Attention

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent our advertisers

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

MICROSOFT ANNOUNCES 18,000 LAYOFFS - CUTS STAFF BY 14 PERCENT

Microsoft, the aging tech behemoth, has a shiny new CEO, a new strategy, new(ish) products in the pipeline and now 18,000 less staff. In a wide ranging, 3,000 word essay to his 125,000 (oops! 107,000) colleagues, CEO Satyna Nadella stressed the need to improve product cycle time, to shed excess management layers and to say goodbye to 14 percent of staff.

Politicians on both sides of the pond are not impressed. EU High Commissioner Laszlo Andor, "I deeply regret the significant job losses announced by Microsoft today because of the impact these will have on so many individuals, their families and the local communities they live and work in" and US Senator Jeff Sessions is irked that MSFT is firing thousands of staff yet continues to press for relaxed Visa rules: "That is a significant action. Indeed, Microsoft employs about 125,000 people, and they are laying off 18,000. The company laid off 5,000 in 2009. Yet their founder and former leader, Mr. Gates, says we have to have more and more people come into our country to take those kinds of jobs."

Microsoft's financials look terrific of late. The share price is up 40 percent in nine months, market cap is now $370b, sales are $83b and profits over $22billion - so why all the layoffs?

More

4 comments:

Never Vote Democrat again said...

America's change per King Obama

Anonymous said...

I hate Microsoft have you not looked at there latest idea of making all the other windows software to become obsolete by stopping support. They said they supported for ten years but they keep selling the software for 2 to 4 years after release. People buy new computers as they needed more powerful ones. Now a days Microsoft is a company who only cares about money and nothing else and they really didn't care about the consumers before to start with. Just one thing to say do you know why you need updates on windows so much because the company purposely make flaws in it so you buy more of there product or services to fix it.

Anonymous said...

18,000 is a lot to cut.

lmclain said...

C'mon man. You know how hard it is when you get down to your last 55 billion dollars? Well, most don't know, but try to imagine what its like when you find out that your PROFITS have only increased by a mere 2 billion bucks.
I don't even know how they manage to avoid depression and anxiety.
Perhaps a few of those 18,000 workers could help them with some clues....