Come January 15th, another 160 of your Capitol Hill friends and neighbors might be out of a job. There are rumors of a big 10% layoff coming at Microsoft. With around 6,500 Microsoft employees in the city, figure at least 25% of them live on the Hill and assume the rumored cut will hit every ‘Softie equally (which it won’t) — that would leave about 162 Capitol Hill residents looking for a new job. Further assume disproportinate percentage of CHS readership amongst those 162, and we’re talking economic disaster for this blog. Or, a big uptick in content submitted to the site. One of the two.
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This could be my husband. We’re keeping fingers crossed. There’s been a hiring freeze in place for months now.
That doesn’t bode well for me. I just came off my 100-day break and scheduled to restart Jan 12.
that 10% number is pure speculation of the commenters at minimsft, and nothing more.
Well, according to my sources the cuts will start with contractors and of course a hiring freeze is in place. Not too happy news.
sunnyside, unless your source is gm level or higher, i don’t know that they would have any more information than the rest of us
A lot of the A- may go, but the thing is, V- and A- do MOST of the work at Microsoft. Without us that place is helpless.
Maybe, I am just adding to the rumors. Remember I am always looking at the sunnyside darling!
It seems that MBA’s and smart executives has suddenly disappeared, or just too lazy to assume that there is any possible solution except for laying off employees; an extremely lazy and biased solution to a failing economy that will not solve any problem.
Companies are massively laying off employees as if the economy will never pick up again or as if hiring those employees back costs nothing. Well, I think many businesses need to look at FedEx and learn from what they did. It is very simple, something we all learned in class rooms in our MBA classes. When you lay off employees in a recession, it negatively impacts other employees’ morale, impacts the country’s economy and might contribute to making the recession even worse. What about all those other good stuff? Sitting down and finding a solution, as opposed to a hot shot over paid CFO and CEO sitting kissing shareholders’ asses by showing how caring for their business they are!.
If we assume that laying off 10% of your employees will save the company, how much cost are you saving by this? Well, in an extreme case, if your labor cost is 80% of your total cost (which is almost impossible but let assume this for the sake of argument), so you are saving 8% of the total cost. Could this be saved by other means? Pay cuts? Freeze 401K contribution? Freeze bonuses? Freeze corporate parties and jets and other unnecessary expenses? Could you cut 8% of all employees’ wages? I am sure they will all accept it to eliminate the risk of losing their jobs! Then everyone will still keep their house! Keep spending, not file unemployment, then we don’t hurt the economy even more! Then the news will not hit Wall Street next morning causing the stock market to drop again! Or what you guys think?
There is an excess of v- and a- and those will go first.
Would someone please define a v- and a- employee for those of us not in the know? Thanks!
V- employees are vendors. A- employees are contractors, like those through Volt.
To add to what Wesa posted, the “a” and the “v” gets prepended to your user account/email address. So if you’re a contractor, you’d be [email protected]. Likewise, if you’re a vendor, your email would be [email protected]. It is pronounced “a dash” or “v dash”, not “a minus” or “v minus”.
Thanks, Wesa and jinushaun! Excellent info. Now the previous posts make sense.
If your husband is a valuable employee (smart) you do not need to cross your fingers.
Most of the Capitol Hill Microsoft employees work for corporate or the US sub, which are areas of revenue generation and product creation. I bet most of the layoffs will be in other subsidiaries, low performers, and contractors.
Ain’t see it comin’
Subs generate revenue and not just the US Sub. Corporate doesn’t generate revenue without a sales force to sell whatever products are created by groups at corporate. The sales force is in the subs.
Microsoft’s lack of new products is leading to layoffs. Even Domino’s is very smart to go after a new market with new products in this tough economy by launching sub sandwiches. Growth requires going after new markets with new growth opportunities. Great companies focus on growth while weaker competitors try saving costs. Even the threat of Microsoft layoffs demonstrates the impact of Linux on the marketplace. Read more at http://www.ThePhoenixPrinciple.com
People always hate to talk about when they are laid off. But as it has become every day’s news headline since Yahoo started it with cutting 1500 of its task force last year, now a need of platform has been in demand where people can express their selves in words how they are feeling about their company, whey the got laid off was that justified or not.
And every thing they want to tell anonymously.And http://www.layoffgossip.com is providing you that platform.