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Hundreds of Microsoft employees worldwide were surprised to learn that they were being laid-off. As workers strolled into office after the long 4th of July weekend they were told that there will no longer be needed by the company. Apparently the memo came from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, pictured in his office above – but I could not get a copy as yet.
Microsoft’s 2010 calendar year ended on June 30, 2010. The company is starting off its 2011 fiscal year by streamlining operations. Current and laid off employees took to blogs to voice their views – based on the posts it seems like most of the layoff in the U.S. were from marketing groups across the company.
The layoffs are happening in small distributed groups similar to the IBM layoffs and Yahoo layoffs a few weeks ago – this way the company will not have to make a public announcement and employees will not notice a worker here and worker there missing.
Channels: layoffs, Microsoft
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What is your source of information? Please substantiate all such articles with references to other news articles and/ or compnay press releases and/ or specific quotes by named company sources.
Comment by Mahesh Singh — July 9, 2010 @ 6:27 PM
Mahesh you must be new to WebGuild. Take my word, everything Daya says is gospel. This guy is more connected than most people will ever be in many lifetimes.
Comment by Jason T — July 9, 2010 @ 11:00 AM
…connected or not, there’s reporting – and then there’s “blogging” out the arse.
Comment by Warren — July 9, 2010 @ 11:11 AM
Hi Mahesh, I replied to your earlier email with sources. You can read about the lay offs on the current and ex Microsoft employee blogs http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63482 and http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2010/07/kin-fusing-k... and several other sites:
1. http://it.tmcnet.com/topics/it/articles/91304-hun...
2. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/63482
3. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/...
4. http://venturebeat.com/2010/07/07/microsoft-layof...
Comment by Daya Baran — July 9, 2010 @ 7:22 PM
When news surfaced I thought that this action should be questionable because you are adding to the economic downturn by laying staff off. Surely by reducing their take home pay you could facilitate a little bit of Employer Loyalty or on the outside, keep them on a retainer until you can find suitable employment for these multi-skilled employee's. Don't forget they may have mortgages and families to provide for, and in better times, these very same people helped to build the Microsoft Empire what it is today. I am an Australian and I do not believe redundancy is the solution.
Comment by frank burns — July 16, 2010 @ 10:31 AM