Microsoft Can Now Stop Reporting the GitHub Layoffs (Even When They Happen)
Earlier today:
- GitHub the Company Has, in Effect, Just Died (Time to Look for Alternatives)
- Our Predictions Were Right: GitHub Dying as Losses Pile Up (as a Company It Cannot Continue to Exist, It's Not 'Free Hosting')
- It Looks More Like Microsoft GitHub Layoffs
- Richard Stallman Will Not Miss Microsoft GitHub, It Was Only Good at Harvesting a Lot of Code for Plagiarism-as-a-Service
In the past it was a lot easier for us to see and then report: 1) GitHub layoffs; 2) GitHub shutting down offices.
This was not about outsourcing. At one point GitHub also fired an entire team in India. That means that even low-salaried staff had to go.
So earlier today Microsoft basically announced that GitHub is no more... the site/services will be folded onto Microsoft.
Microsoft disclosed this in a controlled fashion and tried to make "the story" something about a CEO. Saying that a CEO leaving is more important than the rest is like saying that Liverpool losing to Crystal Palace is really just a "VAR story" or something about one player's injury.
So Microsoft will benefit from more secrecy; now it can lay off considerable chunks of the GitHub workforce and nobody will know (except be able to know a few impacted if they speak about it in LinkedIn, which Microsoft actively discourages).
GitHub is not growing. It is shrinking. According to numbers published in 2020 by Microsoft, after taking over GitHub the number of new projects went down.
Expect GitHub to get smaller (as in, more layoffs) and, just like the new stories below [1,2], GitHub's original staff will see the true cost of becoming "b0rged" - something that Microsoft earned a bad reputation for. █
Related/contextual items from the news:
-
Former Microsoft Employee's Reddit Post Exposes Pain of Sudden Layoff After Division Sold to Cognizant
A former Microsoft employee’s emotional post about losing their job has gone viral. It offers a raw look into how sudden corporate decisions can destroy careers.
The ex-employee said they were proud to work for Microsoft until, without warning, the company sold their entire division to Cognizant. “It felt like we were treated like secondhand office chairs,” the employee wrote.
The shock didn’t end there. Once the sale happened, Microsoft pulled all work from the division. Cognizant, the new employer, didn’t provide a real transition plan. They made no effort to retain staff or assign them new roles. Instead, it was “a slow bleed until we were all laid off.”
-
We could've gotten a Banjo Kazooie cartoon in the '00s, but Xbox was breaking fans' hearts even then: "Microsoft did not see this as something that they wanted to invest in"
An artist who worked for Pokemon production company 4Kids in the 2000s has shed some light on the Banjo Kazooie animated series that never was.
Banjo Kazooie fans have been long-suffering. After two beloved N64 platformers hit the scene, the series had a couple of GBA spinoffs while fans waited on the third entry to arrive. When it did, in the form of 2008's vehicle building simulator Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts – which was a good game (scholarly folks like me may even say, the best one) – but it wasn't the platformer that some fans wanted. Since then, the only real love shown to the characters was by Nintendo, when the Banjo Kazooie duo appeared as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate DLC.