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Microsoft Laying Off 18,000 Employees

Xbox Entertainment Studios, meant to drive original content to Xbox Live, is already dead.

"The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce."

No Caption Provided

No good news can follow a statement like that. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced plans today for the company to lay off up to 18,000 employees.

Most of those layoffs are coming from the recently acquired Nokia, which Microsoft picked up for $7.2 billion just earlier this year. The Nokia division will account for roughly 12,500 of the planned layoffs.

The first 13,000 layoffs will be determined in the next six months. That seems like an unusually cruel amount of time to wonder if your job is going to be around the next day, but so it goes at big companies.

The Xbox division will not be unaffected, either. Deadline reports Xbox Entertainment Studios, tasked with developing original content for Xbox Live, has been shut down before it even really got off the ground. The Halo-related projects, Halo: Nightfall and a planned TV series, are expected to continue.

"Change is never easy, but I believe the changes announced today help us better align with our long-term goals," said head of Xbox Phil Spencer in a memo to employees. "We have an incredible opportunity ahead of us to define what the next generation of gaming looks like for the growing Xbox community. I have a great deal of confidence in this team and know that with clarity of focus on our mission and our customers we can accomplish great things together. We already have."

The first production from the studio, the soccer-themed Every Street United, launched last month.

You can read the entirety of Nadella's announcement below:

From: Satya Nadella

To: All Employees

Date: July 17, 2014 at 5:00 a.m. PT

Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and Culture

Last week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction as a productivity and platform company. Having a clear focus is the start of the journey, not the end. The more difficult steps are creating the organization and culture to bring our ambitions to life. Today I’ll share more on how we’re moving forward. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments.

The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months. It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.

Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment.

First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster. As part of modernizing our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change. In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. In addition, our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at different paces.

Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft. We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. The first-party phone portfolio will align to Microsoft’s strategic direction. To win in the higher price tiers, we will focus on breakthrough innovation that expresses and enlivens Microsoft’s digital work and digital life experiences. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.

Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind. Thank you for your support as we start to take steps forward in evolving our organization and culture.

Satya

Patrick Klepek on Google+

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Tomba_be

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@huey2k2 said:

@thallium said:

You're right but they never did care about supplying jobs for people. They're not in the business of supplying jobs. They're in the business of creating profit. I hate to break it to you but they have a responsibility to create shareholder wealth. Good or bad, that's how it is and that's how they are able to employ people. It'd be good if more people understood that.

Exactly this.

Like it or not, it is the responsibility of a business to generate profit for the shareholders.

Businesses aren't running with your best interests in mind, they are running to make money.

Employees are just an asset/resource that they need to do it, and sometimes the best way for a company to make money is to cut excess fat.

That is life in Capitalism, I am not saying whether or not I think it is the best way to do things, but that is how it works.

Debating the validity of the system that enables companies to do this kind of thing is fine, but implying that they are some kind of horrible monster for doing it is ridiculous.

Yes, they are horrible monsters. Microsoft is making plenty of profit. There is a difference between understanding how things work, and accepting them. Actions like these are completely unethical and only the most disgusting kind of human thinks this is ok 'because profit'. What management "people" usually forget that if no one has a job anymore, there won't be anyone to buy their goods. Because in the end, it's only the consumers that makes sure that companies get an income. In the long term everyone loses if regular people can't afford to buy goods anymore. But because MBA's are utter morons with only a short term vision, they won't see how they are dooming the western civilizations. Either that or they just don't care because they think they will be safe in their mansions when the rest of the country lives in poverty.

In my opinion companies do have an obligation to provide jobs as long as they can remain profitable, because why the fuck should we tolerate their nonsense otherwise?

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spraynardtatum

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Homelessbird

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@jayjonesjunior: I think if you display the level of narcissism that causes you to come to an internet forum to tell everyone you're not interested in the topic, you probably deserve whatever shit you get for it

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Homelessbird

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This email reminds me of nothing more than this new Weird Al song:

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spraynardtatum

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@thallium: Explain how I'm devaluing the meaning of inhumane. The definition is "lacking compassion, humanity, and kindness". If you don't think laying off 18,000 people so the company can be "more agile" isn't lacking in compassion, humanity, and kindness than I don't know what your standard is.

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r3dt1d3

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@spraynardtatum: So MS should keep 18k people employed that they don't need because compassion? They purchased a company and they can't support the large number of employees that brought in. Should every employee/stockholder before the buyout be punished so that MS can be compassionate?

You're speaking nonsense.

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spraynardtatum

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@r3dt1d3 said:

@spraynardtatum: So MS should keep 18k people employed that they don't need because compassion? They purchased a company and they can't support the large number of employees that brought in. Should every employee/stockholder before the buyout be punished so that MS can be compassionate?

You're speaking nonsense.

...sigh...

Maybe they shouldn't have bought something they can't support!

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Matoyak

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Edited By Matoyak

Holy shit. That's more than 4 TIMES the size of my home town. Wow.

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DevOverkill

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@leebmx said:

Christ, the first sentence of that email. They should definitely fire who ever wrote that. Who the fuck 'synthesises' things to other people. What's wrong with 'explained.' or just 'told you.'

Business language is the most horrible, soul-sucking way of speaking, second only to the language of the military.

Yea, you said pretty much exactly what I felt when I read that. Its almost, almost, comical how utterly out of touch these higher ups are when it comes to things like this. Couldn't possibly speak to these people on a human level, gotta put in that business spin.

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deactivated-5f8907c9ada33

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This is terrible for all of those losing their jobs, however, it's also about time Microsoft fixed their business. Microsoft's vision under Ballmer was pretty terrible and they fell behind in all aspects of their business. Nadella seems like he has a better idea of where to take the company.

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DevOverkill

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@cthomer5000: I think he isn't taking in to account the fact that a lot of those people will probably be informed well before the 6 month mark that their position is being cut. From the perspective of not knowing if your job is at risk or not, and not being able to find out for 6 months, I get that sentiment.

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@tomba_be said:


Yes, they are horrible monsters. Microsoft is making plenty of profit. There is a difference between understanding how things work, and accepting them. Actions like these are completely unethical and only the most disgusting kind of human thinks this is ok 'because profit'. What management "people" usually forget that if no one has a job anymore, there won't be anyone to buy their goods. Because in the end, it's only the consumers that makes sure that companies get an income. In the long term everyone loses if regular people can't afford to buy goods anymore. But because MBA's are utter morons with only a short term vision, they won't see how they are dooming the western civilizations. Either that or they just don't care because they think they will be safe in their mansions when the rest of the country lives in poverty.

In my opinion companies do have an obligation to provide jobs as long as they can remain profitable, because why the fuck should we tolerate their nonsense otherwise?

Companies are not job providers. I can't believe anyone bought into Donald Trump's "I'm a job creator!" nonsense. Demand creates jobs. When demand declines or is not what it was expected to be, jobs stop being relevant. But you think the rich 'provide jobs' for some reason.

Being forced to accept crushing debt just in order to compete in a market is hurting the employed. Ignorant discriminatory hiring practices hurts the employed. Companies removing positions when they become irrelevant is not hurting the employed. Nobody has any obligation to continue paying anyone for something that doesn't make sense.

If you'd like a world that is not dominated by people exchanging their talent and labour for a stipend as long as profit flows to investors, you're going to have to find a new system that does not feature private property. In our system, you don't get paid because you exist, you get paid because you perform a service.

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@r3dt1d3 said:

@spraynardtatum: So MS should keep 18k people employed that they don't need because compassion? They purchased a company and they can't support the large number of employees that brought in. Should every employee/stockholder before the buyout be punished so that MS can be compassionate?

You're speaking nonsense.

...sigh...

Maybe they shouldn't have bought something they can't support!

And if there was sufficient demand for the product of those 18,000 peoples labor, they would create businesses that supply that demand and thus make money. If the results of their work was profitable enough to keep them in business; they would not have been sold, and they would not have been closed.

Do you honestly think that if they had never been bought, they would not be in the same position they are now? The job market is based on consumer demand. Do you honestly think there was more than enough consumer demand to keep Nokia in business? What evidence do you have?

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Edited By Tomba_be

Companies are not job providers. I can't believe anyone bought into Donald Trump's "I'm a job creator!" nonsense. Demand creates jobs. When demand declines or is not what it was expected to be, jobs stop being relevant. But you think the rich 'provide jobs' for some reason.

Being forced to accept crushing debt just in order to compete in a market is hurting the employed. Ignorant discriminatory hiring practices hurts the employed. Companies removing positions when they become irrelevant is not hurting the employed. Nobody has any obligation to continue paying anyone for something that doesn't make sense.

If you'd like a world that is not dominated by people exchanging their talent and labour for a stipend as long as profit flows to investors, you're going to have to find a new system that does not feature private property. In our system, you don't get paid because you exist, you get paid because you perform a service.

I think most rich people are job destroyers. Because doing more with less(-paid) people always benefits them. Also, stop acting like MS is doing this because they might run out of money otherwise or all those people are not doing anything anyway right now. This is not a company firing people to stay competitive or profitable. This is indiscriminately firing people to increase already skyhigh profits.

I would like to live in a world were companies have to fairly pay/treat their employees and investors get a reasonable profit. Not this world were employees will be paid the absolute minimum possible and investors that are already incredibly rich get all of the profit.

Not worshiping the dollar does not equal promoting communism. Thinking our current system of 1% of people having all the wealth while being absolutely useless to society is okay, is mindblowing to me.

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The first 13,000 layoffs will be determined in the next six months. That seems like an unusually cruel amount of time to wonder if your job is going to be around the next day, but so it goes at big companies.

Having gone through this type of a process at a big company myself in the last two years... 6 months is nothing. Its the ones left afterwards wondering how much longer it will be until they have HR meetings dropped on them - mine came up nearly 10 months later.

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@tomba_be said:

Also, stop acting like MS is doing this because they might run out of money otherwise or all those people are not doing anything anyway right now. This is not a company firing people to stay competitive or profitable. This is indiscriminately firing people to increase already skyhigh profits.

Also, stop acting like MS is doing this because they might run out of money otherwise or all those people are not doing anything anyway right now. This is not a company firing people to stay competitive or profitable. This is indiscriminately firing people to increase already skyhigh profits.

You don't appear to understand how business works. If the employee is valuable (ie; their employment creates more money than it costs), then how exactly would firing this source of profit increase profits? If the employee is not valuable, their employment costs more money than they create in revenue, the way it 'increases profits' is by 'decreasing losses'. But, if a company has some employees who are valuable and earning that company profit, you feel as if that company is obligated to continuing the employment of workers who are not valuable. And this is apparently good for the employees. You ought to do some reading on expectancy theory.

For serious, take an economics course. You know why income inequality has been able to get the way it is? Because the average person is so fucking clueless when it comes to the motivations behind economic decisions. Hence why ignorant middle managers think the only way to get more profits is to whip people harder. Hence why ignorant entry level employees think they have an entitlement to their positions or income independent of what they do for others. What you do for others is all other people view you as.

I would like to live in a world were companies have to fairly pay/treat their employees and investors get a reasonable profit. Not this world were employees will be paid the absolute minimum possible and investors that are already incredibly rich get all of the profit.

What is your definition of 'reasonable' and what metrics and experience have you used to decide what 'reasonable' is in a country of 320 million people?

Thinking our current system of 1% of people having all the wealth while being absolutely useless to society is okay, is mindblowing to me.

You are bouncing off of different concepts and ideas and it's crazy. First it was that companies have an obligation to provide an income to people they hired for eternity (with no understanding of why people get hired for jobs). Now it's that income inequality is too great (and it is), with no real care for the initial point.

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This article was just published yesterday quoting Finland's Finance Minister Antti Rinne.

In short, he said Microsoft betrayed Finland. Note that translation will be needed (unless you speak Finnish).

It seems Microsoft are still the leader in bad publicity.

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I'm confident that in the number of people laid off worldwide on a monthly basis, 18k isn't even a fraction of a percentage. It just seems big, but MS is one of the largest corporations in the world. The worldwide phone market is growing, not shrinking. Those Nokia employees may find jobs with LG, Samsung, HTC, Apple, Google, etc, because those growing companies will want them.

Yeah, it's not great for those people, obviously. But "inhumane" is just silly.

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Quick update: MS cut 13,000 of the 18,000 yesterday. The bulk was from Nokia (about 12,500) and the other were from 'middle managers' across the globe. The rest will be in the next months.

Harsh doesn't even begin to describe it. According to a buddy of mine at the main campus moral is gone. No one gives a crap about anything right now and no work is getting done.

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@spraynardtatum: although it doesn't negate the shittiness of those people losing their jobs it's still true

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@tomba_be said:

@brodehouse said:

Companies are not job providers. I can't believe anyone bought into Donald Trump's "I'm a job creator!" nonsense. Demand creates jobs. When demand declines or is not what it was expected to be, jobs stop being relevant. But you think the rich 'provide jobs' for some reason.

Being forced to accept crushing debt just in order to compete in a market is hurting the employed. Ignorant discriminatory hiring practices hurts the employed. Companies removing positions when they become irrelevant is not hurting the employed. Nobody has any obligation to continue paying anyone for something that doesn't make sense.

If you'd like a world that is not dominated by people exchanging their talent and labour for a stipend as long as profit flows to investors, you're going to have to find a new system that does not feature private property. In our system, you don't get paid because you exist, you get paid because you perform a service.

I think most rich people are job destroyers. Because doing more with less(-paid) people always benefits them. Also, stop acting like MS is doing this because they might run out of money otherwise or all those people are not doing anything anyway right now. This is not a company firing people to stay competitive or profitable. This is indiscriminately firing people to increase already skyhigh profits.

I would like to live in a world were companies have to fairly pay/treat their employees and investors get a reasonable profit. Not this world were employees will be paid the absolute minimum possible and investors that are already incredibly rich get all of the profit.

Not worshiping the dollar does not equal promoting communism. Thinking our current system of 1% of people having all the wealth while being absolutely useless to society is okay, is mindblowing to me.

Right, because when the 1% start a business no jobs are created. When they buy a house or a second or a third house nobody is employed to build it, it just magically appeared. Also nobody was paid to build their cars or boats or expensive suits or watches and jewelry or all the extravagant things they might buy. News flash. Millions of people around the world earn a living providing goods or working for the 1%. That you don't get this and that you've probably been brainwashed in our education system to see something wrong with this is mindblowing!

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Tomba_be

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You don't appear to understand how business works. If the employee is valuable (ie; their employment creates more money than it costs), then how exactly would firing this source of profit increase profits? If the employee is not valuable, their employment costs more money than they create in revenue, the way it 'increases profits' is by 'decreasing losses'. But, if a company has some employees who are valuable and earning that company profit, you feel as if that company is obligated to continuing the employment of workers who are not valuable. And this is apparently good for the employees. You ought to do some reading on expectancy theory.

For serious, take an economics course. You know why income inequality has been able to get the way it is? Because the average person is so fucking clueless when it comes to the motivations behind economic decisions. Hence why ignorant middle managers think the only way to get more profits is to whip people harder. Hence why ignorant entry level employees think they have an entitlement to their positions or income independent of what they do for others. What you do for others is all other people view you as.

I would like to live in a world were companies have to fairly pay/treat their employees and investors get a reasonable profit. Not this world were employees will be paid the absolute minimum possible and investors that are already incredibly rich get all of the profit.

What is your definition of 'reasonable' and what metrics and experience have you used to decide what 'reasonable' is in a country of 320 million people?

Thinking our current system of 1% of people having all the wealth while being absolutely useless to society is okay, is mindblowing to me.

You are bouncing off of different concepts and ideas and it's crazy. First it was that companies have an obligation to provide an income to people they hired for eternity (with no understanding of why people get hired for jobs). Now it's that income inequality is too great (and it is), with no real care for the initial point.

Well, all of those Nokia employees were pretty valuable before MS got their hands on the company. The ones responsible for destroying their worth won't be fired, and will most likely be rewarded (Elop is the perfect example there). It is because they were mismanaged, individual employees are not generating profit. And no, even if an employee is not earning the company more then they cost at the moment, they should not be fired in such quantities. Especially if no one at all will notice the cost that that employee generates at the end of the year. It even makes sense to keep them on because MS will still be wanting to grow, and will need to hire more employees soon anyway. Why not invest in current employees and educate them on new technology that MS thinks will be needed in the future?

Economic decisions like this are made because they profit the ones making the decisions, no one needs to take a course to see that. This has nothing to to with self-entitlement. The people getting fired were most likely good at their jobs since Nokia did very well before MS started actively destroying that company. So they get fired because other people screwed them over. I think it's only fair the people doing the screwing get punished.

I think a 'reasonable' division of company profits is one that makes sure that everyone involved in those profits can lead a comfortable life, not just the very top employees and the investors. The profits in that country of 320 million people could easily make sure no one has to starve, sleep on the streets or lack healthcare. And the top of the pyramid would not even notice it.

Income inequality is the reason this has happened. It will cause the rich to get richer. That's why it relates to the initial point.

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@tomba_be said:

@brodehouse said:

You don't appear to understand how business works. If the employee is valuable (ie; their employment creates more money than it costs), then how exactly would firing this source of profit increase profits? If the employee is not valuable, their employment costs more money than they create in revenue, the way it 'increases profits' is by 'decreasing losses'. But, if a company has some employees who are valuable and earning that company profit, you feel as if that company is obligated to continuing the employment of workers who are not valuable. And this is apparently good for the employees. You ought to do some reading on expectancy theory.

For serious, take an economics course. You know why income inequality has been able to get the way it is? Because the average person is so fucking clueless when it comes to the motivations behind economic decisions. Hence why ignorant middle managers think the only way to get more profits is to whip people harder. Hence why ignorant entry level employees think they have an entitlement to their positions or income independent of what they do for others. What you do for others is all other people view you as.

I would like to live in a world were companies have to fairly pay/treat their employees and investors get a reasonable profit. Not this world were employees will be paid the absolute minimum possible and investors that are already incredibly rich get all of the profit.

What is your definition of 'reasonable' and what metrics and experience have you used to decide what 'reasonable' is in a country of 320 million people?

Thinking our current system of 1% of people having all the wealth while being absolutely useless to society is okay, is mindblowing to me.

You are bouncing off of different concepts and ideas and it's crazy. First it was that companies have an obligation to provide an income to people they hired for eternity (with no understanding of why people get hired for jobs). Now it's that income inequality is too great (and it is), with no real care for the initial point.

Well, all of those Nokia employees were pretty valuable before MS got their hands on the company. The ones responsible for destroying their worth won't be fired, and will most likely be rewarded (Elop is the perfect example there). It is because they were mismanaged, individual employees are not generating profit. And no, even if an employee is not earning the company more then they cost at the moment, they should not be fired in such quantities. Especially if no one at all will notice the cost that that employee generates at the end of the year. It even makes sense to keep them on because MS will still be wanting to grow, and will need to hire more employees soon anyway. Why not invest in current employees and educate them on new technology that MS thinks will be needed in the future?

Economic decisions like this are made because they profit the ones making the decisions, no one needs to take a course to see that. This has nothing to to with self-entitlement. The people getting fired were most likely good at their jobs since Nokia did very well before MS started actively destroying that company. So they get fired because other people screwed them over. I think it's only fair the people doing the screwing get punished.

I think a 'reasonable' division of company profits is one that makes sure that everyone involved in those profits can lead a comfortable life, not just the very top employees and the investors. The profits in that country of 320 million people could easily make sure no one has to starve, sleep on the streets or lack healthcare. And the top of the pyramid would not even notice it.

Income inequality is the reason this has happened. It will cause the rich to get richer. That's why it relates to the initial point.

No person or company in this world owes anyone else a damned thing.

Now, you may live by a moral, religious or ethical code that dictates how you should deal with your fellow humans, which I do, and that's a different story but just by being born and existing on this earth does not entitle you to anything or obligate anybody to do anything for you.

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@thallium said:

Right, because when the 1% start a business no jobs are created. When they buy a house or a second or a third house nobody is employed to build it, it just magically appeared. Also nobody was paid to build their cars or boats or expensive suits or watches and jewelry or all the extravagant things they might buy. News flash. Millions of people around the world earn a living providing goods or working for the 1%. That you don't get this and that you've probably been brainwashed in our education system to see something wrong with this is mindblowing!

So: Walmart boss forces his employees to work for minimal wages which makes him earn more in an hour then an average employee does in a year. He then uses a small amount of his (ill-gotten) wealth to buy a boat, jewelry, suits,.... which indeed generates a few more jobs. If instead he would pay his employees a fair wage, he would STILL be rich enough to easily afford all the same luxuries. But then his employees would not have to scrape by and they would be able to spend more money on a nice car, a better house, healthcare,... creating much more jobs in the progress then 1 guy buying yet another Rolex. I figured trickle down economics got buried alongside Reagan, but I guess both of those monstrosities will be around much longer than they deserve.

I'm not american, so my education wasn't sponsored by businesses & lobbies. That's probably why I don't accept the fables the 1% tell the rest of humanity.

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@thallium said:

No person or company in this world owes anyone else a damned thing.

Now, you may live by a moral, religious or ethical code that dictates how you should deal with your fellow humans, which I do, and that's a different story but just by being born and existing on this earth does not entitle you to anything or obligate anybody to do anything for you.

Everyone in this world owes everyone else a minimum of respect. Humans are social animals. We realize we can't live on this world alone. Some of us seem to forget that and think that others only exist to serve them. And yes I do realize that can also mean that employees might think that companies only exist to give them money. I'm not defending those people, but the people who actually do a good job and still get screwed over.

But people who are actively destroying other people's lives to better themselves are criminals, even if they are not so in the eyes of the law. I don't see any difference between someone who burgles someone's house and someone who fires thousands of people to get a bigger bonus, except for the scale.

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spraynardtatum

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@spraynardtatum said:

@r3dt1d3 said:

@spraynardtatum: So MS should keep 18k people employed that they don't need because compassion? They purchased a company and they can't support the large number of employees that brought in. Should every employee/stockholder before the buyout be punished so that MS can be compassionate?

You're speaking nonsense.

...sigh...

Maybe they shouldn't have bought something they can't support!

And if there was sufficient demand for the product of those 18,000 peoples labor, they would create businesses that supply that demand and thus make money. If the results of their work was profitable enough to keep them in business; they would not have been sold, and they would not have been closed.

Do you honestly think that if they had never been bought, they would not be in the same position they are now? The job market is based on consumer demand. Do you honestly think there was more than enough consumer demand to keep Nokia in business? What evidence do you have?

I'm not claiming they didn't need to be bought, I'm saying that Microsoft shouldn't have bought them if they were going to fire half of the workforce! What evidence do you have that Microsoft was the only one capable of buying Nokia?

All I'm saying is that Microsoft just took shook up the lives of 18,000 people and their families and I can't feel more sympathy for them. That's too many people to kick out to the curb because of a vision. I think it's terrible.

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thallium

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Edited By thallium

@tomba_be said:

@thallium said:

Right, because when the 1% start a business no jobs are created. When they buy a house or a second or a third house nobody is employed to build it, it just magically appeared. Also nobody was paid to build their cars or boats or expensive suits or watches and jewelry or all the extravagant things they might buy. News flash. Millions of people around the world earn a living providing goods or working for the 1%. That you don't get this and that you've probably been brainwashed in our education system to see something wrong with this is mindblowing!

So: Walmart boss forces his employees to work for minimal wages which makes him earn more in an hour then an average employee does in a year. He then uses a small amount of his (ill-gotten) wealth to buy a boat, jewelry, suits,.... which indeed generates a few more jobs. If instead he would pay his employees a fair wage, he would STILL be rich enough to easily afford all the same luxuries. But then his employees would not have to scrape by and they would be able to spend more money on a nice car, a better house, healthcare,... creating much more jobs in the progress then 1 guy buying yet another Rolex. I figured trickle down economics got buried alongside Reagan, but I guess both of those monstrosities will be around much longer than they deserve.

I'm not american, so my education wasn't sponsored by businesses & lobbies. That's probably why I don't accept the fables the 1% tell the rest of humanity.

You said the 1% are job destroyers which is an absurd assertion. A Walmart boss doesn't and can't force anybody to work for minimal wages.

Well, it's nice to know America doesn't have a monopoly on stupidity.

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spraynardtatum

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@tomba_be said:

@thallium said:

No person or company in this world owes anyone else a damned thing.

Now, you may live by a moral, religious or ethical code that dictates how you should deal with your fellow humans, which I do, and that's a different story but just by being born and existing on this earth does not entitle you to anything or obligate anybody to do anything for you.

Everyone in this world owes everyone else a minimum of respect. Humans are social animals. We realize we can't live on this world alone. Some of us seem to forget that and think that others only exist to serve them. And yes I do realize that can also mean that employees might think that companies only exist to give them money. I'm not defending those people, but the people who actually do a good job and still get screwed over.

But people who are actively destroying other people's lives to better themselves are criminals, even if they are not so in the eyes of the law. I don't see any difference between someone who burgles someone's house and someone who fires thousands of people to get a bigger bonus, except for the scale.

You have your head on straight. Don't listen to him.

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spraynardtatum

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deactivated-5fc1cc1fadd0a

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@me3639 said:

A friend and i were discussing MS the other night and i said they were the absolute dumbest company in games. Seriously, why they continue to ignore PC is beyond me. Note to MS, people make all games ON PC. i really thought they were going to introduce a sort of cross play(like Sony) with PC-Xbox one(possible new gfwl store) when announced but instead they wasted their time with kinect(see ya) and this so called entertainment(bye bye). A lot of wasted time and money they will now retrack from lost jobs, but its astonishing how a company,(not really now a days), on how oblivious they are with their products or user base. As Dave Lang said you have to listen to your audience, that would be a good place for MS to start.

Dude, seriously you have a severe lack of knowledge on this. You think the Xbox led to these layoffs? The overwhelming majority of them are overlapping jobs from the Nokia purchase. A company does not need to have that many employees doing the same thing, it's a waste of money and efficiency.

GFWL left a sour taste in peoples mouths and every time a steam competitor comes out, people scoff and get upset. There's a lot of clients on PC already, asking companies and consumers to adapt and adopt to another one is pointless when they have the Windows Store. We don't know what they have planned, buy cross buy on a small scale is already implemented and can only grow.

If you really think they're oblivious and not listening to their user base and the market, you are astronomically incorrect.

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deactivated-5fc1cc1fadd0a

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@nofzac: Probably nothing? When the company gets on track and back to where they used to be, then yeah, he'll probably get a bonus. They aren't cutting back because they have money to throw around in bonuses.

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Edited By Substance_D

Xbox Entertainment Studios, tasked with developing original content for Xbox Live, has been shut down before it even really got off the ground. TheHalo-related projects, Halo: Nightfall and a planned TV series, are expected to continue.

One of the few things tempting me to get an Xbox One...now it's gone. I guess I still want it for Scalebound but I doubt that's a permanent exclusive unless it sells poorly which it probably will because I doubt many Xbox One owners are familiar with Hideki Kamiya, the director of Devil May Cry, Resident Evil 2, Viewtiful Joe, Okami, Bayonetta, and The Wonderful 101.

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bboymaestro

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God, that email from the CEO started with no less than 5 bad buzzwords. Eesh.

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ArbitraryWater

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No less than 6 robots wrote that email.

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deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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@tomba_be said:

Well, all of those Nokia employees were pretty valuable before MS got their hands on the company.

Were they? What evidence of this do you have? Generally, companies that sell themselves to other companies are not doing extremely well on their own. I certainly have not heard good things about Nokia products for several years. In your mind, what do you do to remedy a sinking ship? You seem to believe that even if the company is losing money, the company is profiting and thus should not fire employees.

The ones responsible for destroying their worth won't be fired

Well now you're showing you have a misunderstanding of how the job market works. Your 'worth' is equal to what you can do for others. It is not what job you have or had. In some markets, some services are more or less valuable than others. Everyone fired from Nokia continues to have the same skills and abilities they did the day they were fired. Either their skills are valuable and their 'worth' has not changed whatsoever, or their skills are not valuable and thus their dismissal is entirely credible.

It is because they were mismanaged, individual employees are not generating profit.

You have no evidence or argument put forward on how or why this specific company was mismanaged, you are just stating that it happened and we should all believe you for no reason.

You realize managers are also employees, right? And they're often among the fired as well.

And no, even if an employee is not earning the company more then they cost at the moment, they should not be fired in such quantities. Especially if no one at all will notice the cost that that employee generates at the end of the year.

...

18 thousand people making between $25,000 and $100,000 a year. That's somewhere between 450 million and 1.8 billion dollars. These numbers actually double when you factor in benefits and insurance.

You know, I think companies do notice the cost of salaries paid. I think they'd notice whether or not they paid a billion dollars in salaries or not. I think they'd probably have a lot of very intelligent people looking at the output of these 18,000 employees and deciding whether or not their output and market conditions were such that their employment makes good sense. If there was profit to be made by continuing to employ them; why on earth would they have fired them?

What do I know, I'm just an accountant.

Economic decisions like this are made because they profit the ones making the decisions, no one needs to take a course to see that. This has nothing to to with self-entitlement. The people getting fired were most likely good at their jobs since Nokia did very well before MS started actively destroying that company. So they get fired because other people screwed them over. I think it's only fair the people doing the screwing get punished.

Once again. If the people who 'were good at their jobs' were bringing a net positive to the company, or the division in which they worked was bringing a net positive to the company, how would it profit Microsoft to not have them bringing a net positive?

Income inequality is the reason this has happened. It will cause the rich to get richer. That's why it relates to the initial point.

Actually, generally the rich get richer by giving someone 10 dollars in wages for 25 dollars in productivity. That's how the rich get richer. The rich do not get richer by paying nothing to receive nothing. Nothing actually changes in that scenario. Those scenarios are what we call depressions.

You have this very... storybook idea of how business works. The profits just appear to come in naturally, and everyone invests without expecting anything in return, and profits appear to be tied to how few employees you keep hired rather than their ability to provide services to meet a market demand. Employees who get hired deserve their jobs independent of whether or not they're valuable.

You should really watch Other People's Money. I feel like you'll really like Gregory Peck's character.

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ArchTeckGuru8

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"Realign" used in just about any corporate speak is never good. Hope those affected can find work right away, if not soon after.

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Nethlem

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Edited By Nethlem

@thallium said:

You said the 1% are job destroyers which is an absurd assertion. A Walmart boss doesn't and can't force anybody to work for minimal wages.

Well, it's nice to know America doesn't have a monopoly on stupidity.

Doesn't? Can't? So what have they been doing for these past years?

According to Florida Congressman Alan Grayson, in many states, Wal-Mart employees are the largest group of Medicaid recipients. They are also the single biggest group of food stamp recipients. Wal-mart’s "associates" are paid so little, according to Grayson, that they receive $1,000 on average in public assistance. These amount to massive taxpayer subsidies for private companies.

Not that it matters, won't be long before even these kinds of jobs also will have been "rationalized away" and replaced with customer self-service or some tech solution. The 1% are not job destroyers per se, because they are actually productivity destroyers, on the job front they are actually inventing new jobs, mostly bullshit jobs ;)

I also don't get how this is any real news? Microsoft has been playing Nokia's vulture for quite a while already, or have people already forgotten about the whole Stephen Elop controversy?

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Brackynews

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I'd like to say thank you to the people hitting the Reply button and not the Quote button.

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inkwolf

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@mrburger said:

That letter really synergizes the focus of their corporate journey's viability transition for me.

The same song came to my mind as well. The corporate-speak in the announcement is absolutely sickening. The phrase "I synthesized our strategic direction" in the first sentence almost made me throw up.

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Homelessbird

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@inkwolf: Yeah, I thought the same thing.

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Almerc

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I'm one of these unfortunate people who came over from Nokia just to be booted out. Check out the goodbye memo reading challenge we had to deal with from Elop. Summarised brilliantly here ..
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/microsoft-lays-off-thousands-with-bad-memo.html

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spraynardtatum

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Edited By spraynardtatum

@almerc said:

I'm one of these unfortunate people who came over from Nokia just to be booted out. Check out the goodbye memo reading challenge we had to deal with from Elop. Summarised brilliantly here ..

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/microsoft-lays-off-thousands-with-bad-memo.html

Dear lord...I couldn't even get my eyes to focus. Sorry you were effected by this.

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DarkeyeHails

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So, whoever wrote this is part cyborg and part shark. Seriously, if it was revealed that Satya was a soulless killing machine that wore children's heads as hats, I would not be shocked.

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That letter does nothing to do to even try to soften the blow to those poor people getting laid off. Throwing around words like "culture" and spouting a bunch of shit about the journey of the companies future while seemingly not acknowledging people hard work and time or reassuring them that they will try to make the transition as easy as possible is so corporate and faceless.

But hey, that's giant corporations for you.

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5p3ktro

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Edited By 5p3ktro

As someone affected by the first round of lay-offs back in April, Microsoft Studios has a real problem with being staffed by a bunch of scared-for-their-job but somehow still non-contributing 40-50 something breeders with very little imagination. Don't get me wrong, there is a fair amount of brilliant people that work there, but every round of layoffs I've seen over 4 years of working there results in the youngest (often times brightest) lower level staff losing their jobs..... not the high level policy makers who ramrod shitty big-budget strategies.

My 2 cents.