Intercontinental Brigading - Part XVII - The Relevance of Silent Layoffs at Microsoft
Publication ("policy paper") issued 3 weeks after Garrett, an American, sent a combative pre-action letter both to my wife (whom he's now trying to put behind bars despite the Judge in charge of media in the High Court saying my wife had been subjected to online abuse) and to yours truly:
Our government is increasingly aware of this problem and we have Legal Aid now (without that, it's extremely expensive because of scale and magnitude with absurdly high level of "misses").
The overzealous attempts to put my wife in prison are a distraction from what had happened in September 2024 [1, 2] and what Garrett's own spouse keeps saying about him:
Previous Parts:
We are still learning and carefully assessing (also actively discussing in IRC) the latest mass layoffs at Microsoft, an American slop company which benefits from what the GGG brigade ("Restricted Boot" Garrett, "Microsoft Plagiarism" Graveley & "Gas The Jews" Lozza) is doing. Garrett was getting drunk with Microsoft staff while promoting Microsoft's control of GNU/Linux (it's a Microsoft project), Graveley was salaried by Microsoft to violate the GPL (the licence of Linux and many other Free software projects), "Gas The Jews" Lozza tried to work for Microsoft but failed (instead working for Microsoft for free, e.g. attacking all sorts of Free software people, even their spouses and friends).
From what we're able to gather, very soon we'll see Microsoft's latest debt figures, which omit secret debt. This month Microsoft is running out of borrowed money and canceling projects associated with this secret debt.
Speaking of borrowed money, Garrett would be evicted if not for third parties funding him and help from his Microsoft litigation buddy (double-dipping the Court's docket, he no longer has income sources). It's quite revealing that Garrett's Microsoft litigation buddy keeps pressing the Court this month, with at least 3 phonecalls (I'm not privy to what they told the Court in those calls) and lots and lots of E-mails with giant PDFs attached to them. This is not normal and the Court isn't responding to them (rightly so). We're talking about 3 hyper-aggressive Americans (2 of them arrested already) who use up resources in the UK's High Court (at least 9 judges so far, including two chief judges and two Masters) at the expense of a European couple, the British taxpayers, and the Court (also local taxpayers, not Americans). At the end of the day, a lot of Microsoft money is driving these lawsuits (there's no denying that), the hired guns repeatedly lied to me and to the Court about this, and a month ago they sent me a threatening letter at GGG's behest/instructions. They try to stop me talking about this.
What we need to focus on isn't GGG but the Microsoft layoffs, the Microsoft attacks on Linux, and the reason they want to stop me writing about 'Secure' Boot or "shut down" my "existence". It should be noted that Garrett started siccing hired guns at me just 6 days before Graveley got arrested (he worked for Microsoft). During the trial a year ago, under sworn oath (Garrett had chosen to swear on the Bible), Garrett admitted to me and to the Judge that he had spoken to Graveley about suing me even before Graveley did so. They - and the overzealous law firm also - had a shared interest (in silencing or 'punishing' me after literally begging me) because I wrote about fraud [1, 2], GPL violations, and back doors of Microsoft.
Microsoft layoffs will carry on without substitution. Microsoft will try to silence its more vocal critics. They "contradict" the "official" lies told by Microsoft and media that blindly parrots anything Microsoft merely claims.
Judging by news headlines about 14 hours after the announcement came out, a lot of it is churnalism. One Microsoft-funded publisher says (in the headline): "Microsoft offers to buy out a quarter of its workforce".
A new way to say fires?
BUYS OUT?
They make it sound good.
What next?
LIBERATES?
Microsoft LIBERATES 30% of its staff?
Microsoft "shows the door"...? "Offers a way out..."?
This, to us, simply means that a lot of the media is complicit. Perpetuating phony narratives for sponsors isn't journalism, it serves to drown out real journalism with PR noise. Such that the few who actually do their job and ask questions won't be visible (lost in the vortex of churnalists, crafting slop and repetition thereof).
We now learn that even XBox staff is impacted by this, so if Microsoft says there will be 5,000 (or 4,800) XBox-focused layoffs, then the real number is a lot higher, they just call a lot of it "buyouts".
Why won't they point that out? Why can't the media explain what's really going on here? Is it assumed that Microsoft hides nothing and isn't spinning the facts?
If the Microsoft executives do not spin facts, then they're not doing their job. Their job is to mislead, to protect the "company's image".
XBox is basically on the chopping block. It's just a matter (or question) of price. This issue isn't limited to XBox because many units at Microsoft are "unsustainable" (which means they operate at a loss).
Misleading narratives that say "buyouts" are unhelpful to the audience of so-called 'news' sites. It's a subtle form of gaslighting by misinformation. Readers are meant to think layoffs are consensual and even "generous" (like Microsoft censorship is "extremely generous").
On top of that, there's the "H-1B Visa Uncertainty" (workers that simple 'expire' out of existence owing to policy).
This longer article speaks of "what happens if they say no" to the "buyout".
To quote or replicate the key parts: "Microsoft has not said that employees who decline the offer will automatically lose their jobs. Nor does the Business Insider report establish that refusing the buyout will lead to a subsequent layoff. However, the company has made clear that the current offer has a deadline. Employees who want to accept it must decide by early December, while those who take the package are expected to leave at the end of the year. The distinction matters because a voluntary buyout is not the same as a compulsory layoff. Under a buyout, eligible employees can choose to leave in exchange for the specified benefits. A later layoff, if one occurs, could involve a different process and different terms. [...] For Microsoft employees, the immediate decision is whether the severance, stock vesting and health insurance benefits make the offer worth accepting. What happens to those who decline remains unclear, and the company has not indicated that refusing the current offer will automatically lead to dismissal."
So it certainly does seem like the end goal is to get rid of about half of the American workers. It's only a question of how much they get paid (if anything) to go away. It's not much. Medical coverage for one year isn't much for a person who's expected to live for another 50 years and has several dependents who also need medical coverage, set aside mortgage, car payments and so on.
There is ample literature about how companies and oligarchs have long attacked critics of theirs. They just needed to make it look like a personal dispute and distance themselves from SLAPPs (as it's considered "bad karma" for their brands/public image). As a reminder, the SLAPPs began when our coverage appeared to have resulted in expulsion of GitHub's CEO (see timeline). After that he was unemployed for a long time, just like his "best friend" who describes himself as "angel investor" while he lives in his dad's home (he's all bluff and bluster). █
