The Latest Microsoft Layoffs Are a Wake-up Call: The Company is Running Low on Money
Microsoft is deep in debt, but it hides this with a smokescreen of chaff and noise like fake figures. One such figure was uttered in a comment from a few hours ago. It said: "It's simply more of Microsoft's stack ranking being used to manage out employees. Shame on this trillion-dollar company for firing US employees with no severance or healthcare while importing replacements on H1B visas."
Microsoft is not a "trillion-dollar company"; it's a company over 0.1 trillion dollars in debt and, as we'll explain in the next article, in most areas it is not even profitable.
Many employees drank the Kool-Aid and convinced themselves that their employer is highly profitable. Microsoft-sponsored media helps perpetuate this perception and there's already public criticism today of the way Microsoft discards staff like it's plain trash, e.g. "Microsoft layoffs: Were the job cuts handled poorly?" and "Microsoft's Termination Letter For Underperforming Employees: Guise For Corporate Cost-Cutting?" (Already in Daily Links as of an hour ago).
Usefully enough someone chose to document or file these rude letters of dismissal sent by Microsoft:
Bye Bye Memo
A memo sent to the affected employees (source below) reads as follows:
“The reason(s) for the termination of your employment including your job performance has not met minimum performance standards and expectations for your position. You are relieved of all job duties effective immediately and your access to Microsoft systems, accounts, and buildings will be removed effective today. You are not to perform any further work on behalf of Microsoft."Note: If you apply for employment at Microsoft in the future, your past performance and basis of termination will be considered.
You must immediately return your Microsoft cardkey, corporate American Express card, phone card, and any other Microsoft property, including but not limited to hardware, software, email files, source code, customer contact information, financial data, status reports, or any other proprietary or confidential data or trade secret information that you have in your possession to me.
You are bound by the terms of your Microsoft Employee Agreement to return such materials and to protect Microsoft confidential information after termination of your employment. If any such materials are stored on any personal device (including, without limitation, computers, mobile phones, tablets, storage devices) you are required to permanently delete them."
Some people have taken note of the impact on health coverage, access to systems (this can impact clients, e.g. causing downtime), set aside the financial trauma. That text was leaked to the press from shocked recipients and could be promptly corroborated (multiple sources).
"The article is archived here and here," it said. Maybe historians will be interested.
Generally speaking, this has nothing to do with replacing workers. They're not being replaced but culled. Microsoft lacks money.
"ChatGPT is what a corporation comes up with when it realises it has nothing to offer anymore and is on a path towards terminal decline," psydruid said. Google and Facebook ("Meta") did the same. They joined bubbles. They knew it would not work, but the real intention was to buy more time.
When some GAFAM company says it is adopting "AI" (typically chatbots, not AI) it has many facets to it: 1) create a bubble out of non-potential (compensate for it with hype); 2) make excuses for everything using (1); 3) rebrand products; 4) claim that "growth" areas are "up" after (3).
We'll cover this in the next article, which seeks the hard facts after book-cooking. Microsoft acts and thinks like drug dealers; they reckon there will be long-term profits in pyramid-building. People on top of the pyramid (e.g. Bill Gates) can get rich, but at whose expense? Gullible investors and people's pension funds, tied to "stocks"? █
"Microsoft, the world’s most valuable company, declared a profit of $4.5 billion in 1998; when the cost of options awarded that year, plus the change in the value of outstanding options, is deducted, the firm made a loss of $18 billion, according to Smithers."