Bonum Certa Men Certa

Microsoft Layoffs Figures Omit Cuts in Its Communications, Bribery, Lies and Spin Department (Waggener Edstrom)

Microsoft's "Microsoft Public Relations Contacts" page as of today ("WE" is Waggener Edstrom):

WE-layoffs
Notice that Waggener Edstrom is everywhere (and has been for well over a decade)



Summary: Waggener Edstrom now faces a new problem; not only layoffs of its own but resentful Microsoft employees, who keep leaking information about Microsoft layoffs to the media and to blogs

THIS morning we wrote a lot about Microsoft layoffs and the last of the batch concerned Waggener Edstrom layoffs. Almost nobody has heard of Waggener Edstrom and Microsoft prefers to keep it that way. That cryptic name (or two names) hides what Waggener Edstrom really is; it's a Microsoft apparatus and also a peripheral propaganda tool of Bill Gates, which he leverages when he gets rightly nervous (criminals like him sometimes even faint upon getting caught, based on press reports).

"The general sentiment right now at Microsoft is that the CEO ("Satya") replaces the established workers with "cheaper" workers from India, who can be deported if they don't obey unreasonable demands or if they join/form a union."A a matter of fact, Microsoft layoffs this year are vastly bigger than the corporate media cares to admit. With Microsoft offloading to contractors, subsidiaries, partners, proxies, and temps it's hard to keep track of the full numbers. In addition, there's a hiring freeze (people who retire and resign do not get replaced), so the headcount went down by a lot. Waggener Edstrom prefers to ensure the public never finds out, but inevitably people talk to other people. Posted a couple of hours ago by "Anonymous" was this comment showing strong resentment against the CEO [1, 2]. Although some comments get deleted there (as recently as this past weekend), this one too might get tagged as "racist" and removed. It says: "GO!!!!! SATYA!!!!! Run off those MS old timers and crank up that offshoring. Its the way to go."

The general sentiment right now at Microsoft is that the CEO ("Satya") replaces the established workers with "cheaper" workers from India, who can be deported if they don't obey unreasonable demands or if they join/form a union. There's also this new thread which says:

More layoffs in the US



This will not stop in Australia. Be prepared for more layoffs here.


This was posted only a few hours ago. Many reports this morning spoke of fresh Microsoft layoffs in Australia. With days ahead of the fake "results" Microsoft might want to signal to investors that it is cutting costs.

"Worth noting that Microsoft and Walmart share some of the same PR firms," Ryan noted in IRC (he used to work at Walmart and was a Microsoft MVP at one point). "So some of the layoffs might be that Walmart is cutting expenses and has less budget for the "bullshit canon" these days. They close lots of stores and list them as "MASS LAYOFF". There's a disturbing amount of cross-pollination between Walmart and Microsoft. Microsoft execs leave and join Walmart and then they "contract" with Microsoft. I don't even think this new policy of like 50 self-checkouts and two human cashiers makes sense, but they pushed it because each one of those machines runs Windows. It's an excuse to spend a lot of money with Microsoft for a thing that hurts Walmart's bottom line. They can justify it as "reduces labor" while they lose several times that in stolen merchandise." Ryan's spouse works at Walmart, where many layoffs are silently happening right now with HR tricks to keep quiet about that, not just PR tricks. Ryan explains that "they cut hours and then say there's no layoffs at that store. They reduced the open positions listed down to just 5 at the entire store, so it's obvious what's happening. Not quite a hiring freeze, but just about one. They hire as few people as they can run the store with and "hours" for those that didn't quit when it got really bad slowly go back up as staffing levels off. They freeze, they make people panic and go find another job, and then it lets up a bit for those that had enough money to get through a really bad month. A month or two is all it takes when you're living on the edge of the knife anyway, with inflation and a job that doesn't pay a lot. After the inflation battering ram and greedy landlords over the past few years, $18 may look like "Oh wow!" but like, you're thinking in 2019 dollars."

But back to Microsoft, many workers there are beginning to feel similarly and the CEO is loathed. He's viewed as a symbol of the problem.

Will Waggener Edstrom start another campaign of reputation laundering for the overtly misogynistic "Satya"? Like it did for Bill Gates?

"Now that Waggener Edstrom itself is having layoffs (it blames that on Microsoft layoffs) one wonders how workers at Waggener Edstrom try to spin not only Microsoft layoffs but their own, too."A reader reminded us that there's a long history there. "Maybe there can be an article reminding people how heavily intertwined the propaganda firm Waggener Edstrom and Microsoft are. The summary in the last article missed a lot of context. Some background on Waggener Edstrom and its parasitic relationship with Microsoft might be worth covering as a topic, [as] it might be new to a lot of people. Especially the fact that Gates was documented as having spent (IIRC) around $300 million per year for a while on personal reputation laundering."

Now that Waggener Edstrom itself is having layoffs (it blames that on Microsoft layoffs) one wonders how workers at Waggener Edstrom try to spin not only Microsoft layoffs but their own, too. Either way, their total capacity has been reduced, and that's a good thing for society...

“In the United States, for example, about one sixth of the gross national product, over a trillion dollars per year, is devoted to marketing. Marketing is manipulation and deceit. It tries to turn people into something they aren't -- individuals focused solely on themselves, maximising their consumption of goods that they don't need.”

--Noam Chomsky (decades ago, these figures are way higher by now)



Recent Techrights' Posts

BASIC Predates Microsoft by Over a Decade, Microsoft-Controlled Sites Like The Register MS Don't Want You to Know This
The state of the media is really bad when it relies a lot on oligarchs' money and is appointing editors who are working for oligarchs
Brian Kernighan, "Only Third to Dennis Richie and Ken Thompson" (UNIX), Agreed With Someone Who Said Rust Was Just Hype, Should Not Replace C
17 hours ago
Reminder: Microsoft's "Secure Boot" Certificate for "Linux" Will be Expired in One Week
Many PCs won't manage to 'rotate' to another certificate
 
Gemini Links 05/09/2025: Logitech Lift and DIY Gemini Servers
Links for the day
Links 05/09/2025: Sainsbury's Caught Spying on In-Store Shoppers and Microsoft "OpenAI is Using Legal Threats to Harass its Critics"
Links for the day
Analogies for "Memory Safety" in Rust
Don't worry, it's Rust! It can do anything!
"Many of the Red Hat Employees Are Still Looking for Work"
Shame on IBM's CEO
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 04, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 04, 2025
Microsoft Started With Code Literally From The Trash, Nothing Has Improved Since
The reality is, there are systems and code that are reliable. But they're not Microsoft's.
Hypothesis That New McKinsey/Microsoft Executive Inside Red Hat Will Outsource Research and Development Operations to India (Like They Do in IBM)
IBM is floundering
Slopwatch: Scams, Fake Articles About "Linux", Plagiarism, and Worse
Perhaps some time soon the LLMs or the "Big LLMs" will run out of money (to borrow) and go offline, leaving those slopfarms in a tough place
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Means of Production and Rusting Out
Links for the day
Links 04/09/2025: Science, Hardware, and Eyes on China
Links for the day
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Digital Minimalism and Social Control Media
Links for the day
IBM's GNU/Linux Divestment, Based on Hard But Anecdotal Evidence (IBM Fails to Recognise How Much Money It Made and Can Still Make From "Linux")
Love us or hate us, a lot of what we've been saying about Red Hat under IBM turns out to be rather accurate
Links 04/09/2025: Massive Microsoft Staff Cuts (Barely Reported), "Strange Conspiracy Theory Is Reportedly Spreading Inside OpenAI"
Links for the day
Activists Can Win, But Keep an Eye on the Ball and on the Trophy
GitHub is dying, it was a loss-making trap, not free hosting
Gemini Links 04/09/2025: Katrina Remembered, Distracted Driving, and Virtual Economics
Links for the day
At This Point It's No Longer Matthew Garrett But People Who Fund Matthew Garrett (or Companies That Fund His SLAPPs Against My Wife and I)
The only thing worse than misogynists are misogynists who fail to respect other people's right to go on holiday
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 03, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 03, 2025
The UEFI 9/11 - Part VI - This Serious Harm Was Planned for Over a Decade, Not an Accident or Merely Some Misfortune
The term "Serious Harm" is legally meaningful here
GNOME Unfit for Diversity and Inclusion
GNOME's leadership is using "bad words"
Brodie Robertson Addressing the Recently-Discovered Comments
Most people probably knew nothing about this until he wrote a response
Red Hat QA Team "Had Shrunk by Half Over the Past Year." (After IBM Divestment)
If Red Hat's workforce is being moved to the East, then RHEL can become a national security problem
Slopwatch: "Open Source" and "Linux" News Faked, Made by Bots and Entered Into Google News
Spam combined with slop about "Linux" has entered Google News
Links 03/09/2025: Microsoft Causes Mass Layoffs Outside Microsoft Also, "Google Can Keep Paying for Firefox Search Deal"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/09/2025: calendar.txt, Alhena 5.3.1, and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
The Theory That the Man From McKinsey, Whom Red Hat Took From Microsoft a Month Ago as Executive, Wants 'Efficiency' (Lower Salaries)
So far... no "official" word
When Your Site's Articles Are Being 'Cheapened' by Slop as Feature Images
Dr. Farnell should become an advisor to The Register MS
Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops to Only Half a Dozen Capsules and 0.2% of the Whole in Geminispace, Self-Signed is the Way to Go
It used to have hundreds, according to Lupa
Doing to Red Hat What They Already Did (and Still Do) to IBM
there seems to be a drive to hire cheaper staff, and it may be led by somebody Red Hat hired from Microsoft
Links 03/09/2025: Salesforce's Latest Mass Layoffs, 93% in Large Poll at The Register MS Say UK Government Should Dump Microsoft
Links for the day
Preparations for Our 19th Anniversary Have Already Begun
When we get back we'll probably sort out some balloons and venue for the next party
Pleased After 2 Years With team.blue
Moving from a Content Management System (CMS, dynamic) to a Static Site Generator (SSG) was a wise decision that made life so much easier
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is Being Attacked by Organisations Jealous of Its Principled Stance and Longevity
Nobody is perfect, but imperfection does not instantaneously imply sinister intent
If You Reject the Google Verdict in the US, Then You Should Also Reject the "Modern" Web (Do Something About It)
Gemini Protocol is still open; it cannot be hijacked or subverted because it's frozen by design and by intention
Open Source Initiative IRS Filing: Almost All the Money is Corporate, Stefano Maffuli (Executive Director) Takes About a Quarter of That Money for Openwashing of "AI" Ponzi Scheme
OSI is currently little but a PR/marketing agency of Microsoft
Many People Are "Leaving" Red Hat, Even High-Level Managers
Something is definitely going on at Red Hat
Techrights Has Been Subjected to Calls of Violence (and Death Threats), It Never Condoned Violence
I have no sympathy for people who call violence "free speech" and then get in trouble
Condoning Violent Behaviour and "Free Speech"
perhaps Microsoft Lunduke lost touch with what constitutes violence
Takeaway From the Google Verdict: GAFAM Has Too Much Control (Even Over the US Government and Courts With Government Appointees)
Many people feel disappointed but hardly surprised by the verdict
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 in One Month
As noted a few days ago, several times in fact, many people now recognise the importance of the FSF's mission, even if most people don't know what the FSF is
Many Microsoft "Assets" Are Fabricated Baloney (to Game the Numbers)
At times it seems like what we deal with are many weak patents (on algorithms), valuations or speculations based on hype ("hey hi"), and stocks held by Microsoft and its own staff
"Voluntary" Layoffs at Microsoft (to Game the Numbers, Sugar-Coating a Crisis)
"Employees interested have until the end of October to volunteer."
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 02, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 02, 2025