Microsoft layoffs

[kenikh]

Good news, my job is safe. Just wanted to share.

[Superman]

Excellent.

My client is considering doing my work in-house. Big mistake, but that's at least one person's agenda. Others are weighing in, so we don't know yet. I would be cut loose at the end of February. The Seattle Building Trades just had their elections last night, and the new Executive Secretary will make my industry "interesting." I expect to have no trouble finding another client or employer. In the meantime, both my professional and my personal life is fun and exciting. Life is good.

[Vintage Racer]

Originally Posted by kenikh

Good news, my job is safe. Just wanted to share.

I am glad about your job, but I am not sure that I understand what the problem is. MSFT earned $4.17 billion last quarter, and everyone acts as though this is the end of the world (as we know it, and I feel fine ).

[Superman]

Perhaps Kenik can shine some light on this. Is Microsoft cleaning out some debris, as opposed to painful layoffs. It could be that Microsoft is just getting rid of some deadwood to make room for the talent coming onto the market. It is becoming a buyer's market for labor.

[kenikh]

I wish I knew.

[pwd72s]

Intel in Portland is laying off 1,000...supposedly not going to happen until late '09 tho.

Microsoft? Radio news says sales slowing the reason given.

[legion]

Has Microsoft ever had layoffs before? I don't think they have.

After 20 years of uninterupted growth, I'm sure they've accumulated more employees than they really needed. A "house cleaning" isn't a bad thing.

What is bad is when a company cuts to the bone for short-term gain and impedes its ability to function.

[Seric]

Originally Posted by kenikh

Good news, my job is safe. Just wanted to share.

Same here.

They will be trimming the fat from alot of non-dev/test sectors. Sales/Marketing, R&D, IT are just a few. There are alot of divisions that are pretty bloated.

[nostatic]

It doesn't help that Ballmer is kind of a moron

http://i.gizmodo.com/5137074/steve-ballmer-on-macs-vs-pc-in-the-recession

[teenerted1]

Originally Posted by kenikh

Good news, my job is safe. Just wanted to share.

glad to hear it.

was wondering with all that time out of country if they really missed you being away. seems they did

i have already hit my sales goal for the month, whew.
and January can be one of the worst months for my industry every year.
i better not get caught slacking

[azasadny]

My ex-Ford buddy just took an IT position at Microsoft in Seattle, I hope he didn't lose his job.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by nostatic

It doesn't help that Ballmer is kind of a moron

http://i.gizmodo.com/5137074/steve-ballmer-on-macs-vs-pc-in-the-recession

LOL!

Have some friends at MSFT.

Hope they come are OK.

[Vintage Racer]

Originally Posted by nostatic

It doesn't help that Ballmer is kind of a moron

http://i.gizmodo.com/5137074/steve-ballmer-on-macs-vs-pc-in-the-recession

"The price premiums that people pay for Macintoshes over PCs will be looked at more carefully."

We will see if, in this economic climate, people will continue to pay such a premium for a computer that adds little additional value. In addition, I see little growth in iPods. How many more people need one?

Steve Jobs had carcinoma of the pancreas. The tumors hide in the head of the pancreas and get into the bile ducts. Patients rarely survive long. Do a search.

MSFT actually is bringing its employee count back to levels of last June 30 as they have been hiring in sales and marketing as well as R&D.

That moron just guided the company to a $50B profit in the ttm period. The operating margin is 39%. MSFT has $2B in debt and $20B in cash.

What will happen when the economy slows purchases of Apple products as the stock market realizes that Jobs will not be returning to the office?

[kenikh]

Originally Posted by Vintage Racer

Steve Jobs had carcinoma of the pancreas. The tumors hide in the head of the pancreas and get into the bile ducts. Patients rarely survive long. Do a search.

Jobs cancer is different from the typical, very, very deadly "garden variety" pancreatic cancer.

Jobs was treated for a rare type of pancreatic cancer called an islet-cell, or neuroendocrine, tumour. Such tumours can be benign or malignant, but they usually grow slowly and are far less deadly than most pancreatic tumours.

The American Cancer Society estimates that 37,680 Americans get pancreatic cancer each year, but few get islet-cell tumours of the kind Jobs had. The tumours are easily removed surgically but recur in roughly half of patients, said Dr. Roderich Schwarz, a cancer surgeon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas.

http://www.euractiv.com/en/BreakingNews?GUID=TRE50F69D&_xsl=Article

[Soterik]

Good to hear about Jobs type of cancer, have a friend with the other type...very sad.

Glad to hear about your position.

Microsoft is doing what my company (PVH) just did.

We have plenty of cash, and our division would have been happy to take salary cuts to save the one guy we cut (a friend of mine).

They seem to do these cuts for market appearance, so they can say to investors that they are "doing" something. Moral suffers, and the rest of us wonder who is next....

e

[Vintage Racer]

Originally Posted by kenikh

Jobs cancer is different from the typical, very, very deadly "garden variety" pancreatic cancer.

We will see. The people that really know aren't talking. A hormone imbalance is easily adjusted. Apple is facing a SEC investigation as to this issue.

Apple shares are down $104/share in less than 8 months (from $192 to $88). That is a much worse haircut than the rest of the tech sector. The market is obviously pricing in something.

[kenikh]

Dollar per dollar, maybe, but Google is off even more on a dollar basis. If you compare Apple, Google and MSFT, they are off their peaks 1 yr peaks almost identical percentage (between 38% and 45%).

[LakeCleElum]

Today's paper sez MS is cutting back to the employment level of Sept. 2008.

I have an idea on how they can save a lot of money. Bring back XP and layoff all the idiots that brought us Vista???

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Vintage Racer

We will see if, in this economic climate, people will continue to pay such a premium for a computer that adds little additional value. In addition, I see little growth in iPods. How many more people need one?

Steve Jobs had carcinoma of the pancreas. The tumors hide in the head of the pancreas and get into the bile ducts. Patients rarely survive long. Do a search.

MSFT actually is bringing its employee count back to levels of last June 30 as they have been hiring in sales and marketing as well as R&D.

That moron just guided the company to a $50B profit in the ttm period. The operating margin is 39%. MSFT has $2B in debt and $20B in cash.

What will happen when the economy slows purchases of Apple products as the stock market realizes that Jobs will not be returning to the office?

There is no price premium for Apple computers. People love to compare them to $600 PC's.

If you take the time to compare the specs to offerings from the other guys you'll find that for the same performance hardware there is no premium.

It's like going to a Lexus dealer and arguing the Hyundai down the street is cheaper.

Apple 17 Inch Powerbook. Base Price. $2,799 upgrade HD to match Dell configurable option, $2,849

Dell Precision M6300. (Closest base config to MacBook but still lower spec) Base Price. $2,314 with $915 Instant Savings = $1,399.
Configure spec to match Apple, memory, processor, video card, etc.. base price goes up to $3,643 - instant savings of $915, total for Dell is $2,728

For a nearly $3,000 box I don't see a delta of $120 as a premium. And what about that instant savings from Dell? Without it they are $800 more. Is their box really that much or is it the old shell game, inflate the price and then give a deep discount so it looks like you are getting a deal when you really are not?

Let's look at work stations.

Apple Macpro base box Dual QuadCore 2.8 Xenon = $2,799

Dell Precision T5400, configured to match the MacPro, $3,923-$150 instant savings = $3,773.

So the base Dell that matches the base Macpro is $1,000 more.

Bottom line, yes you can get hardware cheaper, much cheaper than Apple, BUT you are buying cheaper hardware. That's why it's cheaper.

Not everyone needs a $3,000 computer. If you only need a $500 computer then buy what fits your budget. If you are in the market for a high end machine, then that's a different story.

Edit: And the Mac runs Vista/XP native if you want so if you don't like OS X then you don't need to run it.

And go to an Apple store, open up a MacPro, look inside. The engineering and build quality is staggering. Not a wire to be seen as opposed the the spaghetti you find inside a non Apple product.

[kenikh]

Originally Posted by LakeCleElum

I have an idea on how they can save a lot of money. Bring back XP and layoff all the idiots that brought us Vista???

No comments on Vista, but I will say one thing. I have a laptop in my office and it is pretty old, maybe 3 and half years. It ran XP pretty well, definitley did everything I needed. FWIW, all of my home machines were still XP at this point.

I installed Vista on that laptop when the betas first released and upgraded the builds over time, but after a year or so, decided to retire it since it just ran too painfully slowly. I bought a high powered 64 bit laptop with 4GB of RAM and really liked Vista. The feature sets were great once you go it running on proper hardware.

Being a good corporate citizen, I installed Windows 7 three weeks ago on the high powered laptop and it was noticably faster. I really liked it and things seemed easier and faster all around.

Back to the old XP laptop - I figured if Windows 7 ran so well on the new laptop, I might as well try installing it on the old laptop, just to see. All of the buzz I have been hearing on Win 7 is that it is designed to run at the same performance level as XP on XP spec hardware - here was my chance to find out if it was crap or not.

Well, after an install that took less than an hour, including installing Office(!), hell has frozen over.

The old laptop runs faster than it did on XP, looks prettier than Vista and is as easy to use my iBook. Seriously. I can't even beleive I am writing this. My Linux and Mac developer friends, who hate Microsoft, invariably think Win 7 is amazing. Having been through a lot of OS releases at Microsoft in 10 years, I've seen it all - I worked on XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008 (but not Win 7). Impressed is an understatement.

Everyone pining for XP just needs to hang tight. You couldn't pay me to use XP now that I have Win 7.