Summary: Reluctantly, under pressure, Microsoft acknowledges further layoffs in the US; the father of SCO's representative welcomes Microsoft expansion in Utah

Microsoft had laid off thousands of employees at the beginning of the year and completed the layoffs earlier than planned. Last month, Microsoft let another 2,000+ employees go when it sold part of itself to Publicis Groupe SA.

With the exception of places where there is cheaper labour, Microsoft is cutting down throughout the whole company so as to lower operation costs.

The Seattle Times has just found out that Microsoft is still laying employees off, more or less forcing Microsoft to acknowledge that the scale is greater than first reported.

Microsoft is laying off 27 employees in Redmond and Bellevue, according to the Washington State Employment Security Department.

[...]

Update 2:59 p.m.: Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos saidthe company is making cuts across the country, but he did not elaborate on how many more jobs in the U.S. were affected.

The Seattle press tries to downplay it and so do the Microsoft blogs from Seattle [1, 2]. Here is the report from Ars Technica and another one from The Register:

In January Microsoft announced plans to layoff 5,000 staff over the course of 18 months.

It’s understood that most of those staff cuts have now been completed.

Microsoft actually hinted several months ago that it would go further than that; now it's confirmed. How far might it go in the long term?

In another piece of news that we wrote about or at least mentioned several times before, former SCO employees and the current Novell strategy may have led to this idea:

Microsoft opens new research office in Utah

[...]

Microsoft Corp. marked the opening Thursday of its new research and development office where it plans to employ as many as 100 people working on some key areas of the giant software company's products.

The opening and the addition of those high-paying jobs were announced in June. The facility was opened three weeks ago, and on Thursday the Redmond, Wash.-based, company marked the occasion with a ceremony featuring Sen. Orrin Hatch.

The above is not surprising as it was planned a long time ago. What is interesting, however, is that Senator Orrin Hatch's son "coincidentally represents SCO," as Groklaw reminds us. Here he is inaugurating alongside Microsoft. ⬆