12.04.08

Microsoft Layoffs Worse Than Initially Reported

Posted in Microsoft at 5:06 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Rejected

For readers who are only joining us now, here are some previous (and very recent) posts:

Todd Bishop did some research and found out that the layoffs were worse than isolated reports had indicated.

Rumors have circulated for months that Microsoft may be looking to sell the Razorfish business, though CEO Clark Kokich told TechFlash last month that there was nothing in the works. However, he didn’t rule out the possibility down the road.

“That doesn’t mean that two to three to four years from now, it might not happen,” Kokich told reporter Eric Engleman.

Tips are always very welcome in the IRC channel. █

“Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn’t all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.”

–Richard Stallman

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7 Comments

G. Michaels said,

December 4, 2008 at 5:59 pm

Hmmm. Isn’t it a little dishonest to trumpet up MICROSOFT LAYOFFS when the displacements are being made at a company that was acquired as part of a purchase of another company, and very recently at that?

And why not quote the whole thing:

“Unfortunately, the economic crisis is having a dramatic effect on our business as several of our clients are in hard-hit categories,” she said. “Our layoffs were a direct result of difficulties facing some West regional clients.” She said that laid off employees would receive job search assistance. O’Dowd also noted that the company will invest in other parts of the business in order to reinforce “teams to grow our recent wins.”

This is not unlike the constant harping on about the stock price. The economy is in the doldrums, people are getting laid off left and right from everywhere. That you are not affected because you’re not even part of the workforce (what is it that you do for a living again Roy?) doesn’t give you the right to gloat about other people losing their jobs, regardless of which subsidiary of a subsidiary of which company you dislike that happens at.

I guess I know where your nymshifter troll friend and collaborator from Slashdot gets the idea of submitting the same story over and over again with all his sockpuppet accounts in order to game the Slashdot Firehose.

That last part was just to actually justify your silly little warning below

Note: writer of this comment adds absolutely nothing but stalking and personal attacks against readers, as documented here.
G. Michaels said,

December 4, 2008 at 6:14 pm

Note: writer of this comment adds absolutely nothing but stalking and personal attacks against readers, as documented here

Oh, you actually do this manually, don’t you? I don’t know if I should be amused at the silliness of that, or just plain scared.

Note: writer of this comment adds absolutely nothing but stalking and personal attacks against readers, as documented here.
Omar Hafez said,

December 4, 2008 at 10:46 pm

@ G. Michaels

I remember telling you grow up or to go find something else to play with instead of yapping all around this site. Can’t you see you’re polluting it with your utter nonsense?

Go find something useful to do than wasting your time flinging rubbish at people!
G. Michaels said,

December 5, 2008 at 12:11 am

@Omar Hafez,

Whine at Roy. Maybe he’ll add some more red text to my comments

In the meantime, you’re full of shit. Oops *

* Insulting you like this is OK, as I understand it, his friend twitter has done it before to other people with no apparent side effects. Nothing personal though, you seem like a nice guy.

Note: writer of this comment adds absolutely nothing but stalking and personal attacks against readers, as documented here.
Susan said,

December 5, 2008 at 7:30 pm

I see high paying jobs posted on popular job sites –

http://www.linkedin.com (professional networking)
http://www.monster.com (keyword job search)
http://www.realmatch.com (matches jobs based on skills)

I think the media is trying to scare the US workforce.
twitter said,

December 14, 2008 at 8:44 pm

Bishop also adds some background about who Razorfish is.

With 20 offices around the globe, Razorfish helps clients such as Best Buy, The New York Times, Levi’s and others build digital media campaigns and interactive Web sites. Seattle-based Razorfish, which was acquired by Microsoft last year as part of its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, now employs more than 2,200 workers.

A more interesting question than why is M$ firing these people would by why they bought the firm in the first place. There’s at least 76 people willing and able to fill us all in.
It should also be noted that M$ is doing a lot of damage control and denial. Craige Mundie is quoted on November 21, here saying:

Right now we’re still on a plan to complete 100% of our college recruitment plan globally. The ability to get top talent has actually improved. Our position at this point is that we hope to continue to actually still have some growth in our employment through the course of the year. But we’re monitoring the situation carefully.

Lots of weasel words and phrasing there to account for the fact that his company just fired a bunch of their new employees. “Welcome, top talent, to M$. You are fired.”
twitter said,

December 14, 2008 at 9:01 pm

A week after making the above statement, M$ fired 17 people from Fast Search

Seventeen sales positions have been cut in the U.S. by Microsoft subsidiary Fast Search, the Oslo, Norway-based enterprise search provider acquired by the Redmond company earlier this year. [employees from Boston, California, New York, and Washington DC were fired]

Soon after being acquired Fast Search was accused of fraud [2], [3].

Even back in January when Microsoft agreed to pay $1.2 billion for enterprise search company Fast Search & Transfer, it was mired in an accounting scandal and trading in its stock had been suspended. Its aggressive accounting for phantom deals that never materialized earned it the moniker the “Enron of Norway.” …
The latest account comes in the June 28 issue of the Norwegian magazine Dagens Næringsliv

It is hard to tell if this is real or just part of the usual M$ slog against “competitors” and acquisition targets. If it’s true they are frauds, they are now in good company.