Microsoft Plans Up To 3,000 Job Cuts In a Sales Staff Overhaul To Fuel Cloud Growth (cnbc.com) 44
Microsoft announced a major reorganization on Wednesday that will include thousands of layoffs, largely in sales. From a report: The job cuts amount to less that 10 percent of the company's total sales force, and about 75 percent of them will be outside the U.S., the company said. Reports from last week suggested this was going to happen, and that Microsoft was going to specifically focus on how it sells its cloud services product, Azure. Microsoft's cloud business has been booming over recent quarters -- Microsoft noted Azure sales growth of 93 percent last quarter. While Amazon has become a bigger competitor in the space, Microsoft's restructuring is to pivot to software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure.
MSFT annual rank and yank, actually (Score:2)
This is a continuation of the sales staff cuts that the hatchet man that was Bill Gates CFO put in place.
They do this all the time.
It's based on an outmoded concept of how things should work, not how they actually work.
Re: MSFT annual rank and yank, actually (Score:1)
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Recently it was announced the first batch of Seattle min. wage studies had some significant flaws.
But in general, decades of min. wage change studies show a mixed bag: some people gain and some lose. It's neither a panacea nor doom.
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Its the government actively harming people. Thats your mixed bag.
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Well, I can see the logic: Given two choices, A and B, each with different trade-offs, but in which case the net benefits are roughly EQUAL, then go with the choice that's the least gov't interference.
But generally conservatives claim the net benefits are clearly less for hikes. They don't make the above argument much, other than an indirect one such as "the more power the gov't has, the more things go wrong in general."
They exaggerate this in my opinion. For one, gov't is fractured such that growth in Part
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Well, I can see the logic: Given two choices, A and B, each with different trade-offs, but in which case the net benefits are roughly EQUAL, then go with the choice that's the least gov't interference.
Good job rephrasing things in a completely fucking dishonesty bullshit way.
The net benefits arent roughly equal. Thats the fucking issue when some people are harmed while others are helped. You dont get to just say that they are equal anyways.... thats called dishonesty you fucking lying fuck,
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I didn't intend any manipulation of your statements. Any "problems" with rephrasing are purely unintentional, I assure you. I'm just not understanding your point. Your writing is not clear to me.
Tip: Arguing over "the other guy's" motivations is usually pointless, for motivates usually cannot be objectively verified with current medical technology: only speculated on.
All services, all the time ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:All services, all the time ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly 100% correct. I keep pointing this out every time this topic comes up, and people act like I have three heads or something. They keep whining about how MS is "treating customers poorly", about how bad the update process is, etc., but any time I suggest changing vendors if they're unhappy with how they're being treated, they act like I'm insane, and that somehow MS has a duty to treat customers better and provide a better experience. They don't, and why should they? Customers will keep coming back for more, no matter how badly MS treats them, so MS might as well soak them for as much as they can. I sure don't feel any sympathy for them any more.
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People have to vote with their dollars (or Euros or whatever). Nothing else makes the slightest impact.
If Microsoft users have demonstrated they are willing to pay more and more for abuse, poor service, being spied upon, etc., they get what they pay for.
Microsoft is a business with the express purpose of making money, and they'll do that to the maximum extent possible. While I don't like them, I don't blame them. They are beholden to shareholders and no one else.
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Technically people can also vote with their votes ie they can push laws to force greater customer respect out of M$, why fucking beg when you can demand. Still wont play, break them up, they'll learn one way or the other.
So what... (Score:1)
This really isn't news, Microsoft makes cuts like this nearly every year, often larger... if anything this is a warning to those working near the affected MS offices that the job market is about to be flooded with more useless goons that even MS doesn't want around... I worked there for almost 6 years, trust me when I say most of the people they're letting go aren't worth their salt.
Bye bye boxed software and licensing (Score:5, Interesting)
This is all in sales, not technology. Being in a systems engineering/design role, I often get pulled in on meetings where the software and hardware sales guys are courting the CIOs and other executives. It's amazing how much money someone can make selling stuff like enterprise agreements, and equally amazing how much money they have to spend to get the CIOs to sign the paper. Expensive dinners, rounds of golf, sports tickets, you name it -- I've never tagged along on the strip club visits some CIOs I've worked with have demanded from their salespeople.
I'm guessing Microsoft is getting rid of all the salespeople who are narrowly focused on closing these big licensing deals and trying to refocus everyone on selling Azure and subscriptions. That's the grand master plan -- get out of the boxed software business and force everyone to rent computing power and software tools from them, IBM mainframe style. It's an absolute license to print money -- all they need to do is provide power, cooling, network and hardware. We're doing a huge Azure-based project now and it's really interesting -- but it's eye-wateringly expensive when you think about the long term. The long term lock-in is what they're going for -- rather than buying a Windows Server license for $20K once, you pay over and over and over, just like companies do for Office 365.
I just wish they'd slow down a little bit and let people catch up -- there are new features every week, major changes to existing ones very frequently and now Azure Stack is almost released. I think at some point they're going to have to slow it down just to nail down problems once things get to a certain size. (God help them the day someone figures out how to compromise Azure AD in an undetectable way.)
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Azure is still built on a modified windows 2008 right?
Well, windows server has a support cost, as does hardware, power & cooling, floor space....those "high costs" might not really be a bad deal
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Unless you are seeking resume bullet points or enjoy drama for drama's sake, it's usually best to let others be the guinea-pigs for new or fast-changing tech.
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Unless you are seeking resume bullet points
You aren't?
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I often get pulled in on meetings where the software and hardware sales guys are courting the CIOs and other executives
Frankly: This is the opposite of how it should work.... The CIOs ought to be asking the Engineers what products to buy. Let the software/hardware sales guys court the Engineers, Design, and Security teams, but at the end of the day, the products be chosen based on technical merit, quality, lack of undesirable characteristics, and their ability to actually efficiently the meet bus
'Cloud' indeed (Score:3)
The headline reads like newspeak... (Score:1)
Re:The headline reads like newspeak... (Score:5, Insightful)
If those 3,000 weren't doing a whole lot, then it might be -- and this is coming from someone who really wants more stable employment relationships in the world.
I've worked in big companies almost my whole career, both as an employee and a contractor. I've seen plenty of people who don't do tons of work and still manage to keep their jobs. The truth is that the bigger a company is, the easier it is for people to "hide out" and find a nice safe corner where they don't have to do a whole lot:
- It's gotten way faster in the last 10 years or so, but it used to be that if you were an acquisition hire, it would take a very long time to lay off the person they didn't need.
- Large organizations develop their own internal politics, and being a favorite of a well-connected executive or even middle manager is one way to get away without doing the best possible job.
- A corollary to this is the fact that those who really know how to work the system have studied every single rule, custom and exception to the rule. They know exactly how every single internal organization decision is made, obsess over things like pay grades and vacation entitlements, and will always come out on the right side of any reorg simply because their second full-time job is internal tea leaf reading.
- Large organizations also thrive on empire builders, and managers try to increase the number of employees they're managing by any means necessary. Latch on to someone who likes you, and you could get rewarded with the equivalent of a no-show job -- I've seen it happen.
- It's also possible for really big companies to "lose" entire groups of people, as in, we know they're on the payroll but have no idea what that department does these days.
- Fewer places allow this these days, but I've worked in jobs where there are levels upon levels of management for even the simplest tasks. What usually happens is the person doing a job gets promoted, then promotes the next in line so they don't have to directly manage the work, then on up the line. If a company has enough margin (like a consulting company for example,) this is how you wind up with a hierarchy of 8 account executives servicing the same customer.
Microsoft is kind of like an IBM or AT&T pre-breakup in that regard. I'm sure there are plenty of people just hanging on because there's just not a lot of pressure cost-wise. One-off software revenue was huge for them, and now they're poised to vacuum in billions a month in rental fees.
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QA (Score:3)
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Ditto. Please bring back QA and hire me! :(
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How about getting some more in-house QA going for the Windows 10? It's got more bugs than a (sarcastic comparison to things with many bugs).
I loved this idea - "Want to continue working for Microsoft? Head across the campus and find your new desk in the QA department."
Then I remembered that we're dealing with the SALES staff. Literally, the people whose job it is to convince other people that the product works properly as advertised, using as much BS as it takes to make the sale. They are the polar opposite of good QA types and would be guaranteed to either be doing nothing, or causing harm.
No, MS needs to scour neighboring school districts and
Cloud = vapor (Score:2)