Reminder: Any Time Microsoft Publicises Layoff Figures It Leaves Out Contract Workers and "Temps" (Discharged Without Credit)
Here is an important and timely reminder from July 2014: (still relevant, still very much applicable, even if online reporting has pretty much died down, only to be replaced by PR parrots who call "Stochastic Parrots" an "AI arms race" and "revolution")
It's an HR trick. Microsoft gets them to work for Microsoft, but it never calls them "Microsoft employees". When they're laid off nobody pays attention to them or even counts them.
In my last employer those were called "Associates" (akin to "gig economy") and the company only counted them when it was convenient to the company (e.g. pretending to be vastly bigger than it actually was).
It seems safe to estimate that Microsoft laid off 30,000 or more workers (or "discontinued their contract") since January of last year. Now it's all just a bubble. And bubbles always implode, eventually. Intel collapsed by 30% in less than a day. The bubble just burst. The insiders know when to run away, just like in every multi-level or pyramid scheme. █
Yes, that's the firm that killed Novell for Microsoft. Here's what this cites: (behind paywall though)
