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Microsoft Cuts Many Open Job Listings in Weakening Economy (bloomberg.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the up-next dept.
Microsoft is eliminating many open jobs, including in its Azure cloud business and its security software unit, as the economy continues to weaken. From a report: These hiring cuts will continue for the foreseeable future, Microsoft said, while declining to comment on which departments and businesses are affected. The company said it is honoring job offers that have already been made for open roles and will make some exceptions for critical jobs.

It's an expansion of a hiring slowdown disclosed in May, which mostly affected its Windows, Office and Teams groups. In June, Insider also reported cuts to new headcount in the security business. The latest slowdown, which was communicated by executives in the groups to their teams, impacts the company's cloud crown jewels -- a key source of growth and investor scrutiny -- as well as a newer priority area in security.
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Microsoft Cuts Many Open Job Listings in Weakening Economy More

Microsoft Cuts Many Open Job Listings in Weakening Economy

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  • On the plus side (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @11:58AM (#62722346)

    With Google and Microsoft cutting back on hiring, many more young people will keep their souls.

    • Re:On the plus side (Score:5, Insightful)

      by real_nickname ( 6922224 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:15PM (#62722388)
      Working at MS or google is a dream job for 99% of humanity. And if billion dollar companies need to reduce hiring, imagine what small business will need to do. No plus side here.
      • Do they need to?
        This seems like a want. They can surely afford it.

        • Yes they do. My company is doing it too. Well technically they have stopped all new hires other than intern replacements, we treat our interns well and their salary these days is better than I got as a full timer when I started. And MS is not laying people off. They have just stopped hiring new, and may not hire head count replacements unless there is a strong business case.

          Many or if not all non-intern employees have long term investment in discounted company stock. We want to protect our value. Things tak

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by RobinH ( 124750 )
        While I'm normally pretty doom and gloom, I doubt this trend will expand outside of tech. The tech industry has been propped up by cheap capital for a long time, but that capital is gone and it's not coming back soon, so the whole tech industry, particularly startups, are having a reckoning. But this is the first time I'm aware of where the conditions leading to inflation is caused in part by a labour shortage. While energy and home prices will eventually stabilize as the economy adapts, we're now in the

        • Re:On the plus side (Score:4, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:36PM (#62722456) Homepage Journal

          Small businesses are falling over each other to hire workers and keep them happy.

          They're doing anything but paying a living wage. Which arguably many of them can't do, because if they charge enough for that, then all those other people not making a living wage can't afford to pay for the service, so they will either go somewhere else, simply have unmet need, or change their goals completely — none of which will save that small business.

          The only rational thing to do is increase the minimum wage, gradually but beginning immediately, and winding up at a living wage — whatever that actually means, which we can debate about some other time. Everyone can at least comprehend the idea, even if they disagree about the amount. Raising wages means everyone has more money to pay for things, so it's okay if prices go up. There will be a certain amount of inflation, and the wage is going to have to fight that for a while. It's been around 30 years since the minimum wage kept up with inflation, so there's 30 years of corrections to make. If we wait another ten years without fixing the problem, not only will it cause a lot of costly problems and oh yeah literally kill a whole lot of people, then we'll have 40 years of corrections and it will be even worse. The excuse that it will be hard has never been a good one, because it only gets harder.

          • Federal minimum wage hardly applies anywhere right now, almost every State has a higher local minimum. And the ones which don't, are mostly places with vastly lower cost of living. But it's pretty much a moot point since the jobs we're talking about all have starting pay that puts you into the Middle Class bracket. And if that's not "livable" where you are then there's serious issue that no amount of minimum wage increase is going to fix.

          • This is literally one of the worst economic takes I've seen posted on /. Small businesses get squeezed tight because almost every aspect of capitalism is rigged against them.

            For starters, suppliers/wholesalers generally operate on variable pricing schemes, and to get the best pricing you have to move X amount of product. This puts your smaller business at a competitive disadvantage right from the beginning. Then there's the old "we'll make it up in volume" adage, where a larger business can charge lower

            • That's kindof the conundrum isn't it though. From a pure market and economics perspective small businesses cannot and in a way should not be able to compete with larger ones. It's something of an ethical and traditional view, especially in America, that we value small business and entrepreneurship even though economically they are not as efficient.

              I think instead of pretending that small businesses are able to compete with larger ones we just accept that they cannot and that we support them in spite of th

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by RobinH ( 124750 )
                I've been a part of several successful small businesses over the years, and I've learned that successful small businesses are successful because they leverage the two advantages they have: 1) they can adapt quickly, and 2) they face far less actual regulation (or actual regulatory scrutiny at least). Large companies benefit from economies of scale, so they can negotiate lower prices than small companies, and they can spread their costs over larger production volumes. But large companies are almost incapab

            • I'm somehow failing to see how you at all addressed anything I actually said in my comment. Did you mean to reply to some other comment, or did are you just using my comment to get visibility for your screed?

          • ... how you going to outbid them on houses with your extra capital?

          • Sigh... I know the "minimum wage" argument is never ending. But I still feel compelled to present the other side of the case here, since you're talking in such an absolute manner about something roughly half of all economists would disagree with you on.

            I'd say a perfectly rational thing to do would be to ELIMINATE the entire concept of a "minimum wage", because clearly, it doesn't reflect anything relevant anyway.

            https://www.bls.gov/opub/repor... [bls.gov]

            (Per that link, only 1.4% of all U.S. workers in 2021 were be

            • You might be surprised to know that I too want to eliminate the minimum wage. However, it will probably not surprise you that I want to replace it with UBI, funded with a tax system without a bunch of bullshit loopholes for the wealthy.

              I realize that gradually pushing up the minimum wage will destroy some businesses. And I'm not just okay with that, I'm ecstatic. Any business which can't pay a living wage fundamentally doesn't deserve to exist. There is no right to make a profit at the expense of workers.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by tsqr ( 808554 )
                Found the person who doesn't frequent small local eateries that have counter service but no waitstaff. Prices have gone up recently, at least here in California, with every increase in the state minimum wage. Guess what? Profit margins are so thin that they have to raise prices to pay the increased wages. The increases aren't as large as the wage increases by percentage, because labor is only one cost element for a restaurant; however, it's not an insignificant element. Every time that happens, many of thes

              • With 'economists' like you, it is no surprise what is happening in the world. You are saying: if a business cannot succeed in the current economic system in case it is forced to pay more for its employees, you would be 'ecstatic' to see such a business fail. So if at any moment in time the government changes the rules by using force against the market, a business would fail, this would make you happy. OK, so would it make you happy if most small businesses failed because the government changed the rul

                • You are saying: if a business cannot succeed in the current economic system in case it is forced to pay more for its employees, you would be 'ecstatic' to see such a business fail.

                  More than what? How much more? That's why your comment is bullshit. I don't want them to have to pay infinitely or arbitrarily more. I want them to pay sustainably more. Anything less is some fraction slavery, basically by whatever percentage it fails to provide a living wage. Requiring people to go into debt to meet their basic needs is fundamentally corrupt.

                  What's more, I'm not primarily blaming small business owners here — but they do share the blame by pretending their interest is the most importa

                  • Are you actually a software developer or have you ever been? It is just that you keep coming up with magic numbers and if statements all over the place, if you structure your code the way you are proposing to structure reality it should be quite a disaster.

                    "More than what? How much more?" - it doesn't matter, there shouldn't be such a thing where someone codes in magic numbers into the economy. 2% this, 15 dollars that, it's all garbage. It is all arbitrary and it is all magic and it all leads to consequ

            • You act like minimum wage always existed. Your assertion is incorrect because most of the power lays with the employer even now. Also, raising minimum wage would as you already pointed out, really isn't a big deal because so many people already make more than that. So it is a small adjustment to the economy at large.

              There is a reason minimum wage was enacted in the first place and you would do well to look into it. The underlying conditions that lead to it being necessary are still very much present in our

      • And if billion dollar companies need to reduce hiring,

        A reduction in the maximal hiring cap does not mean the economy is about to hit the skids. The dirty secret of large companies, particularly tech oriented ones, is that they have many, many open listings which they never fill because they don't feel the applicants are sufficiently qualified (advanced degree specific to job field, or actual experience in specific job, or hidden red flag). This is partially how the federal employment numbers are "gamed" to reflect a lower unemployment rate than it actually

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PCM2 ( 4486 )

        And if billion dollar companies need to reduce hiring, imagine what small business will need to do.

        You gotta remember, these giant companies get a lot of scrutiny from shareholders, institutional investors, and analysts. If the market-watchers say the economy is slowing, everyone wants to see what the big companies' responses will be. So Microsoft "cuts" a bunch of jobs were never filled in the first place. There you go, everybody: The ship remains on course.

        (And I'm sure it's no coincidence that Microsoft will announce its earnings on July 26.)

        • All these open positions wind up giving negotiating leverage to the employees. We can't have THAT! Cutting positions reduces demand for labor, which is at least something that can be done in the short term to try and get salaries down. The work they would have done can just be dumped on to the current employees, who now have less opportunity to jump ship (assuming other similar companies follow along and cut their open positions too, of course).

      • Working at MS or google is a dream job for 99% of humanity.

        Yes, it's gotten pretty bad, hasn't it?

  • Well I think all these tech jobs being cut are due to "people hoarding". I think tech (+ finance) were hiring people due to how tight the markets were, keeping people they did not need right now.

    Yesterday I heard other job sectors are still hiring and doing well (so far). So I think that is the reason for these layoffs.

  • Wrong Answer (Score:3)

    by xanthos ( 73578 ) <xanthos@toke.CURIEcom minus physicist> on Thursday July 21, 2022 @12:14PM (#62722382)
    When will the "Leadership" in these organizations wake up to the fact that cutting staff may prop up the stock price but does not move the company forward. The issues Teams and Azure have suffered due to rapid growth have been widely reported. Hey Satya, quit digging and start building.

  • It seems to me that the economy dropping jobs is at least a bit of a good thing right now as our extremely low unemployment rate is heavily fueling inflation https://www.heritage.org/jobs-... [heritage.org] which is hurting almost everybody. Sure, most of our current labor shortage is in the service industry while this is a lay off in the tech industry but maybe some techies will have to spend some time flipping burgers. I certainly spent a good portion of my youth working in the service industry and there's nothing wrong

    • I certainly spent a good portion of my youth working in the service industry and there's nothing wrong with it as work as long as you're not the type that thinks certain forms of work are beneath them.

      A lot of jobs have nothing wrong with them until you try to buy a house or a car and realize you don't earn anywhere near what the respective markets for those commodities requires you to be earning. Jobs that are fine for a kid still living at home aren't for everyone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Yes but a techie taking a job in the service industry would typically only ever be short term.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fermion ( 181285 )
        A lot of kids out of high school have no trouble with the initial car/apartment/bills. It is as their lifestyle expands they realize the unskilled or semi skilled job does not. Or maybe they are jerks and donâ(TM)t realize that a new group of high school students appear every year to take their place.

        I see the same things with engineer. Mid six figure income for a year. Then replaced by the next graduated class. Or teachers. In my area you start at almost $300 a day and the job is secure as it requi

    • Re:US economy losing jobs right now is good maybe? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday July 21, 2022 @01:32PM (#62722670)

      Let me get this straight. Low unemployment under Trump did not lead to inflation and yet the same low unemployment under Biden is driving inflation? The premise of your link is incorrect as well. There is no labor shortage, there is a wage shortage. If nobody will work for what you’re offering how can the problem be with everyone else? For that matter why does inflation drive up everything except wages?

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        There is no labor shortage, there is a wage shortage

        As a Leftist there's a certain gut appeal to your claims for me but they dont match reality as the US labor participation rate is lower then it's been in half a century https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub... [stlouisfed.org] . As a percentage of overall population the US work force has never been so small in my lifetime and I'm not all that young anymore!

        • Let's not forget that native population isn't growing which means they can't by themselves grow our economy. Vastly reduce immigration over the last 4 years as lead us right to this spot. We need immigrants to help our economy grow and yet they've been demonized over and over again for taking the jobs we don't want.

          Anthony Bourdain understood this and wrote a nice piece about most of our restaurant industry being driven by immigrants and especially Mexican immigrants.

          I was working with this Indian women n

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by skam240 ( 789197 )

            We need the population growth help at least until we get over the baby boomer population hump. I'm generally pro immigrant though, throughout history they've always brought a tremendous amounts of energy to our economy from well before my ancestors coming over to today and if you think about it it makes sense as if they're so determined to leave their home to go to a foreign country where they dont even speak the same language they're probably hard working people and thus exactly the type we want contributi

    • If you don't lose your job then you'll have to work harder and more hours to make up for the ones who do. And your raise will be smaller or nonexistent because they know you're not going anywhere. If you do lose your job, well, you'll get paid less when you find a new one.

      Don't believe me? Here's Fed chairman Jerome Powell saying exactly that. [mronline.org]

      Will it lower inflation? No, not really. Our inflation isn't caused by on overheated economy. It's caused by supply chain issues, a shortage of houses, the stu

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by skam240 ( 789197 )

        Good lord, is this the real rsilvergun and not one of the plethora of pretend accounts that random mouth breather has been making!?

        At any rate though...

        Will it lower inflation? No, not really. Our inflation isn't caused by on overheated economy.

        I never said our economy was over heated, what I said was that there was a labor shortage and there is. As I've already pointed out elsewhere in this thread we have the lowest labor participation rate in half a century right now https://www.stlouisfed.org/pub... [stlouisfed.org] .

        Getting people fired doesn't fix any of that

        It would certainly help a bit with inflation. A person on unemployment's purchasing power typica

      • College grads cannot demand higher pay unless they have multiple offers . Employers monitor market and offer competitive which is as low as they think will attract and retain someone as they need. Some jobs retention more important than others. Employers also only hire if they can convert labor to revenue for a decent return. Loans are not really an employer consideration, mainly market availability of skills.

  • Corporations are using bad journalism to justify cutting jobs.

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