Bonum Certa Men Certa

When It Comes to Financial Spin-Doctoring, Microsoft is Now Marketers Marketers Marketers Marketers

Microsoft exec tells employees to improve its stock performance in lieu of raises



Stock price 'most important lever' to get pay raise, Microsoft CMO tells employees



Microsoft CMO tells employees the stock price is the ‘most important lever’ to get a pay raise after cashing out on $4.4 million worth of stock this month



Microsoft CMO tells employees the stock price is the ‘most important lever’ to get a pay raise after cashing out on $4.4 million worth of stock this month



Summary: Marketers from Microsoft -- and former Chief Marketing Officers or HR VPs too -- are trying to spin Microsoft's collapsing business units (and mass layoffs that are under-reported and grossly under-counted in the media); how much of Microsoft's remaining financial activity is just financialization and debt-loading (e.g. buying companies to offload debt onto them)?

Microsoft is 80 billion dollars in debt (a lot higher than its cash reserves or bank balance) and the layoffs carry on and on this year (example from this past Friday). The bleeding does not stop.



"The bleeding does not stop."As an associate put it this morning, "it is telling that Microsoft is [as per news sites] linking the possibility of salary raises to stock price because it suggest that Microsoft makes most of its money through financialization and that the Office format monopoly rents are weak or gone and that the OEM monopoly rents are weak or probably gone, since they are now basically giving away Windows." (Almost no cost, as the competition with GNU/Linux is fierce)

"Notice how the media now quotes as financial expert a marketing person."We're going to see some interesting things ahead because government bailouts will be harder for Microsoft to secure (Trump and Biden bailed Microsoft out with "defence" contracts worth tens of billions of dollars). Now that the US government grapples with the possibility of default (aside from almost $32 trillion in national debt there is also close to $18 trillion in US household debt), not to mention many failing banks (hundreds more are said to be on the verge of collapse right now) there are not many chips left on the table. Will people's pensions be thrown at the stock market, tied to stocks where the valuation is massively inflated and unrealistic?

Notice how the media now quotes as financial expert a marketing person*. To quote: "Microsoft's Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela has reportedly told employees that "the most important lever for almost all our employees' compensation upside is the stock price.""

______ * That Microsoft "report" and similar ones (same 'script') has helped distract from the layoffs (we saw numerous of the same spiel, an identical 'script'). Last week Microsoft spread a bunch of fluff about salaries and salary increases while many layoffs were quietly signed off.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: The OSI Does Not Respect Anybody's Privacy
The surveillance mafia that bans dissent or key people (even co-founders) with dissenting views
 
Links 31/03/2025: China Tensions, Bombs Falling in Myanmar After Earthquake
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: Falling Out of Love With Tech, Sunsetting openSNP
Links for the day
R.T.O. at IBM in Texas and Atlanta (State of Georgia) Expected as "Soft Layoffs" Catalyst This Coming Year
It also sounds like more IBM layoffs are in the making
Law Firms Can Also Lose Their Licence for Clearly Misusing It
The bottom line is, never made the false assumption that because you can pile up SLAPPs in a docket you will not suffer from bad reputation or even get disbarred
Link between institutional abuse, Swiss jurists, Debianism and FSFE
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
LLM Slop Piggybacking News About GNU/Linux and Distorting It
new examples
Links 31/03/2025: Press and Democracy Under Further Attacks in the US, Attitudes Towards Slop Sour
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2025: More X-Filesposting and Dreaming in Emacs
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 30, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, March 30, 2025
Links 30/03/2025: Security Breaches, Crackdowns on Dissent/Rival Politicians
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: London Soundtrack Festival, Superbloom, gmiCAPTCHA
Links for the day
Phasing Out Vista 10 in Nations Where ~90% of Windows Users Still Rely on It
Recipe for another Microsoft disaster
The Cost of Pursuing the Much-Needed Reform/Shield Against Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs)
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
The LLM Bubble is About to Implode, Gimmicks and Financial Shell Games Cannot Prevent That, Only Delay It
To inflate the bubble MElon is now doing the classic trick of buying from oneself for a fictional value
Links 30/03/2025: Contagious Ideas, Signal Leak, and Squashing Lousy Patents
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: "Quantum Randomness" and "F-1 Visa Revoked" in US
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2025: US as a Threat, Returning to the WWW
Links for the day
Links 30/03/2025: Judge Blocks Dismantling Of VOA, Turkey Arrested Many Journalists
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, March 29, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, March 29, 2025