewed based on the tasks they performed, and also the fact the reviews up until just recently were done a completely different curves.
So for the people wondering why didn't Microsoft just take the high performing SDETs that they're laying off and get rid of the low performing SDEs instead should understand that it's just not the simple.
My understanding is that SDETs showing SDE potential were courted several months ago to move into the SDE role before this all happened.
And unfortunately for some awesome SDEts, certain teams may not have had those opportunities available.
These people still can interview into SDE positions in the meantime, which is how the transition process works anyway.
So it's not like these people are being left to the curb or anything.
"Really? Fixing the Win8 mess is helping drive the stock price? If that's true, why are there still millions of Win7 and even XP users still undecided to convert, and not rushing to embrace the progress we are showing publicly?"
Because enterprise has always taken a generation to catch up (note how long to took to move to XP, then to Win 7) and stock price is about confidence in future potential. Note how when the updates for Win 8 came out, investor confidence did increase, as reflected by the increase in stock price during this period.
Can anyone provide specific details about the severance package?
I have a job offer from Microsoft. From MSIT precisely. I have already given notice to my current employer and am set to join in a couple of weeks. Should I decline the offer now. And where are these announcements about cuts in MSIT? Any insights highly appreciated.
Re open milk cartons...if I have to move a f'g milk carton to get my can of pop, your lazy ass convenience is an Inconvenience to ME. Also, it could easily get knocked over. If a carton gets in my way, it gets poofed. Use the regular refer or keep it out from in front of the cans. Stop being an inconsiderate boob.
We are told to compete, and we do. We work for lower wages and less benefits. But every indication is that the numbers of guest workers will increase. But we are established and will be able to compete by working for even lower wages and even less benefits. It is the people that come after us that we should be concerned about. As we are able to work for lower wages, new graduates are not. They have massive student loans. I know many new graduates that are working in their fields and are in default on their student loans. I have two daughters and they won't be in college for another five and seven years. What will it cost then? How much will they owe when they graduate? How can they work for the same amount as people who have no student loan debt. For the most part, higher education in the competing locals is largely socialized. We are told we have the best education system in the world as our corporations tell us they can't compete without importing people wielding a socialist education on a massive scale. We are expected to pay big American prices for everything yet companies don’t want to pay our salaries. They want to charge us more and do. Software and such is sold regionally so that we pay more. What about medicine? We pay more. The system was built broken. They say that they pay guest workers a market salary. If it is not possible to find Americans with the appropriate skill set to work for that salary, it is not market. You know you have hit the market rate when you can find Americans to work for that salary. But then you don’t need the guest workers. The logic is internally inconsistent. It seems to be made to keep salaries from rising. But the education required to get the job is rising rapidly. We are accepting a system that will rob our children of a future. To compete we need a level playing field. There are current college graduates that are indenturing themselves to work for wages that cause them to default on their student loans. How can they compete with people who pay nothing. How much more do we need to retire then the guest workers who we are told to compete against. What will it be like by the time my daughters enter the workforce. They are cheating us and they are selling out our children. We can't accept this if we care about our children's future. There has to be something we can do. They are cheating us. There is no way there should be layoffs when a 100,000,000$ labour contract was just signed with Infosys. If we just “get used to it” or we “accept it” we are selling out the next generation. We owe them more. There has to be something we can do. I am not a racist for wanting my children to have a future. We need to do something or we are part of the problem.
"The Win8 modern design mistake? Rapidly being fixed, and we are showing progress on that publicly."
Really? Fixing the Win8 mess is helping drive the stock price? If that's true, why are there still millions of Win7 and even XP users still undecided to convert, and not rushing to embrace the progress we are showing publicly?
You've answered your own question, you just don't know it. There are hundreds of millions of Win7 and XP users sitting on the sidelines not buying new machines because they don't see anything compelling in Win8 and they hear a lot of negativity from friends, press, etc. That's the "modern design mistake" I'm talking about.
Those hundreds of millions of people are an addressible market for Macs (too pricy for many), for Chromebooks (too wimpy for many), and for a better OS from Microsoft (yeah! Cheap hardware, runs real programs like iTunes). OEMs could sell hundreds of millions of new PCs running the new OS into that market, once we fix the modern design mistake that's stopping them from buying.
So showing progress on fixing the modern design mistake is making Wall Street think we are going to have a hit next year, PC sales will increase, Microsoft revenues will increase next year. Thus driving the stock price today.
"Because enterprise has always taken a generation to catch up..."
Fresh stats from website of little interest to enterprise users:
Versions Pages Percent Hits Percent
Windows 2,846,320 63.1 % 78,728,112 57.6 %
Windows XP 780,905 17.3 % 8,281,419 6 %
Windows Vista 1 0 % 9 0 %
Windows (unknown version) 1,226 0 % 101,967 0 %
Windows Phone 13,653 0.3 % 506,148 0.3 %
Windows NT 5,311 0.1 % 19,990 0 %
Windows ME 295 0 % 984 0 %
Windows Vista (LongHorn) 124,869 2.7 % 3,455,403 2.5 %
Windows Mobile 49 0 % 1,015 0 %
Windows 98 1,657 0 % 15,493 0 %
Windows 95 1,509 0 % 3,145 0 %
Windows 8.1 230,314 5.1 % 8,522,206 6.2 %
Windows 8 165,888 3.6 % 4,890,807 3.5 %
Windows 7 1,498,292 33.2 % 52,780,044 38.6 %
Windows 2003 3,320 0 % 113,152 0 %
Windows 2000 18,895 0.4 % 36,071 0 %
How senior people were made go? Any entry level people like L59 or L60?
For those with Microsoft job offers, find another job. For those on H1B, expect your labor certificate to be audited 3 years from now, you will have to refile and rest your green time clock 3-4 years from now.
If I'm not making myself clear, find another job.
All of these problems would melt away if we just NATIONALIZE MICROSOFT
"[racist filth comments] are just a nuisance, mostly showcasing your own depravity. Nothing more."
Also apparently showcasing the sad situation of a person who has failed in a strongly growing employment market and is desperately trying to find somebody else to blame. If there's a family with expectations and a lot of unpaid bills at home, it's not hard to see how resigning responsibility and accountability would be a tempting option. Being helplessly incompetent does truly suck.
Cherry-picked H1-B statistics support a comforting illusion. Just don't scrutinize the magic.
This hypothesis could be verified or discounted if the filth-monger would identify themselves and elaborate on their own personal situation, in a verifiable way. Not likely; more excuse-making is the most we can expect.
Cuts at MS are probably too little and too soon. In terms of damage to the local economy, not much....However this is far more concerning:
Anonymous said...
Have you heard that no FTEs can come back as contractors for at least 6 months? Also, all v- will now be able to work only 18 months, then have to take 6 months off. That wont affect business continuity at all....
IMHO, it's going to hurt the local economy far more. All the v- will file for unemployment for 6 months because who else is going to hire them?
Nobody at MS is safe, it is better to be prepared if you feel uneasy, look around, there are tons of opportunities. Look for real diversity, not indian dominated companies is also worth remembering when searching for new jobs.
What are you complaining about? Cups in the bathroom is not a problem. If you complain it you are guilty of HATE CRIME! My muslim brothers and I leave those cups for a purpose- it is to help you. You white devils are supposed to drink the penis water we leave behind so you can become closer to Allah!
Caring about our country does not make a person a racist. Pointing out that the playing field is uneven does not make a person helplessly incompetent. Why all the name calling?
There is no way there should be layoffs when a $100,000,000 labour contract was just signed with Infosys.
So jobs are being sent to India. This isn't the first time this has happened and Microsoft isn't the first company to do this. We (Americans) have also been sending manufacturing jobs to China for many decades now. We are reaping benefits in the form of cheaper goods at Walmart. We want cheap stuff, but we don't jobs to go to China, India or other countries. Guess what, you can't have both.
It is part of capitalism to get things made wherever they can be made at lowest cost.
I feel your pain, and although I am currently employed I could join the ranks of the unemployed any day. But what is the solution? Protectionism? Americans should not be allowed to buy stuff made overseas? Do American companies owe jobs to American citizens? Maybe soviet-style communism is the answer?
//
For those with Microsoft job offers, find another job. For those on H1B, expect your labor certificate to be audited 3 years from now, you will have to refile and rest your green time clock 3-4 years from now.
//
Why three years from now?
"Why all the name calling?"
Too funny, massively ironic.
Blogs should be able to request no links from the Seattle Times commentariat sewerage system.
"Windows 8.1 230,314 5.1 % 8,522,206 6.2 %
Windows 8 165,888 3.6 % 4,890,807 3.5 % "
Ouch. After a year and billion spent? There's the -real- problem, not a few jobs washing back and forth across the border.
Companies do owe Americans jobs if they we have to subsidize their preferred tax status. If they use our government to strong-arm other governments into enforcing their intellectual property rights. We do a lot of that through foreign aid. We pay. They owe. Access to American markets should not be an entitlement. If you want a free market, I am all for it. Nullify patents, copyrights, trademarks, contracts and we can have a free market. This is not an environment were MS could exist. They only exist because of protectionism. But they insist it can only benefit them. I don’t want to sacrifice the future of this country to that one-sided dogma.
As suggested by someone else, H1B folks joining microsoft should strongly research the rough road ahead of them in getting a green card. The layoffs will adversely affect the gc process at Microsoft and set it back by several years.
If you are from India, it may not matter however. It will take you 20 years to get a green card no matter which company you join. You might as well learn to enjoy the servitude.
And someone told me about an idiot who can't talk about someone else without mentioning their races even when it has no relevance in the discussion
Hey, are you the same Chinese girl?
The poster about the pubes was right on. It's not just one here or there, its collections of them in every building and its EVERY DAY.
PC upgrade cycle is happening albeit at a much slower rate. The general populace doesnt care enough to research about the "improvements" we make. They just buy the most affordable box that kind of does what they want. ("Does it have internet and email/word?")
Enterprises can hold back only so long. They upgrade because they need some new feature in a newer OS. Some of them may move to Apple products or "tablets", but the moment they realize how difficult it is to get support or upgrades or control their environment tightly, they will look at Microsoft products.
The real killer here is the Cloud and that is the writing on the wall.
At the current price, is the stock a hold or a sell?
Sell. New CEO and more competitive products are priced in already, but Microsoft's problems are too deep to be fixed by downsizings and 1000-words exec memos. Microsoft will be struggling for a while to grow top and bottom lines.
Why are people complaining about pubes when there are the infinitely larger issues such as buying wives. This is a human rights issue. There is no human right about freedom from a view of pubes. Perhaps I am just an intolerant person who thinks women should not be sold. Perhaps I am a racist for not wanting women bought from this country. More on pubes please!
Hey, are you the same Chinese girl?
Yes, I am a girl. And I am not the first to do favors to men to get promoted. Look at Marissa Mayer. Did you know that she dated Larry Page and got promoted? She is now the CEO of Yahoo. Get used to it.
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