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 1001 – 1200 of 1345 Newer› Newest»"It is part of capitalism to get things made wherever they can be made at lowest cost."
I know where I can get a copy of windows for a dollar. I hope nobody has any complaints; its just capitalism. Of course nobody would advocate for protectionism.
They will keep screwing us over until we do something about it in an organized way.
(This post will be split up because this blog can’t accept more than 4,096 characters)
I was hired as a SDET 1 not to terribly long ago (less than 3 years). In this time here is what I've learned:
1.) The interview process for SDETs are easier. Anyone who says they are up to the same rigour as SDE interviews is lying to you. They are a lot easier. Some of the questions may be the same, but the answer and quality of code they expect from your answer is held to a higher bar. Also in dev interviews they continue to make the question harder and harder until you can't answer it. SDET interviews SOMETIMES did this but usually they didn't make it to much harder. And they were easily satisfied with answers you gave them (whereas SDE interviews they push back and question what you're doing).
2.) Test managers (and leads) sell you. With a few exceptions, whenever I talk to a test manager I always felt like I'm talking to a used car salesman. They are so desperate to grab you up probably because they know no one wants to be an SDET and good SDETs are hard to come by. After the company wide re-org, I was looking for SDE jobs and some SDET jobs. The reaction from the SDE managers were "yea sure, this is what we do, blah blah, interested? Ok lets setup a loop". The reaction from the SDET managers were "omg, welcome welcome, this is what we do and it's great and amazing and you'll love it, we are the best, we really want you blah blah blah. Let me know if you want the position, great to talk to you!!". I kept getting follow up emails from these guys and their leads too, just hassling me endlessly. These guys were probably willing to let me sleep with their wife if they thought that would help convince me to join their team. They also didn't require an interview loop. I guess because it was going from SDET to SDET?? They should have had at least a small loop 1-2 people or something, at the very least one person doing an hour long technical interview. I had a good review score, higher than a 3 so maybe that is why??? My advice is watch out for test managers/leads, they will try to sell you the most polished up, beautiful, amazing smelling TURD delivered on the finest silverware possible. Hell, I say this for all disciplines now that I think about it, I just think test does it even more than the rest.
3.) Ok, lets talk about actually BEING an SDET. First and foremost, PMs and Devs don't respect SDETs at all. The Dev's never included the test team (my team and sister teams) in any email threads or code reviews or hallway discussions regarding anything. Usually we figured out some feature of the product changed when our tests started to break. We never knew what was going on because no one every bothered to invite us in or include us in any conversation. I had to fight to change this and I wasn't 100% successful. Eventually I got us on all their code reviews so we had at least a clue what was going on. I started to get CC'ed on some email threads of importance (only from 3 of the devs), and those 3 same devs would drop by if something was going to change. I guess I couldn't get the other 2 devs on my side :(. I never used windbg before but I figured it out and learned enough about it so that when I reproed a bug I could point to a specific block of product code and say "here is the problem". Most of the other SDETs (except maybe the senior ones) didn't bother using windbg, ask questions about it, or even want to learn it. I knew it was important the moment I saw it. For the PMs, sometimes they responded to my email, sometimes they didn't. I was ignored by PMs at times. Guess I was a low priority email being an SDET and all. I can tell you right now with my new dev title I've noticed a shift in attitude towards me from the PMs. I always get a response now :). Every week we (test and dev team) had at least one meeting regarding our status, and let me tell you those meetings were dominated by the devs. Test never had anything to contribute and our lead never said a word or ever contributed anything of value AT ALL. After a while I noticed the tests didn't talk because we didn't know anything! Again, not being included means not knowing anything. That and in my opinion SDETs aren't as hard working (or as smart) as the devs (this is from my observation, may not be true in other groups). I remember this one time when my SDET lead did say something (for once)...it was so off point, so utterly incorrect and not useful the dev just starred at him blankly and said "umm, yeah that makes sense I'll look into that". So awkward. Eventually I started to have relevant things to say...but it was still mostly dominated by devs. Another thing, "test specs" are stupid. They didn't matter at all and no one cared about test specs. If someone wrote bad specs, who cares, it didn't go into or effect the final product so what difference does it make? I was lucky to have a dev or two even show up to my spec reviews. And my specs were shit imo. I knew it but no one said anything, it was like they didn't care. Or maybe the bar is so low that they thought my spec was actually good. Lets talk about the SDETs on my team. Their code was not good at all. I was seeing mistakes that I should not have been seeing and yet there they were. I also noticed that our CR's (code reviews) were nowhere near the rigour of the devs code reviews. People on my team just checked off on whatever without even looking sometimes whereas the dev CR's everyone had something to say always. And of course test leads were NEVER involved in CR's AT ALL. NEVER. Dev side? The leads were actively involved in all CR's and contributed to them.
(Part 3 continued)
So getting back to my team, yeah, one of the SDETs had holes in his/her tests. Blatant holes. Features that were not covered. This really annoyed me a lot. How the fuck can we keep a certain part of the feature untested like that??? The area I owned was tested very well after I and one other SDET on my team was done with it. It caught a lot of problems that slipped past the devs and self-hosting (it even started catching bugs in completely different teams which I thought was funny). Lastly, no one held us (SDETs) accountable for anything. I didn't HAVE to write all those tests that I did and I still would have done fine (gotten a 3, or even maybe a 2 if I played the game well enough). I didn't HAVE to stay after hours at all because no one would have noticed or cared because guess what, SDET code doesn't matter. It isn't shipped. It has no effect on the product. The only time our tests would matter is if some serious bug got past everything and went to MAIN, but that rarely happened (mainly because we had good devs, we were self-hosting, and the automation I wrote caught stuff before it got that far). Does testing matter? Sure it does! Do we need a 1:1 dev/test ratio, you bet you're ass we DON'T. Yeah yeah, I know what some of you are thinking, that this isn't true in other orgs and SDETs do good work blah blah blah. Yeah I'm sure this is true in a minority of cases, but guess what, SDETs as a whole just don't have the technical chops that most devs do (not including the retarded devs).
4.) Let's talk about the SDET role itself. The funniest thing about this role is this; we get paid the same as SDEs! This is a red flag to me. Why would a role where the interview is easier, the expectations are lower, the code quality is less stringent and whose code DOESN'T SHIP be paid the same amount as SDEs????? How does this make sense? This was my first thought when I came to MSFT. Even more hilariously, SDETs get promoted faster than devs! Meaning we start making more than our counterparts faster for doing less work (and less important work). I can't believe any software company would allow something like that to happen, much less MSFT. To my fellow SDETs, does this seem fair to you? Does it even seem right? Should we get paid the same amount of money that others who have to do more work, contribute more, do work that contributes value to the company and have more expectations than us? No. It's wrong. We should be getting paid less and if you really think about, if you swallow your pride and suspend your ego, you'll know that this is true. Yes, I know I know, SOME SDETs get to do important work, some SDETs actually do contribute a lot of value, some SDETs are smarter and better and more technical than their dev counterparts but this is few and far between. If you happen to work that an SDET like that, congratulations, you won the tester lottery. To make matters worse, they changed SDETs to Quality!! Could this not be a bigger sign that either you're going to receive a pay cut or just out right be laid off? Come on, quality?? Seriously? Data scientist? What the hell does that even mean? Quality = Quality Assurance (QA) and there is no way they are going to pay this many people this much money who unless they are writing an obscene amount of code or make useful tools.
(Part 4 continued)
Being in the SDET role may provide a lot of career advancement, but very little technical advancement (unless you are self-driven and work on stuff outside of work or you are one of the few lucky SDETs who gets to work on something cool). Side note, I remember one time a test manager telling me that SDETs are the clog of the company. He/she probably saw this coming. I personally know of at least 6 different SDETs that I worked with over my time at MSFT who got the axe and deep down I knew, they had to go. Not one of them was particularly good at their job (they weren't TERRIBLE, but not up to the bar MSFT should be setting). My first reaction was when I heard the news was "yep...not surprised at all they got the axe" I don't like firing people or telling them they are worthless (or not valuable enough to keep) but the truth is the truth, these people did not earn their paycheck.
5.) Given the above, are you really surprised they are cutting SDETs like crazy? Is this a shock to you? Here is the uncomfortable truth, SDETs don't contribute enough value to warrant their paychecks. Simple. We are overpaid. I knew that within the first 6 months of starting. I thought to myself "I can't believe I get paid to do what I do". I knew there were people out there working harder and doing more important things who were getting paid much less and I hated it. It made me feel depressed and unworthy. As much pride I had at saying "yeah I work at Microsoft" deep down I had this gnawing feeling that I didn't deserve the money I was getting. What has happened recently confirms this. Guys, listen to the next sentence. THIS WAS A LONG TIME COMING.
6.) A note on PMs. I don't have much to say about them since I haven't interacted with them much. They seem to talk a lot but don't say much and I can't say for sure of their value without more experience. What I do know is this, they talk too much. Way too much. Most of the time it isn't meaningful. I suppose I could be wrong, I need more experience...anyone else who wants to chime in on this please do so.
7.) A note about devs. From the above you may think I have a hard-on for devs and hate test. You wouldn't be 100% wrong. But you have to admit, why be a test when you can be a dev? Why not challenge yourself instead of just hitting cruise control in the SDET position (I can guarantee you the overwhelming majority of SDET work is not a challenge, more like grunt work). Obviously there are retarded devs too, and hopefully they will be going as well. And there probably are retarded dev positions at the company, I guess that can't be avoided when you have 100,000 employees.
8.) This is more of a question than a statement. Does anyone know if the next round of lay offs will be test leads/managers? Or other retarded managers who will be laid off? Thursday we lost 1351 in the pudget sound area, 12,500 from Nokia, so what about the remaining cuts? Are they coming or did they happen outside of redmond/bellevue?
Finally, to the SDETs who were laid off, trust me, this is good for you. You will leave Microsoft and work somewhere else and probably think to yourself "wow, I'm really glad I got laid off, I feel a lot happier now." You will, trust me on this, you will. What happened was a GOOD thing for you. Hell, if I was still an SDET I'd be HAPPY this happened (mainly because I would have quit anyway, but now I'd get 2 months of paid vacation as well). Once you are off the MSFT kool-aid you'll realize there is another (potentially better) world at there. However, be aware that you'll be fighting an uphill battle. You were a tester and no one wants to a hire a tester/SDET. They may not take you seriously, they may throw away your resume before even interviewing you. Can you blame them? Why hire a tester when you can hire a full blown dev? I say keep trying, eventually you'll make something happen. I would also brush up on your technical skills that you should have been learning at MSFT but haven't because being an SDET is stupid and has very little technical growth.
So there it is, my "rant" on being an SDET and why the lay offs occurred. I'm sure there are other angles, but to me, this is the core reason on why they cut sdets.
If MS is getting rid of their testers their products will be even more buggy. Perhaps MS leadership has stock in Apple. Their products have always been better anyway.
So a ten thousand word post, two and a half times larger than the comment limit? I think you should reconsider the reasons why your emails were ignored. A short hint: It was not because you were SDET.
So there it is, my "rant" on being an SDET and why the lay offs occurred. I'm sure there are other angles, but to me, this is the core reason on why they cut sdets.
Thanks for posting, dude. It is useful to get others' perspectives.
re: 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.
Not just infosys, there's also tata, wipro, HCL and a whole army of other vendors. Collectively they brought 1 million IT experts to America to push out the "stupid" American nerds.
Apple-IBM or Google-X alliance is going to eat Microsoft's enterprise lunch. But does Satya care? No, he just wants to sow infighting to push the best people out and weaken the nonIndian survivors, while at the same time cultivating the Indians to join him to rule Microsoft's cash hoard and launch 1 million more Indian gurus into America's devastated IT departments.
">>So a ten thousand word post, two and a half times larger than the comment limit? I think you should reconsider the reasons why your emails were ignored. A short hint: It was not because you were SDET."
I typically don't send out anything NEARLY this large, this has been stewing in me for some time. Most of my emails were pretty concise and short. Don't try to attack me because you didn't like what I had to say.
"Collectively they brought 1 million IT experts to America to push out the "stupid" American nerds."
It is time for the "stupid American nerds" to smarten up and put an end to this. It is so dishonest. Americans are not stupid or under-skilled. I have seen these imported "IT Experts" being used a manual testers for websites. Really, you can't find an American who is smart enough to log in and understand whether login happened? Write a Jira card if it didn't? Any high school graduate could do it. They are lying and screwing us over and selling out our children. I don't understand why MS and others can assert that their American consumer base is stupid and not face any consequences. It is time they did. Where are the pitchforks?
American graduates of STEM programs often are facing massive student debts. Yet they are also being turned down by high tech companies' swarms of Indian managers with a "poor culture fit", "lack of experience". Instead these Indian managers would prefer to hire his buddies from India's cheater schools, with a fake "5 year of experience" and keywords in a fake resume that meet their "high bar".
Same with promotion where only Indians get promoted. Good technical nonIndians are pushed out, their credits/projects/jobs are stolen by their Indian boss, and his golden Brahmin boy. The Americans are forced to travel to India or work super long hours on India time as well as American time, so that they burn out and leave on their own.
Microsoft has been the breeding ground of Indian take-over artists for some time. American IT system will be 90% occupied if this invasion army is not stopped.
Excellent expose and the life of an SDET and why its been obvious that step one of fixing Microsoft engineering is purge test test. So far I have not been surprised at all by the ones laid off. Step 2 is clearly a PM purge. Too many glorified secretaries writing down what dev says. The purge will again be bases on technical chops.
All 50%+ Indian staffed Microsoft vendors, H1b visa abusers at Microsoft should be thrown out!
Pitchfork for Satya, Elop, Ravi and their Indian gurus. Let's say if American nerds are incapable of managing their own IT.
>>Too many glorified secretaries writing down what dev says.
Someone has to write that stuff down. Most devs never bother to update their specs, even after there have been massive changes. They only write them in the first place because one of the "glorified secretaries" is responsible for making sure they do it.
Devs don't seem to realize that some of the shitty features they poorly implemented will need to be supported by some other team for 10 years. Maybe throw them a bone and write down why you made some of the decisions you did when you wrote the code?
"American graduates of STEM programs often are facing massive student debts. Yet they are also being turned down by high tech companies' swarms of Indian managers with a "poor culture fit", "lack of experience"."
They will never stop on their own. We need to take back our country. Not from the guest workers but from those at the highest level who are just giving it away. Something has to be done. We can't just give up.
SDET guy - kudos for the writeup.
Everyone take a long and hard look at your own job to figure out what value it adds. Not something fluffly like "I provide customer connection", but something solid like "I helped bring in $10 Million in business". Same goes for devs, who it appears are safe at the moment. If your job is real easy or just too vague - either you are overqualified or outgrown the job or it is ripe to be eliminated. It may not happen today or even this year, but people will eventually figure it out.
NATIONALIZE MICROSOFT - let our countrymen vote on the next CEO
This is a message to people who are complaining about Microsoft outsourcing to Indian outfits such as Infosys, Tata and HCL.
If Microsoft stops outsourcing to foreign companies, but other American companies such as Oracle don't, then Microsoft will no longer be competitive relative to other American companies. Maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing at all American companies. Then there will no longer be a competitiveness issue.
But wait, SAP from Germany will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative to German companies. So maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing on a worldwide basis. We'll then be able to enjoy 2x or 3x our current salary.
But wait that won't work either because we'll suddenly have to pay higher prices for everything we consume (because a worldwide outsourcing ban will affect more than just software.) If our salary goes up 3x but the prices for everything goes up 10x, the net result is poverty.
So banning outsourcing doesn't work, does it?
What then is the solution?
The way to wealth is simply, to buy low and sell high. Buy commodity products and services, from foreign countries, at low prices and sell them innovative new products at high prices. This is how America became wealthy in the first place. There was huge demand for American products such as Boeing airplanes and Intel chips, and asians didn't know how to make similar things themselves. So we demanded a huge premium for those products. And then we imported stuff everyone knows how to make at low prices. Once foreign countries figure out how to make something we can no longer demand a premium for our version of that thing. Instead we should let them make it and import it from them at commodity prices. We should then move up a notch and make something they don't know how to make and sell it to them for premium prices. This is the only way to wealth.
Wealth is not our birthright. Wealth can only be obtained by being smarter than the foreigners and making things they can't. This is how we have always done it, and if we are going to continue to be the wealthiest nation in the world this is how we are going to do it.
It is sad that mini decided to put this post up and then apparently take a vacation. This comments section is a great example of what is wrong with the internet today.
Anonymous commenters are the worst.
And to the dude that is trying to make this discussion the #1 web hit for Info sys, give it a rest. Ok, so you saw some indian dude at the pro club and he had a bigger dick than you. It is not the end of the world. I'm sure there are white guys with bigger dicks too, but you're not hating on them are you?
It is sad that mini decided to put this post up and then apparently take a vacation.
The current speculation is that mini no longer works at Microsoft and couldn't care less what is said here.
"All of these problems would melt away if we just NATIONALIZE MICROSOFT"
Ksharma, please keep in mind you are in Seattle council. Deal with Amazon.
Or maybe Mini is using this as an outlet for some of his racist views?
To the Indian booster talking head above:
> If Microsoft stops outsourcing to foreign companies, but other American companies such as Oracle don't, then Microsoft will no longer be competitive relative to other American companies. Maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing at all American companies. Then there will no longer be a competitiveness issue.
My answer: Motorola, Nokia outsourced to India. Apple, google, facebook tried and pulled out more or less. Who got the competitive advantage?
> But wait, SAP from Germany will continue to outsource and American companies will no longer be competitive relative to German companies. So maybe the solution then is to ban outsourcing on a worldwide basis. We'll then be able to enjoy 2x or 3x our current salary.
Funny you mention SAP. SAP just booted its big Indian hotshot Sikka. Probably because he dropped a billion buck to buy a sleepy little 300 Indian-person cloud company run by another Indian?
Now he's in Infosys, a good culture fit: hot bed of nepotism, racial discrimination and fraud. LOL
Long winded sdet dude, your describing the sdet role of 10 years ago. Guess osg is behind the times.
“The way to wealth is simply, to buy low and sell high.”
No rules capitalism is what happens all over the third world. It creates no wealth for the population and extraordinary wealth for a few. People function as slaves. Places in the world where people are living a good standard of life are where there are ‘socialist’ policies in place. Where outsourcing and immigration limits exist. Where people are not disposable. I don’t want my fellow Americans to make themselves disposable due to some misguided ideology which asserts that will create wealth. MS would have no wealth at all under a capitalist system. They need big government to enforce their intellectual property rights on an unwilling population. You argue for a system where the rules are rigged, why would anyone agree. They want our borders locked down for software and open for people. For every person MS imports, I should be able to import a windows knockoff.
“Wealth is not our birthright.”
Your opinion. Stating it as if it is a fact does not make it true. We are born into what you call the wealthiest nation in the world. It is our nation.
“if we are going to continue to be the wealthiest nation in the world...”
We already are not. We have people dying from lack of medical care in genocidal proportions. We gave up the highest living standard in the world in the seventies to your silly dogma. Stop with your silliness. Let people live a decent life without being undermined.
Any insights on impacts to LCA, SMSG, Finance. Everyone here is way too anxious.
>>> ...Microsoft doesn't have enough great SDEs for 2015.<<<<
And they are not likely to hire a lot more either. Not trying to be a dick here but given this layoff and what it signals why would a great SDE want to work at Microsoft when they could work other places? Better yet why would a great SDE want to stay at Microsoft? I get that there is interesting project work at Microsoft but there is a lot at other places too especially for great SDEs. This really smacks of being a bit arrogant in that a Microsoft SDE position is an elite SDE position. Part of the cultural changes that are needed is losing the arrogance because it isn't warranted.
I assume many will shit their pants every time they see a meeting request from a senior manager now.
Do we still have the laundry pickup benefit that we can take advantage of?
LCA - Patent Analysts, Attonreys
SMSG - HQ pretty much dead, ATS/TAM. Subs OK. MSIT less than halved, CSS is toast. Marlena now has to sleep with someone else.
Finance - Half out
Why can't they get rid of SDEs?
Why only SDETs?
Why not close SVC campus?
"Wealth is not our birthright."
Incorrect - WEALTH IS OUR BIRTHRIGHT ** NATIONALIZE MICROSOFT
>>Incorrect -
Great response. Lots of HS debate club experience I assume?
"Anonymous said...
"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.
Sunday, July 20, 2014 9:56:00 AM"
It is so much about race! We all know when a new head of division becomes Indian, many Indian employees transfer to there. They then play politics and take important projects from people of other nationality and assign them to Indians. the original component owners then have to leave, and the Indian managers have all the reason to outsource the project to india. Later they play politice again and bring those projects back, converting the vendors to FTE, and the product from that team/division finally get worse than before.
I saw it happen many, many times.
"Great response. Lots of HS debate club experience I assume?"
I was responding to an unsupported assertion. That is really all it deserved. There were no points to argue.
Talking about India cronies and inbreeding, Soma with 0 vision has made Visual Studio bloaty and worthless. Been there for years with VS share falling. 0 Accountability. CEO and him are buddies, probably will become a EVP for his stellar contribution. Joke!
SDET was a good job in early 2000 where testers knew what they were doing and knew what to test. However the Indian housewives who had nothing better to do got hired by their husband's buddies and completely destroyed the test concept. We had a lady in our team who used to open great bugs pointing out the code and everything but could not defend them in discussions. It later turned out that her Indian husband was doing the work for her. She then moved on to another team and is now a Test lead. Go figure
Wow! I though some type of Critical Thinking courses were included in the US high school curriculum. This thread proves otherwise... I'm now convinced that schools in some regions actually include courses specially designed to immunize their students against this disease of the "libtard" minds.
"Wow! I though some type of Critical Thinking courses were included in the US high school curriculum."
Education is being gutted. It is too expensive. There is no reason to educate our children when industry would rather import their indentured servants. I guess the 13th amendment is no longer important.
Is there somewhere to actually discuss the layoffs with other people that were actually impacted?
Because this is clearly not the place to have a useful discussion.
I feel for all my colleagues who were affected by the job cuts irrespective of their nationalities. The fact that it is a business decision probably in the best interests of the company will be of little consolation for those who have been laid off.
For those who have been laid off and those left behind - take some time to think about what you really want to do with the rest of your life. While I'm a dev and I've not been personally affected by this wave of layoffs, it did get me thinking about what I want to do next. It is so easy to get caught up in day to day activities that you never really spend time thinking about what else you would rather do.
Good luck to everybody!
To someone claiming that this long drawn out layoff is a business decision for the good of company
that's BS. It's the worst kind of corporate murder with a smile of "I'm doing the best thing for you".
Fire all the Indian vendors who does nothing, cut all the nepotistic Indian managers and their indian serfs, cut the entire Indian division, fire himself with his hollow vision of mobile productivity (completely eclipsed by the Apple-IBM mobile enterprise alliance), then Americans and nonIndians would be happy to do the best thing for the "good of company", including layoffs.
To the person who wrote this: "We had a lady in our team who used to open great bugs pointing out the code and everything but could not defend them in discussions. It later turned out that her Indian husband was doing the work for her. She then moved on to another team and is now a Test lead. Go figure"
How did you find out that her husband was creating the bugs for her? You were lurking behind his back when he was creating bugs for her?
Lots of people are better at email discussions than in face to face discussions, where usually the loudest person wins. That doesn't mean the work was done by someone else.
If she is one of such people, she probably wouldn't be able to defend her team in a calibration and would not survive as a Test Lead for long, but would still be a better IC than your sorry ass will ever be.
I agree that many sdets are incompetent, but same is true for devs too. The code they write is not really that exceptional as what they claim. Also, the code if full of the bugs.A lot of times null conditions, thread safety, performance strategies are not handled well. Don't even talk about the quality FVTs, they are just additional layer of verification over the unit tests. At least, sdets used to catch those bugs. Now we are totally at the mercy of the devs. God save Microsoft.
I wonder why no one is talking about LisaB. Wan't she the next to go after SteveB kicked out?
Excellent writeup about life of SDETs. I can only agree with all you've written and also add that most of SDEs are no better: they can't write code, they haven't heard about unit tests, they rarely test their code even manually. Sometimes looking at a yet another batch of code reviews from SDEs and SDETs I can't say who write code worse. The only difference is that for a production code from a SDE I leave comments and force the author to fix them all (in some cases it takes 15 iterations in CR and a few months) and in case of a SDET code (they like to write some weird useless tools that then are silently thrown away because the lack of dev skills quickly turns these tools into buggy unfixable programs with unpredictable behavior) I leave some general comments and sign off because I don't care and the reason I don't care is that SDETs have never taken my comments seriously (perhaps because they think they can fix problems later) and reading their huge unreadable code reviews is usually a waste of time.
There are very few SDETs that know how to do stuff and do it and these SDETs are very well known across the org. All others don't bring any value. As I've said, many SDEs are no better, but it's harder to find them because typically a team doing a project consist of very few rock stars that do the job while other devs do nothing and the management has no means to discover this situation because it doesn't know who does the job. The peer feedback system doesn't work because it's very risky to send crititcise others even if there are good reasons to do so.
It's a fact that Microsoft has a lot of fat and this fat needs to be removed, but it's also likely that such an attempt to remove this fat will sink the whole company.
I'm personally thinking about leaving the company (perhaps I'll go to Google) just because I'm afraid I'll be laid off by a mistake.
It is always to good to evaluate redundant resources just doing email forwarding and sending you the output of reports generated by BI tools. Why would you need such minimum 63+ resources? it is generating another level of discomfort for boss over boss. we need me more horizontal rather than vertical. we have electronic tools to measure success of each individual. why do we need so many levels of span of management?
"
I'm personally thinking about leaving the company (perhaps I'll go to Google) just because I'm afraid I'll be laid off by a mistake.
"
If you can, why are you not going to Google?
"Excellent writeup about life of SDETs. I can only agree with all you've written and also add that most of SDEs are no better: they can't write code, they haven't heard about unit tests, they rarely test their code even manually....blah, blah, blah."
We can't all be perfect like you.
"I'm personally thinking about leaving the company (perhaps I'll go to Google) just because I'm afraid I'll be laid off by a mistake."
I urge you to jump on the opportunity.
"The current speculation is that mini no longer works at Microsoft and couldn't care less what is said here."
He and about 7 billion other people but keep on thinking the world revolves around Microsoft.
>>> ...Microsoft doesn't have enough great SDEs for 2015.<<<<
And they are not likely to hire a lot more either. Not trying to be a dick here but given this layoff and what it signals why would a great SDE want to work at Microsoft when they could work other places? Better yet why would a great SDE want to stay at Microsoft? I get that there is interesting project work at Microsoft but there is a lot at other places too especially for great SDEs. This really smacks of being a bit arrogant in that a Microsoft SDE position is an elite SDE position. Part of the cultural changes that are needed is losing the arrogance because it isn't warranted.
Exactly right, except for the "arroagance" part.
Microsoft needs great SDEs yet too many SDEs fall for the mistake of letting PMs write down what they say and call that a spec, and throwing code over the wall for SDETs to test, and calling that good enough. That is no way to actually become a great SDE. The whole SDE/SDET/PM system is broken and has been for a long time. It results in crap all around.
After thinking about this, a few things seem clear to me.
- OSG bore the brunt of this layoff because they had three groups (Nokia, Core Windows, and the phone OS folks) essentially doing the same thing. Perhaps this is me being captain obvious, but after wading through all the comments here, maybe it isn't that obvious to some. If phone and desktop are going to converge, why do we need three silo'ed teams doing UX? Why do we need multiple app teams? It didn't make any sense, so the axe went down.
- Since OSG had a surplus of people, and the company as a whole is moving to combined engineering, it made sense that SDETs were the targets. By all accounts though, it seems like HR made the calls on the individuals that were targeted. I think this was a terrible mistake - let the managers and leads provide input on who's most likely to succeed in combined engineering. HR has no clue about individual talents - they just know salary, age, and review score.
- People in far flung US offices with actual development work (the Hauppauge, NY office comes to mind) are at risk. SVC and Boston are safe but I'd start looking elsewhere if I were PM/SDE/SDET in the US that isn't in Redmond, SVC, or Boston.
I get the impression that ASG, C+E, et al are going to use the review period to manage the low performers out, erase the headcount, move to combined engineering, and remove the misfits (SDETs that cannot code, leads/managers that can't cut it as ICs) come Annual Review 2015. I love the test manager in our org, really nice guy, but there is no way he's cutting it as a principal software engineer. The same goes for my dev manager, but I have a feeling those guys are penciled in for engineering manager positions.
Anonymous said:
"It is sad that mini decided to put this post up and then apparently take a vacation. This comments section is a great example of what is wrong with the internet today.
Anonymous commenters are the worst.
... guys with bigger dicks too, but you're not hating on them are you?"
Trying to prove your point about anonymous commenters, I guess.
For the person complaining about immigrants.
We live in the USA and the society it (meaning YOU) have created. The fact that American companies are willing and more than happy to utilize non Americans (whatever that even means) to perform work means they don't have a single care for you or anything else that doesn't help improve their bottom line. The very same society that you praise so much and helped create cares nothing about you. Strange how you can praise the very fundamentals of a system (competition and winning) that you helped create but then turn right around and complain when it doesn't suite you. As an American in a free society you probably (but perhaps not) also know that there is a process in this country for changing processes that you don't agree with. Rather than polluting a blog post you should explore those proper avenues as is your right and would most likely be much more effective.
Question to all surviving Quality Leads whose teams were affected
I have these questions to the Quality Leads who survived this round of layoffs, but had reports who were casualties:
- Were you aware that your team was going to be impacted? If so, how much of a heads up did you have?
- Did you know the team members who were going to be affected?
- Did you have the Review discussion with the team member beforehand?
- Do you know who set the criteria? Was it HR acting solo? Or were the M2s involved as well? Were you involved at all in the discussion?
Myself Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy, a humble SDET in OSG. I was laid off on Friday. I applied online to Google sharp at 6:30pm. I had my phone screen around 8pm. Interviewer asked to reverse linked list. I reversed. I had my onsite next day. Very simpul questions. I just got offer. Larry sir called. $339,734 total compensation.
HR has no clue about individual talents - they just know salary, age, and review score.
Going forward there will be no review scores. How will HR handle this in the future?
>>"Myself Ramprasad Narayan >>Chokalingam Murthy, a humble >>SDET in OSG. I was laid off on >>Friday. I applied online to >>Google sharp at 6:30pm. I had my >>phone screen around 8pm. >>Interviewer asked to reverse >>linked list. I reversed. I had >>my onsite next day. Very simpul >>questions. I just got offer. >>Larry sir called. $339,734 total >>compensation."
How does this make any sense? If you applied at 6:30pm, how could you have had an interview within 90 minutes? Also, the layoffs happened on Thursday, why were you laid off on Friday? If you were laid off on Friday, how can you have an on-site interview on Saturday? And how did you get $340k in compensation?
None of that makes any sense unless you knew a guy on the inside who short-cutted you through the entire interview process. Even then interviews don't happen on Saturday.
I've never understood Microsoft management's aversion to testers.
Windows 8 came with parental controls that allow a parent to restrict what time of day a child may use the computer and to limit how many hours per day the child may use the computer. It flat out did not work.
I restricted my kid to one hour per day and he continued to use the computer for hours on end.
If you... ummm... binged (that's not right, "binged", another fail) this problem there were numerous examples of people reporting the same issue.
The feature was flat out broken from day one.
1. What makes Microsoft think its devs are so good?
2. What makes Microsoft think it doesn't need testers to find this crap?
3. Does anyone at Microsoft actually care about the quality and usability and desirability of the products you sell?
THIS is the problem with Microsoft. Everyone is so busy stabbing one another in the back and covering their own asses so they don't wind up getting "Kimmed" that everything else goes by the wayside. It's really, really pathetic that nobody seems to get this.
Plain and simple: You guys suck. Not just SDET's, not just PM's, but the whole lot of you are so goddamn mediocre and yet you continue to pat yourselves on the back for being so good. You're not. Get over yourselves already.
Whatever criteria HR used to choose people, competency sure as hell wasn't one of them. Of the SDETs I know who were laid off, about three quarters had good testing and coding skills. This layoff is sheer lunacy.
Windows on ARM: I still don't understand why decision makers are too fucking stupid to let third parties recompile their Win32 apps. This will forever make it a flop. Modern Windows APIs? Most things don't work well because it was designed by idiots. Most people don't give a shit about it, they just see a new programmer hostile GUI library introduced every couple of years as usual and think Microsoft is breaking my shit again for no reason.
In 2011 at least people could more convicingly make the excuse "well iPad blah blah blah"... (I never bought it but Apple seemed to be killing it then.) Now the numbers show iPad sales are down. The thing is a dud. What's the excuse now?
Myself Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy...
I couldn't find such a person in MS. I found a few Rampasads, but none of them match this name.
The Ramprasad post is satire.
My god you people can't even tell a satire from a real post.
>Whatever criteria HR used to choose people, competency sure as hell wasn't one of them. Of the SDETs I know who were laid off, about three quarters had good testing and coding skills. This layoff is sheer lunacy.
Maybe the victims are perfectly good tester/coders. But they are in Mr Nadella's way for the Indianization of Microsoft, so they must be gotten rid of.
Mr Nadella's Nokia CEO college buddy and Mr Nadella learned the same layoff-at-thesame-time-outsourcing tricks from the same second rate Indian college.
"Most people don't give a shit about it, they just see a new programmer hostile GUI library introduced every couple of years as usual and think Microsoft is breaking my shit again for no reason.
...
The thing is a dud. What's the excuse now?"
As for rewriting the library I'm pretty sure the reason is somebody needed something to put down on their review for what they would be doing over the next year. Their manager had no clue what to tell them so between them they schemed a plan to update that library. It kept the dev busy, made it look like the dev manager was on top of his report, and, "Who gives a bleep what the customers think. My job is on the line and I need something to keep me busy, or else."
This sort of mentality is rampant throughout the company and it is a reflection of management's lack of ideas and good planning.
Congratulations Ramprasad,
I just had my Google screening at Mayuri. Passed. Onsite tomorrow. Can you please email me your questions at:
my_name_is_senthil_and_i_am_not_an_sdet@gmail.com
Your friend
Senthil Vijayaparaputhy Murli
I saw people have title of Data Scientist,Data Scientist II,Senior Data Science Lead. SDET's today is the future of Data Science's tomorrow.
Dear Senthil,
Best wishes for your interview. Here are the list of questions you will be asked. For the other interviewers, you should ask Deepak to do a stand-in interviews. Also add these keywords to your resume, OK? and 5 more years of experience would help you beat out the stupid American grads.
Your friend,
Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy.
Wait, you guys are both at Google now too? I had HCL fabricate a resume and do the interview for me as well and I start there tomorrow!
See you guys on our new Kirkland campus, lets get lunch!
Kumar
Dear Senthil,
Best wishes for your interview. Here are the list of questions you will be asked. For the other interviewers, you should ask Deepak to do a stand-in interviews. Also add these keywords to your resume, OK? and 5 more years of experience would help you beat out the stupid American grads.
Your friend,
Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Ramu - you stupid fuck. This is Google interview not Microsoft interview. None of the above would work. Send me real questions.
"You know you have hit the market rate when you can find Americans to work for that salary."
Sorry, but no. Like it or not, the market is the world now. If someone is willing and able to do the same work you do for a lot less money, they're going to get the job.
If you want to be paid significantly more than the market (i.e., global) average, then you will need to have significantly greater skills and produce significantly better results to justify the higher pay. That's how life works and always has. All that's changed now is the size of the playing field.
One of the consequences of the technology we've all created is to connect more of the world together and make it possible to hire people from virtually anywhere. Like it or not, that's the reality we helped to create. You're competing with everybody.
Protectionist policies lead to substandard products that can't compete globally, which means that their market inevitably shrinks until it's only the size of that protectionist zone. Such policies help a few people in the short run and end up screwing everyone in the long run.
The world doesn't owe you a job in your chosen industry at the salary you wish to earn for the rest of your life. If your skills used to be scarce and now they're less scarce, then the price they command is going to drop. Asking the government to re-impose scarcity by fiat is the exact opposite of how a market works.
If you want that, please don't pretend it has anything to do with "market rates." Market rates are precisely the thing you're complaining about.
Time to deport all H1Bs.
Now that people are being more transparent and sharing their stories, it is my turn.
My name is Murali Satish Subramanian. I've been an SDET at Microsoft since long time back. My last team was with OSG. I got an invite Thursday morning for a 10:30 meeting and some announcement of an organizational changes. I showed up and saw few other people there as well, about 35-40. The announcement was quick, they told us last day is July 20th, payroll till September 15. There were many nationalities there, fellow Indians, few Chinese and women, and Americans.
Somehow I had to be escorted out of the building immediately following the meeting. They said they would mail me my office belongings. Took my badge and prime card, and corporate Amex card as well, and parking sticker also. Still in shock over what happened, I asked why I'm being escorted. Apparently, I had been red-flagged by HR and identified as that guy who leaves white cups in the toilets. I told them only Muslims do that and I only worship cows, but their decision was final. It was a very ugly end to my Microsoft career.
"Time to deport all H1Bs."
Since the layoff date is Sept 15, 2014, I presume the laid off H1B workers have two more months to find another job, before being deported.
Given the current sprawling job market in Seattle, your dream of deporting H1Bs is just that - a dream :)
Hello - this is Vishvanathan Samudrapali. Please do not do satire posts. If you understand hindi - "logon ke bhavnaoo ke saath mut kheleo". Do not play with Bhavna - please.
Here is Bhavna:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Bhavna&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=u3nMU_WfEMSqyASe7YG4Cg&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1600&bih=805#facrc=0%3Bbhavana&imgdii=_&imgrc=_
To respond to the question on if test leads have knowledge about who would be let go, AFAIK, they have no idea either.
I quit MS almost a decade ago. By then the GMs I knew with the brains and balls to drive innovation against the growing politics were starting to give up and leave the company. Reading mini today, I am truly shocked though by how much has changed for the worse.
Small bore issue: Good God ! doesn't anyone have the guts to complain to HR about the filthy condition of the restrooms? Screw the PC police!
Large bore: if you lost a job my condolences but also congratulations. You can take advantage of a pretty decent local market as the first wave of MS layoffs - doesn't take much imagination to market yourselves as progressive, creative thinkers who were booted out for speaking up. Position yourselves, use what you've got! Enjoy a break, the summer, then move on and kick ass! But before you unwind and perhaps smoke a doobie, write Patty Murray and lay out how Gates and his Boy Nadella are hollowing out the MS US tech workforce with your own story. the stories here, along with the likes of Infosys $100M outsourcing contract - a month before these layoffs. Total bullshit!
Myself Babu Ram Agrawal. Friends call me BRA. Questions on sorting and searching are very hot. Good luck with onsite tomorrow.
"Talking about India cronies and inbreeding, Soma with 0 vision has made Visual Studio bloaty and worthless. Been there for years with VS share falling. 0 Accountability. CEO and him are buddies, probably will become a EVP for his stellar contribution. Joke!"
BTW what's up with Soma's org ? What's his ex room mate Paramesh Vaidyanathan doing ? Soma must be truly eggzited that he is shipping people along with VS DVDs ?
This is Mukesh Pabbisetty Sivaram. Laid of on Thursday, already have received few calls from recruiters with full offer package. Will flip coin between Amazon offer and Google offer and make decision tomorrow. Does anyone know of Google Kirkland campus cafeteria offers free Indian buffet daily?
No point getting mad at me. Google is also hackable with "stand-in"s. Stupid Americans can't tell us apart, besides the hiring side are not hiring manager anyway. Deepak's worth his weight in gold!
Anyway, what do you have against Microsoft? You will be protected from layoffs by the Great One, and then after we take over 60%, we could all divvy up the spoils and promotions. Come to think of it, Microsoft beats Google as the place to be!
If Google doesn't work out for my fake resume, I could always change my name and come join your team at Microsoft. Microsoft could match my package.
Yours Sincerely,
Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy.
Ramprasad Narayan Chokalingam Murthy is the Dilbert if MSFT.
He is a superhit
Quote from MercuryNews
"Tech companies, Lewis said, "do not want to employ Americans. They import labor from overseas, pushing for H-1B visas. Check the job boards. They basically say, 'H-1B Visa. Americans need not apply.' For years, women, blacks and Latinos have been kept out of the tech job market. Now white men are being forced to train their replacements.""
Asians dominating Silicon Valley are mainly Indians with fake resumes and backdoor into Indian managed American high tech. The top users of H1b visas are almost all Indians and got almost 10 times as many H1b visas than any runner up countries, 50-70% total H1b visa.
I am not happy to see all the racist comments here, honestly what is driving so many people(Spanish, Chinese, Indians, Phillipines , Thai) to America, it is dollar global currency status and exchange, if Americans don't want foreigners to come here, they need to give up on the global currency status for dollar, already Foreigners have to do more work and prove compared to Americans for the same job in my experience, you cannot get it all for free and the way you want , you have to give something to get something.
Nobody is saying anything about the other foreigners as long as they are honest and hardworking. But Indians taking 50-70% of total H1b visas and claiming to be the "best and finest"?
and taking almost 1 million software related jobs (over more than 10 years) when the total American software related job count stand at 2 million?
You have your head in the sand to call this free and honest competition or justify it as "global market". Call it giant invasion, great take-over of American nerves and brains.
In another 10 years, American nerves and brains will be completely Indian at this rate, and we will all talk under our breath with a beneficent Big Brother Satya or Raghu or Sanjee watching us 24 hours a day.
I am not happy to see all the racist comments here
"We have always been a nation of immigrants who hate the newer immigrants." -- Jon Stewart
This country should only hire First Nations people. All you pilgrims should get back on your Mayflower and paddle back across the Atlantic.
I'm pretty sure that some of the trolls are Indians - I don't think whites would use the term 'housewives', or be that comfortable with South Indian names. These could be Aryan-wannabe North Indians who are mighty pissed of with the H-1B contractors (primarily from South India). I can completely understand the frustration :) ...
What do Indians give to get our American dollars and jobs? Other than donations @ the urinal, of course. They don't give time to education since they are dumber than a box of rocks. They don't contribute to our economy since they live like homeless and don't spend money on hygiene.
Where is Shilpa? Must be two floors up since the air is almost breathable right now.
Now that SDETs are rolled out is it the turn of SDEs next? I am wondering when will this storm end.
Since the job openings are normally split 50-50 SDE-SDET, and 90% of the candidates want an SDE position, the rest works out exactly how you would expect.
The SDE > SDET hierarchy is established from the get-go. If you're smart and can problem solve, you're offered an SDET interview. If you're smart, can problem solve, and can code, you're offered an SDE interview. The only reason a dev-capable person would be offered a test position is 1) the recruiter needs to fill their test quota and 2) you've expressed enough interest that they can convince you to do it.
The smartest candidates will purposely show little to no test aptitude in order to make sure the recruiter doesn't try to use them to fill their test quota.
They way MSFT is handling the layoffs will be damaging not only to current employees/morale, but to its ability to hire top talent from universities. Recruiters/interviewers have been saying for years that SDET positions are just as important as SDE. Now it should be clear to everyone that it's just not true.
"Sorry, but no. Like it or not, the market is the world now. If someone is willing and able to do the same work you do for a lot less money, they're going to get the job."
That is exciting! Does that mean that I can buy Microsoft products for the same amount as people from other counties? Does that mean that I can buy lifesaving medications at the same amount as people from other countries? No. We are talking about American markets.
I am sure that the powers that be would like to make labour a global market while keeping borders up for their crappy products. The political discussion for the H1B is not hey, lets bring down the wage for American workers to the market rate of other countries where the cost of living is much less. No that would be a loosing political argument. What we are told, is that the guest workers are being paid the market rate for America. That doesn't make any sense at all because if they hit market rate for America for the skill set they want they will find the workers they need and not need the guest workers at all. No, it was always for America. Not for the world or any other country. Guest workers usually make a lot more here, because they are supposed to be paid market for America. If it was world market they would make less.
PMs and leads/managers are next
If you understand hindi - "logon ke bhavnaoo ke saath mut kheleo".
Wow, you are a dedicated hater, even going to the extent of learning Hindi. Did you consider that if you spent that time learning C# instead you might actually land a job at Microsoft? Then you wouldn't have to spend so much time hating and stewing.
Linus took the M$ on its knees single hand. Git made forking seem less. Google forked it to android and Samsung and htc forked it again. M$ is not going to succeed in mobile market. Apple still relevant because they have to test it on 2 or 3 devices. Satya seems to be going behind internal open source now to compete the external open source projects. Not sure how far it will go
If your programming skills aren't cutting the mustard why not stop spewing hate online and consider becoming a plumber? My plumber charges $140 for first hour, $70 for each additional half hour. That's very nice pay -- equivalent to about $250K per year, but not very sexy, so it might be a bit harder to get chicks. They can never outsource plumbing to India or China or wherever.
I left Microsoft 8 months ago after spending only 9 months there. They were the most miserable months of my 13 year career. After having spent 6.5 years at Amazon, I was ready for a change and was courted by the Azure team.
I joined the team as a Sr Lead (L64). During the interview, I was told fairytales of how Azure was different, how it was a start-up culture where they wanted to bring in my expertise and help shape the product. Man! What a bunch of horse sh!t.
I had worked with strong teams at Amazon (AWS) where we had strong personalities, but I never expected to join a product team where everyone was a type A personality. Everyone thought that they were god's gift to mankind. It was not possible to have a simple discussion around a component without someone's ego getting hurt, no not hurt, massacred!!!!
I was simply being asked to manage ICs and keep my mouth shut. Follow what the Sr Principal manager wanted and be handed down miscellaneous tasks which had nothing to do with my role. I was simply expected to do them and not ask questions.
And the politics!!! Oh the politics would have put "Frank Underwood" to shame!!!! And I really mean it!! Everyone was just looking for an opportunity to put down others, backstabbing was perfected to an art form and everyone there had an agenda!!
Finally, when it came down to performance review, I was pitted against leads who were veterans, favorites and had 7 extra months of work than me (Since reviews got locked down in June and I started Jan, given 1 month of ramp up to orient myself with MS tech stack, culture, I had 5 months work of work!!!), I was given a rating of 4, despite being told that I was doing a "great" job. When I mentioned that it was unfair and that it was not a fair comparison from a comparative deliverable perspective, I was told to be a team player and that I should take one for the team since everyone had to be stack ranked.
At that time, i realized the mistake I had made. I could have stuck around and completed an year, but I was so enraged/fed-up, I put in my papers 10 days after my first review.
In 13 years I had been an 'Exceed/Outstanding' rated employee. Getting a rating of 4 and no good explanation was enough incentive for me to look out. I work at Google today and I can say without a shred of doubt that this was the best decision I made.
"My plumber charges $140 for first hour, $70 for each additional half hour. That's very nice pay -- equivalent to about $250K per year, but not very sexy, so it might be a bit harder to get chicks.
Outsourcing plumbing has probably been thought about. "No American is smart enough to lay this pipe. We better fly in some geniuses for this job." But then, plumbers wouldn't bend over for that. It would be much harder to push around a plumber. They would be organized in a second and have plenty to say. Why do you think it would be harder to get chicks? Your smooth girly hands don't have anything on the strong hands of a plumber. If you watch Cinamax at night, you might have noticed that it is never a programmer. It is time for programmers to grow a pair and stand up for themselves as any plumber would. Don't let them give away your jobs.
>>They can never outsource plumbing to India or China
Well, thank God for that. Can you imagine having to deal with all the cups and pubic hair left behind by Krishna the Plumber after a service call?
More pubic hair. They buy wives. That goes hand in hand with honor killing. Karmanarvana www.karmanirvana.org.uk is a charity set up for young girls to call when they are being 'arranged' into a marriage against their will. Usually they are very young and terrified. This charity was set up by an indian woman that was victimized by this custom. The only advice that can be given to them is to run away, or get on a no fly list so they can't be married off against their will. Not something I want in my country. Forget the pubic hair. They are bigger problems.
"To respond to the question on if test leads have knowledge about who would be let go, AFAIK, they have no idea either"
Thanks - I heard the same, but wanted to confirm. Any ideas about M2s? GAL shows that a number of Test Managers are on vacation at this time. Either they knew about the shitstorm and decided to take off or we have way too many Test Managers going off on vacation.
The pitchforks are this countries only hope.
Were you aware that your team was going to be impacted? If so, how much of a heads up did you have?
No
Did you know the team members who were going to be affected?
Not until after it happened on Thursday
Did you have the Review discussion with the team member beforehand?
Yes for some and had one scheduled for later that day.
Do you know who set the criteria? Was it HR acting solo? Or were the M2s involved as well? Were you involved at all in the discussion?
M2's were not involved. Learn more Monday at 2pm meeting.
Finally, some useful information. Thank you Anonymous at 9:34:00 PM
What does M2 mean?
"Whatever criteria HR used to choose people, competency sure as hell wasn't one of them. Of the SDETs I know who were laid off, about three quarters had good testing and coding skills. This layoff is sheer lunacy."
Don't be so naïve. The sad part is good coding kill doesn't always get your a good review score.
This was not based on current review score. Everyone expects a normal bonus.
Was not based on history of review scores either.
Wasn't based on age.
So I guess I can assume from four days of this nonsense that no one knows WTF is going on or what is going to happen next ...
9:34 is untrue. M2s and above knew sooner. One when they gave the list of expendables and two shortly before. If you did meet the criteria and M2 had said s/he was on a mission critical, s/he was saved for now.
>>So I guess I can assume from four days of this nonsense that no one knows WTF is going on or what is going to happen next ...
Yes.
>>One when they gave the list of expendables and two shortly before.
That list didn't happen. There was no input at this level. I know this because people that were on critical projects and were top performers were fired. Less critical people on those same projects were not fired.
Anon @ 10:09
Curious - are you a lead? I was wondering if that's how you know that M2s were given a list of expendables or whether that was a guess on your part.
We are looking at resumes from people laid off. (I'm a manager at MSFT with open headcount)
Can anyone please tell me what M1 and M2 means?
Worry that mid mgrs will get one more chance to screw ICs in upcoming review, unless they aren't laid off by next Thu.
10:09 - Yes M2.
I left Microsoft(MS IT India) 7 months back after working for 8 years. Though initial 5 years was good, once i moved into Indian leadership the whole thing started turning around.
Bureaucracy, politics and favouritism. There is no more appreciation for work instead you need to lick your manager. Even there is many stories of mangers relatives getting into the company.
Finally i made my decision to leave the pressure cooler. I am happy now to have made the decision at the right time. I am very very very happy now and doing the work i like the most.
Unless the stupid politics, middle managers and some general managers in IT are thrown out this company is not going to get back.
>> Worry that mid mgrs will get one more chance to screw ICs in upcoming review, unless they aren't laid off by next Thu.
Decisions made after review work completed. Some of the people that were fired will still get big bonuses. I don't know why someone thinks that makes sense. Maybe legal reasons.
M1 manages ICs (individual contributors who have no reports). M2 manages M1s. M2 is manager of managers.
"10:09 - Yes M2."
Thanks. Makes sense.
If HR was to yank off people from some deliverable, that would have put the release at risk.
I imagine the criteria won't be made public because people would figure out that they're next in line and start looking for new jobs thereby impacting timelines.
by not making the critera public, everyone thinks s/he is next and start to look, that would impact every project, not just the critical ones.
For those wondering about the psychotic fixation on the imaginary Indian Conspiracy as found here and what those ravings have to do with the reality of MSFT, look on the the bright side: this comment thread is less expensive than a real isolation ward for deranged xenophobes. True, the facility does come with all the standard trimmings such as expressions of hostility written with feces smeared on the wall, disturbing outbursts of acute multiple personality disorder, inarticulate howling, etc. but the good news is that most of us are on the right side of the little window on the door of the padded cell. Look in, count yourself lucky, look away.
The 10.09 is accurate. In another M2s defense, the list of expendables was not an explicit ask. It was who's who, project they are working on and pri of projects. Ring a bell? Don't forget, HR has ratings history.
It was who's who, project they are working on and pri of projects. Ring a bell?
Wow. My boss asked me to send him this info (because he was pretty new). I did not. Guess what happened next?
:(
I am a group manager in SMSG HQ Finance and I am worried. Any insights would help, updating my Resume tonight. I had many options from Fuqua, but chose MSFT.
"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."
------------------
I any layoff, the new comers are the easiest targets. Note that it is not the HR that decides who to let go, it is the M2 almost always....and as a new joiner you are not exactly his blue eyed boy.
I any layoff, the new comers are the easiest targets. Note that it is not the HR that decides who to let go, it is the M2 almost always....and as a new joiner you are not exactly his blue eyed boy.
Many reasons to disagree.
Newcomers make a lot less than people that have been around a long time. They are also easier to mold into exactly the kind of employee you want. Some people are set in their ways and will not change.
"This is Mukesh Pabbisetty Sivaram. Laid of on Thursday, already have received few calls from recruiters with full offer package. Will flip coin between Amazon offer and Google offer and make decision tomorrow. Does anyone know of Google Kirkland campus cafeteria offers free Indian buffet daily?"
When you flip the coin, you'll either lose the coin or the coin will land on its edge and you'll go nowhere hahahaha
>can buy Microsoft products for the same amount as people from other counties<
Well, it would not make any sense. When MS came to my country it was selling Office for just $20 long enough to bankrupt all local competition. Then they became monopolist and increased price to US level plus local sales tax which is much higher than in US. But I do not care that much anymore because I work in Redmond and milk MS enough so I can afford this stuff :)
My wife is pregnant and I just bought a home. SDET in CRM. I am so scared, wifey heard it, hope her stress doesn't affect the baby. All pointers appreciated. God please this is my first job, home and baby.
A thousand+ plus posts, and we still don't know how many Indians were laid off on Thursday. Can someone please shed light on this important issue? Will we see a decease in the number white coffee cups in bathroom stalls and more breathable air in hallways and conference rooms?
God please this is my first job, home and baby.
You're completely reckless :) What did you think about when you made these decisions? Start looking for a new job, what else can I say...
Dear me, I hadn't had a chance to read things over the last couple of days and things went from 300 -> 1100+ posts.
A softie through acquisition some years ago. The company when I joined was sub 5% indian employees globally. A year post acquisition that jumped to 15-20% and two years later it was north of 40%. Some of that was through mergers w/ other groups some of that was through hiring. Key point - post acquisition, domestic racial percentages in hiring changed.
I've since been in two other orbs. Once was very much as described - PM (and DEV) - if the nationality of a higher level manager was Indian or asian - (yes india is part of asia...but no), the greatest percentage of the team under them was of similar nationality.
Is this a bias on the side of the hiring manager or those that decide to continue interviewing? I don't know, but from the partner level down, I saw this across at least a 1/2 dozen different teams across two orgs, some PM, some dev.
I have my own personal bias', but make sure those are measured in terms of who I work with and who I report to. They aren't relevant to the above discussion, but I have seen a correlation or hiring similar (nationality) from the dev mgr down.
My own, current org, was hit early from the planning but, overall, I'm actually excited for the road ahead -- assuming political outfall from the decision doesn't distract us.
If Infosys is indeed being brought in for IT, we can expect a further erosion of quality of support from IT.
Companies/partners like Symantec that brought in these outsourcing firms (HP, WiPro, Infosys) for support in the hope of "cutting costs" learned their lesson and are now starting to in-source again.
The H1-B discussion is one thing. Outsourcing functionality to firms that have no reputation for quality and end up costing more is a whole different ball of wax. I hope we learn from those who went this route before us, likelihood is...we won't.
To all the H1B Indian haters if you had ever worked for Microsoft you would have known that at MSFT there are - "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians"
"My wife is pregnant and I just bought a home. SDET in CRM. I am so scared, wifey heard it, hope her stress doesn't affect the baby. All pointers appreciated. God please this is my first job, home and baby."
This is going to sound cruel, but honestly, what were you thinking? For your first job you invested that much into it? You bought a house (I'll assume you are not even 25) which is really expensive in this area AND you decided to have a baby??? All on your first job? Dude, reckless. Never commit so much at once.
Please tell me you don't have college/grad school debt too.....
Home AND a baby!?!?! You are some kind of monster! I hope you are an indian with an indian manager. Otherwise... hope you can afford prenatal care when you're living in your Subaru Outback.
Better take a cup to the toilet and get to work. Maybe a genie will pop out and grant you some wishes.
"this is my first job, home and baby"
Dude, ignore these condescending a-holes. Live your life. Hit books on algorithms, start solving interview problems from careercup or similar. Update your resume, get some recommendations on linkedin. You may or may not need it but better be ready. You'll get another job; first baby is once in a lifetime experience. Take care of your wife and baby.
To the SDET@CRM. I can at least imagine what you're going through. Have some friends in Dynamics, will try to spot you. My goal is to get you first screen at Google. Ex MSFT SDET here. God bless.
"Dude, ignore these condescending a-holes. Live your life. Hit books on algorithms, start solving interview problems from careercup or similar. Update your resume, get some recommendations on linkedin. You may or may not need it but better be ready. You'll get another job; first baby is once in a lifetime experience. Take care of your wife and baby."
Correct. I'd add that you should have your resume ready to and have a list of place you want to send them out the instance you find out if you're laid off or not. I'd also be mentally/technically ready for an interview.
In the meantime, sit tight.
>>but I never expected to join a product team where everyone was a type A personality. Everyone thought that they were god's gift to mankind. It was not possible to have a simple discussion around a component without someone's ego getting hurt, no not hurt, massacred<<
That is why when I interviewed in other places in Seattle as ex-MSFTie I got following serious question quote-unquote : " Tell me the truth : Are you Microsoft asshole or not "
Something fishy with the timing of this layoff, why can't it wait until this week or later? Why does it have to been a few days before earnings? Reminds me of Ballmer announcing his retirement, then announce buying Nokia.
What is the latest scene? Any layoffs in India office today? And are there going to be layoffs in India??
Are there final numbers on how many people were let go from OSG and MSIT?
>> Are there final numbers on how many people were let go from MSIT?
NOT ENOUGH, I am sure!
I hope they fired one person for every time my machine has been randomly rebooted because they felt it was important to install an update immediately.
Good riddance to them. Maybe this will mean we get to talk to tier 2 support directly.
When are they cleaning up MSIT India? There is great talent in the region that is being wasted with the uppermost management. This fatty layer can be easily done away with...
"My plumber charges $140 for first hour, $70 for each additional half hour. That's very nice pay -- equivalent to about $250K per year, but not very sexy, so it might be a bit harder to get chicks. "
My dear Indian troll, you took 50% of our IT jobs, spied on us, reported to mothership about us, and now planning to temp the other 50% IT worker to become plumbers?
Hail Big Brother Vijay!
The Great BackStabbing Party starts today: French against Finns, Ukrainians against Russians, Chinese against Romanians; Devs against SDETs-turned-Devs, IC against manager-turned-ICs, PM against . In the nxt 6 months, who will be pushed out? who will stay? who will be mortally wounded? who will survive scarred?
Our Indian coworkers get to buy a front row seat to watch this carnage, with crocodile tears and a bone for the survivors. They will be well protected no matter who wins/loses in the ring.
Afterwards, they will pick up the bodies, and hold a real party, every Indian gets a promotion for being so steadfast and calm watching the spectacle.
Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?
.....at MSFT there are - "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians"
--------------------------------------------
ROFL..So true. That made my day
Hey folks, Any news from GBS, Marlena's org?
Has there been laying off too? especially in India/China region?
When is wave2 expected?
To the M2 who mentioned providing list of expendables, thanks. Can't believe my M2 had me at bottom. I ran into him when they were escorting me out, all he said was "you do remember what you entered in ms poll, right". I asked if he can expand, and he said he had to run to a meeting. I will post more details when I am less bitter.
and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?
It is just one person making all those posts.
To all those blaming Indians and India today they should look at the person who was responsible for this sad state of the company.
STEVE BALLMER
And that dude was neither an India, nor a Chinese nor a Mexican blah....
No matter how you blame Steve Ballmer, he actually cared enough about Microsoft to do layoffs in a speedy way to minimize morale hit and attrition and he tried to keep the good people (he thinks).
Satya is completely different. He does not care about Microsoft and he's positively urging good nonIndians to go away and not come into Microsoft. Why? It's his Kingdom now, for Indians only.
>>>> "I guess it's good that the Indians remain oblivious to what many of their white co-workers think of them."
>> I hardly think the opinions of idiots here at the blog are reflective of MSFT employees. A group of people are trying to stir up trouble, probably from Google or one of other competitors. Don't believe this stuff. This is a classic disinformation campaign.
Dude, I work at Google (and left MS several years ago, fortunately). While I'm feeling bad for those who lost their jobs, and reading these comments simply to understand what work environment in MS looks like these days (and it looks like that it's really bad), trust me that Microsoft is so not interesting anymore to Google, and likely to Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
@7:16AM
"Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?"
Nah. If you look at the reader comments for the Seattle Times' articles on the layoff, you pretty much see the same kind of stuff but just barely polite enough to get past the moderators. These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
@7:16AM
"Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?"
Nah. If you look at the reader comments for the Seattle Times' articles on the layoff, you pretty much see the same kind of stuff but just barely polite enough to get past the moderators. These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
@7:16AM
"Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?"
Nah. If you look at the reader comments for the Seattle Times' articles on the layoff, you pretty much see the same kind of stuff but just barely polite enough to get past the moderators. These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
@7:16AM
"Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?"
Nah. If you look at the reader comments for the Seattle Times' articles on the layoff, you pretty much see the same kind of stuff but just barely polite enough to get past the moderators. These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
@7:16AM
"Is this blog read by a wider audience anymore? The nature of this "discourse", the comments, and the pervasive animosity directed towards Indians ought to be making waves in the area, no?"
Nah. If you look at the reader comments for the Seattle Times' articles on the layoff, you pretty much see the same kind of stuff but just barely polite enough to get past the moderators. These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
Not even 8:30 and already pubes all over the urinals in Building 30, 2 cups on the toilet.
>Dude, I work at Google (and left MS several years ago, fortunately). While I'm feeling bad for those who lost their jobs, and reading these comments simply to understand what work environment in MS looks like these days (and it looks like that it's really bad), trust me that Microsoft is so not interesting anymore to Google, and likely to Facebook, Apple and Amazon.
Dude, Google is great and all, a few months ago, it had 3 Indian SVP out of total 6 SVP. That's not counting the business head Nikesh Arora.
Now fortunately Arora has moved onto become the master of Softbank, but you still got Indian SVP and Indian gangs stealing projects and promoting Indians at every opportunity.
What do you expect? You can run, you can't hide, nor could you talk straight on email because your email is read by Sanjay in the IT department. 1 million Indian imported software gurus have to displace 1 million stupid American IT folks. With Microsoft completely Indianized, in 10 years, you will have 2 million Indian software gurus pulling every important virtue string in America, while American nerds flip burgers or hide in increasingly small enclaves of tech fairness paradise.
You think Google will survive the onslaught of 2 million Indian gurus storming your HR? LOL
"These are all posts by outsiders with nothing better to do.
Monday, July 21, 2014 7:59:00 AM
How can you tell an outsider's post vs. an insider's post? The insider is the one not bright enough to figure out they've posted the same message 5 times.
Any update on MSIT in Redmond, i have a offer to join the team as v- next month? should i take it or walk away
I've heard that both the PM and SDET disciplines would be greatly revised. SDET makes sense to me - in an agile world where everyone can work on any feature, why segregate some devs to work only on tests and harnesses. Treat tests and harnesses as equal to other code and make/let everyone work on them. As for PM, what I heard didn't actually make any sense...
I think there should be no PM's or Project Managers .. just Software Engineers who take different role for every project. Also every SDE should be an SDET, so basically it should be SDE who also Tests. No v- or a-. Thats it we will have a leaner org. Also no middle management/leads/principals. SDE should have 3 layers , SDE, sr SDE, principal SDE. There should be 1 leader for 25 engineers instead of the current model where i see managers having even 3-4 engineers. Such a waste of management power.
"I hope they fired one person for every time my machine has been randomly rebooted because they felt it was important to install an update immediately."
MSIT seems to impose the most useless policies on us. Their aggressive power-save mode policies killed the fan on my PC. I didnt think this was possible, but what can you expect after turning the machine on and off every minute? Fortunately this was right after a PC refresh and my work wasnt affected.
"...SDET disciplines would be greatly revised. SDET makes sense to me - in an agile world where everyone can work on any feature, why segregate some devs to work only on tests and harnesses."
Some devs do not make great testers just as some testers do not make great devs.
What you don't want to do is rely on a dev. to test their own code. Developers get tunnel vision when they look at the problem they are solving. This can cause them to miss errors in their logic that a fresh perspective can spot.
Similarly you don't want to rely on pure devs. to test other devs' code. Developers are not interested in testing. They want to write the code and move on to the next coding problem.
You can not browbeat a developer into testing other devs' (or even their own) code. Some will take the job seriously and do a decent job, but many will gloss over it so they can get to work on their next coding project.
Asking people to do a job they don't enjoy (devs to be testers) is unfair to both the employees and the customers who ultimately have to use your (poorly tested) products.
Many PMs I have worked with refuse to run even a single powershell script for their own features. None of them have the industry experience in the relevant field. This begs the question of what is the basis of their inputs.
To the SDET with the new home and the expectant wife:
This comes from a father of three who married, had kids and bought a home at a young age (i.e., who engaged in the same slightly over-optimistic life planning process that you probably did) and who has been through his share of software-company layoffs and real-estate turnover. My message to you is simply this: It'll be fine.
I'm not saying you might not have to find a new job at a very inconvenient time. I'm not saying you might not have to move into a different home. I'm saying that even if you do, it'll still be fine. Really, it will.
First-time expectant parents are always freaked out that things are going to affect the baby. I know I was. Tip from somebody who's now been around that block multiple times: 99.9% of the things that you're afraid might hurt the baby will not, in fact, hurt the baby. Our species did not evolve to require nine uninterrupted months of stress-free bliss in order to carry a baby to term. People have had healthy babies during wars, depressions, you name it. Layoff season at a tech company in a city with an otherwise strong economy isn't going to be the exception.
Related point: Your baby won't give a shit whether you're living in your dream home or a less costly starter home, whether you're an owner or a renter, or whether you work at Microsoft or at some fly-by-night startup. (Your wife might care, but that's a separate issue.) As long as your baby gets a basic level of food, shelter and education, and has those things provided by loving parents, he or she will be perfectly okay regardless of what else might be going on in your lives at the time. Just from reading the tone of your brief note, it's pretty clear to me that those things are a given in your case. So don't sweat it, your baby'll be fine.
If you're smart and capable enough to get hired at Microsoft, then I can promise you that you're smart and capable enough to get hired at a hundred other places, too. I hope you won't have to do so right away, because unwanted change sucks regardless, but if it turns out that that's what you have to do, then you'll do it, and it'll be okay. (Fatherhood is basically a never-ending series of "This is what I have to do, so I'll do it" situations. If it isn't this one, it'll be something else. Might as well get accustomed to that reality right up front.)
This stuff is scary as shit and there's not much to be done about the fear while events are unfolding. Nothing anyone says will change that. But life generally turns out all right, even though it NEVER turns out the way you thought it would and planned for it to beforehand. I hope you get through all this in the simplest and most direct way possible (your job sticks around and this all turns out to be a non-issue for you), but either way, you'll get through it. Be a good father and a good husband and the rest will take care of itself. Or rather, YOU'LL take care of it as it comes along. (That's pretty much what those jobs entail.)
Enjoy kissing your new baby in a few months. And don't let this other shit get you down more than it has to. The things that matter most, you already have.
Anonymous at 9:33 is not only spot-on brilliant but 100% correct.
But don't bring your baby to campus near any of the bathrooms if an Indian has just come out of there....
Recently celebrated my 25th year at Microsoft – my role was a Senior SDET Lead. My last two connect reviews where positive, filled with “well dones”. Last review score, prior to the connects, was a 2. I seemed to have been doing everything right. I was let go on Thursday. I loved working at Microsoft. It was my passion. I put everything I could into that company. Today I feel betrayed on a level that I have never felt before in my life. Over the weekend I meet with those that were affected, I did my best to shed a positive light and show that we have a new bright journey ahead of us, but their pain and disbelief crushed me. Yes there was one person that was performing low, but the vast super majority of them were ranked high on the last Connect’s impact level. Yes we get 1 weeks’ pay for every six months and cobra for six months, but my passion and love in my life was taken away. I didn’t even get a thank you or a hand shake, just a bunch of legalize speak from HR that ripped my heat out. It angers me when I hear that Bill is asking for more H1-B visas, it angers me when I hear people say Microsoft cut out the “deadwood” ( there are two people still there that ranked at the bottom of the Connect impact ranking), it angers me when I hear Satya say that he’s going to invest heavily (read; hire a bunch of people)in Data Science and the cloud - we could have been retrained. I have two jobs now; finding a job for me, and finding a job for those in my team and around me. All the best to those remaining at Microsoft, I hope each and every one of you makes it well past 25 years at Microsoft.
50% cut in Amy's org seems crazy. Any truth to this?
The simultaneous policy changes for V- staff is amazing as well. Talk about shooting himself in the dick. What is Satya thinking? V-'s do over half the work!!!
"Today I feel betrayed on a level that I have never felt before in my life. Over the weekend I meet with those that were affected, I did my best to shed a positive light and show that we have a new bright journey ahead of us, but their pain and disbelief crushed me. Yes there was one person that was performing low, but the vast super majority of them were ranked high on the last Connect’s impact level. Yes we get 1 weeks’ pay for every six months and cobra for six months, but my passion and love in my life was taken away. I didn’t even get a thank you or a hand shake, just a bunch of legalize speak from HR that ripped my heat out. It angers me when I hear that Bill is asking for more H1-B visas, it angers me when I hear people say Microsoft cut out the “deadwood” ( there are two people still there that ranked at the bottom of the Connect impact ranking), it angers me when I hear Satya say that he’s going to invest heavily (read; hire a bunch of people)in Data Science and the cloud - we could have been retrained. I have two jobs now; finding a job for me, and finding a job for those in my team and around me. All the best to those remaining at Microsoft, I hope each and every one of you makes it well past 25 years at Microsoft."
1 month ago, even as Satya was planning for this layoff, he was awarding $100 million to one of the big Indian contractors Infosys, being sued for disciminating against Americans, and abusing the H1b visas for 10+ years. Microsoft also has many contracts with Tata, Wipro, HCL, all of these contractors together brings 1 million software "professionals" on trumped up resumes to America, where there are just 2 million software jobs total.
You'd think smart Microsofters could be retrained to manage their own IT. no way, how else could Indian contractors plant moles and listen to company's internal emails?
Get out stupid Americans! Raj will be your Big Brother!
>>The simultaneous policy changes for V- staff is amazing as well
A lot of Accenture v- people in Sammamish were pruged in mid of June without even letting know related MS teams. It looked as Accenture decision. They got 2 days notice
"we could have been retrained"
--You could not learn in 25 years that the world is getting younger, power is shifting from west to east, from civilian aircrafts to fighter places, from turbines to nuclear plants China and India are on a buying spree that is powering economies of the west. If in these 25 years you had bothered to look into balance sheets of American companies you would have not failed to notice - > 50% of their revenues are being generated outside US of A. If you could not see that shift happening in 25 years, and kept doing the same thing year after year then don't blame Indians & Chinese for the situation you are in today.
Has anyone looked at the latest issue of Fortune cover story:
http://fortune.com/2014/07/07/taxes-offshore-dodge/
Pro tip to the trolls: product engineering is vastly different from IT. Nobody takes you seriously because you know nothing about Microsoft.
Let go this morning, in Finance. Too bitter.
> You could not learn in 25 years that the world is getting younger, power is shifting from west to east, from civilian aircrafts to fighter places, from turbines to nuclear plants China and India are on a buying spree that is powering economies of the west. If in these 25 years you had bothered to look into balance sheets of American companies you would have not failed to notice - > 50% of their revenues are being generated outside US of A. If you could not see that shift happening in 25 years, and kept doing the same thing year after year then don't blame Indians & Chinese for the situation you are in today.
More Indian-China boosterism. Indian revenue has always been a tiny blip of total revenue for companies like Google, Microsoft and Cisco. India is just a mass exporter of PPT gurus, outsourcing artists, fake resumes, office-politicians, power-grabbers, nepotist, discriminators, political correct "diversity" talk.
Not sure about China, but China may be the last country whose IT departments are NOT being parasitized by Indians, thanks to the language barrier. That is the real competitive advantage of China's IT industry... LOL
Which org in finance were you? are there more layoffs you know in finance?
9:33 That's survivor's bias.
11:06 Is that in Corp HQ finance? Also were you IC or people mgr?
"More Indian-China boosterism. Indian revenue has always been a tiny blip of total revenue for companies like Google, Microsoft and Cisco. India is just a mass exporter of PPT gurus, outsourcing artists, fake resumes, office-politicians, power-grabbers, nepotist, discriminators, political correct "diversity" talk.
Not sure about China, but China may be the last country whose IT departments are NOT being parasitized by Indians, thanks to the language barrier. That is the real competitive advantage of China's IT industry... LOL"
The most accurate statement anyone has ever made on this thread. However, I have to say it is wrong to conflate Indians who have studied here for MS/PHD with the massive hordes who have been brought over from India by Infosys/Wipro etc.
Anonymous at 9:33: so true.
"As long as your baby gets a basic level of food, shelter and education, and has those things provided by loving parents, he or she will be perfectly okay regardless of what else might be going on in your lives at the time."
Even a little farther... the most important thing is also the thing that costs nothing: "loving parents." Loving your child is easy, and remembering why you're in love is free. Those things are yours and can't be taken away.
> Microsoft Corp. is scheduled to deliver its fiscal
> fourth-quarter results after the close of trading on
> Tuesday, and Chief Executive Satya Nadella and
Maybe one of our recently rif'd brethren could get on the call as an "individual investor" (a legitimate designation since most of us own some stock) and ask the Dear leader some polite but probing questions as to the direction the layoffs are taking (and what the next shoe to fall will be)?
>The most accurate statement anyone has ever made on this thread. However, I have to say it is wrong to conflate Indians who have studied here for MS/PHD with the massive hordes who have been brought over from India by Infosys/Wipro etc.
True. But the ratio is like 1/10 good ones. Often even the good Indian engineer is complicit in the Indian take over and serve as a Trojian horse.
Microsofties should visit Bay Area, in companies like VMware, Cisco, Qualcomm, you will see 1 caucasian engineer, 1 Asian engineer and 8 Indian engineers.
Hop on a plane check out big financial companies, insurance, auto companies IT departments, you will see the same "diversity" of 90% Indians.
This is what Microsoft will look like in 2 years at this rate. The playbook is the same everywhere. Layoff of Americans at the same time as outsourcing/contracting/H1b visas.
2014, 1 million imported Indian software gurus in software industry of only 2 million jobs, are very powerful.
2024, 2 million imported Indian software gurus will control America from nerve center out.
So, Microsofties wake up, don't blame yourself for being laid off. It's not your fault. But failing to wake up and storm the rampants, that is your fault.
Lots of strange changes on who/
Look up your management chain and look at all the open positions that can't be found on HRweb. Wondering if this is part of the restructuring
But failing to wake up and storm the rampants, that is your fault.
I think the word you intended to use was "ramparts". But care to elaborate on how you intend to do the "storming"?
Let go today from marketing. Been with the company for 14 years. Got the standard things that most have talked about. Was told I could apply internally. Feeling deflated.
11:19 When someone is experiencing "oh shit I'm going through all these things for the first time in my life and it feels like the world is ending" bias, survivor's bias may still provide a useful perspective. Especially when discussing events that the overwhelming majority of people who go through them do, in fact, survive.
But hey, if somebody else wants to chime in and tell the dude that he'll probably lose his baby and end up living in a cardboard box somewhere, it's a permanent open-mic night around here and nobody's going to stop them. I just don't think their advice will be particularly accurate or helpful.
I chose to leave January 2012 after 13 years, and have not looked back. The first gig with a Bainbridge Island company was a turd sandwich, but sunshine and roses since then. Better pay, better benefits (medical and retirement) and way less stress, backstabbing, and sycophantic boot-licking.
Cliche as it has become, "Life is better after Microsoft"
> I think the word you intended to use was "ramparts". But care to elaborate on how you intend to do the "storming"?
LOL thanks for the correction. Action list:
1. tell Microsoftie friends and pass on to friends' friends.
Talk about infosys, wipro, HCL, Tata, Cognizant's parasitic hold on Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Cisco, Qualcomm,Nokia, Vmware.
Motorola and Sun are dead and buried but during their death spiral they bred thousands of Indian managers to conquer America's high tech. Microsoft is the next one to undergo the same fate.
2. organize and stop infighting, sdes against sdets, PMs against devs, lawyers against devs, Russians against Ukrainians, Chinese against French, Canadians against Finns, Americans against whoever. Satya designed his looong layoff to make you fight for scraps and drive all nonIndian talent away.
3. media, politicians, MSFT alums, all swarm to check out Microsoft's contracts with the Indian outsourcing giants. Cut those contracts before laying off Americans.
4. Force Nokia's Indian plant to close. It's a stupid waste of money.
5. Kick Satya and his buddies and his Indian H1b serfs out. His vision is so hollow, IBM and Apple and the whole world laughs at it. His execution of this layoff is pathetic and a conspiracy to destroy Microsoft.
So basically, they are laying off SDET and outsource the job to tata/infosys/wipro in India?
American developers. American jobs are being given to foreign colonizers.
For the sake of your career and your loved ones, do something either legal or extralegal. Your birthright as an American citizen and your livelihood is being taken away from you. Your children's futures are at risk.
What kind of men are you to allow this to happen? Don't take this like a whipped dog.
Fight back!!!
>So basically, they are laying off SDET and outsource the job to tata/infosys/wipro in India?
No, more likely the plan is to retrain Indian SDET into SDEs, Indian PMs into greater roles, Indian contractors into FTEs. While the nonIndians fight over scraps, losers get poor performance reviews or kicked out through rounds of layoffs , while the survivors could be ambushed picked out one by one.
End result should look like VMWare & Cisco. Go check it out.
Indians already got a stranglehold on company IT, so everyone needs to be careful talking internally.
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