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[Tom Warren] Microsoft lays off nearly 1,000 people across the company including Xbox division

adamsapple said:
Yep. Despite this being a fraction of their work force, it sucks to get laid off even if you are 1 in a million strong force who got laid off.

Some of the extremely dumb takes in this thread tho ..
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Something every corporation and their employees has had to deal with from time to time. I'm not seeing how this is a "massive" layoff and only where I've heard that entire departments were "bulldozed" is in this thread.
 
Could have just fire whole 343i and no damage would be done, like this I feel for teams and people affected.
 
SLB1904 said:
A thousand people losing their jobs is a thousand people losing their jobs.
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'massive' is subjective so doesn't really matter what the number is and there isnt a really a clear answer to what massive determines.

I do feel sorry for anyone losing their job going into this recession.
 
There's fat at every company, and some of it needs to be trimmed. When you have 221,000 employees, losing 1,000 isn't bad. Now they have 220,000 employees.

Let's also remember that 1,000 people now have Microsoft on their resume, they will be just fine and find jobs rather quickly.

Secondly, they were laid off, they have benefits they can tap into when getting laid off, it's not like the won't have income.
 
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reksveks said:
'massive' is subjective so doesn't really matter what the number is and there isnt a really a clear answer to what massive determines.

I do feel sorry for anyone losing their job going into this recession.
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There is nothing subjetive about this. That's massive layoffs.
 
reksveks said:
It is.

1m debt for a company with 100m in the back isn't the same as 1m debt for a company with 2m in the bank.

Massive is inherently a contextual word.
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This are people lives we talking about. Not grains of rice wtf. Is like 100 people died and you be like "yeah but there is 10bill people in the world " wtf lol
 
SLB1904 said:
This are people lives we talking about. Not grains of rice wtf. Is like 100 people died and you be like "yeah but there is 10bill people in the world " wtf lol
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It's not nice that people have lost their jobs. R reksveks is right though, the word massive is subjective, although whether it matters or not is seemingly massively contentious.
 
SLB1904 said:
This are people lives we talking about. Not grains of rice wtf. Is like 100 people died and you be like "yeah but there is 10bill people in the world " wtf lol
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You can be analytical and empathic, there is a whole world of research/industry around making sure your charitable donations have the most positive impact. The word is escaping me. (effective altruism)
 
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SLB1904 said:
A thousand people losing their jobs is a thousand people losing their jobs.
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A thousand people losing their jobs in a company with 221 thousand employees is anything but massive.
Not to be rude, but anyone honestly saying the contrary is at the very least a bit limited.
 
Bojanglez said:
It's not nice that people have lost their jobs. R reksveks is right though, the word massive is subjective, although whether it matters or not is seemingly massively contentious.
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500 jobs on a 5k employees company is massive.
10 jobs on a 25 employees is massive.
1000 on a 221000 employees company is nothing.

Any lost job is a tragedy, specially on a stanflation situation like this anyways. But lets not pretend that reducing a company workforce by 0.45% is massive.
 
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SLB1904 said:
Sure Jim.
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Tom Hanks Hello GIF
 
pqueue said:
1. Layoffs suck.

BUT

2. Microsoft employs almost a quarter million people, and contracts probably 100,000 more.
1,00 people were let go. Not all were from gaming. In fact less than 20% of the layoffs were in the HUGE umbrella division that includes Xbox, and not all were xbox subdivision specific.

Goddamn, some of you jump to so many uninformed conclusions for the sake of your console warring.
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Colteastwood, is that you?
 
remember_spinal said:
Are all those tech companies also making record breaking acquisitions?
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No and that's my point. Everyone is downsizing right now but you are correlating a company wide downsize with the acquistion for some reason. Reducing headcount isn't going to help this deal go through.
 
While ur at it Microsoft fire the entire 343 , people loosing jobs is always awful but what those fuckers did to halo all of them deserve to be fired
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
Yes, this is a stark contrast to communist software companies.
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Why can't anyone ever criticize capitalisms obvious flaws without them strawmannirg in communism? Company hits record profits and lays people off. They can afford to keep them on and still be massively profitable. Thats not an inherent flaw?
 
Pidull said:
Microsoft has been making loads of money, but there's no way you can convince me Xbox division hasn't been hemorrhaging money. This doesn't surprise me at all.
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Didn't we just have a thread in here somewhere with Microsoft fanboys getting excited over 2.9 billion dollars revenue from game pass? Microsoft is apparently making money, yet people are losing jobs? And they're about to make an approx 70 billion dollar acquisition? Fuck is going on here?!?
 
While it sucks if you are one of those 1000 people, a 1% workforce purge is expected.. I have been a part of medium sized to massive sized corps over my 20 year career in business, and I can say without a doubt that EVERY COMPANY large or small has a lot of dead weight to cut.

When I say "dead weight", you know who you are...

edit: while this might be a reaction to market conditions, you can be damn sure that the cuts were made to areas they could do without or of workers that weren't delivering on expectations..
 
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Ghost of Johto said:
Why can't anyone ever criticize capitalisms obvious flaws without them strawmannirg in communism? Company hits record profits and lays people off. They can afford to keep them on and still be massively profitable. Thats not an inherent flaw?
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It's the internet, unfortunately some people don't want to have a good faith conversation.
 
jakinov said:
Everyone is laying people off right now. Because shit was hot for a while and companies were hiring like crazy and taking a lot of risk on several different projects. Willing to take massive lists in efforts of growth. There's a looming recession, ad spend is down, people are purportedly spending less, companies are taking less risk and cutting cost all around. Since times are bad companies are tightening their purse strings and slowing down or backtracking on initiatives from when times were bad. Part of it is to keep investors happy but the other part is that now is not the time to be taking lots of risk and burning money.
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Yes MS desperately needed to lay off staff. By getting rid of 1000 employees MS will now turn a profit this next quarter.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
Why can't anyone ever criticize capitalisms obvious flaws without them strawmannirg in communism? Company hits record profits and lays people off. They can afford to keep them on and still be massively profitable. Thats not an inherent flaw?
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How is it an inherent flaw? If you have employees whose work doesn't justify their salary, or whose labor is no longer needed, you SHOULD eliminate their positions. That's how it's supposed to work. It's not like you're going to keep on employing them forever just because the company as a whole is turning a profit.

You're talking about a company that created trillions in wealth and hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs. None of that would exist if they didn't make tough decisions from time to time.

I do hope they are given decent severance packages and encouraged to apply for other positions in the company.
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
How is it an inherent flaw? If you have employees whose work doesn't justify their salary, or whose labor is no longer needed, you SHOULD eliminate their positions. That's how it's supposed to work. It's not like you're going to keep on employing them forever just because the company as a whole is turning a profit.

You're talking about a company that created trillions in wealth and hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs. None of that would exist if they didn't make tough decisions from time to time.

I do hope they are given decent severance packages and encouraged to apply for other positions in the company.
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Agreed.

Some people in life just expect forever job security. That's how you can tell who is a manager or owner, and who isn't.

I guarantee you that if the shoe was on the other foot and they owned a business or managed a team budget and had dead weight to cut, they'll cut them instead of keeping them on the payroll as a charity case.
 
John Wick said:
Yes MS desperately needed to lay off staff. By getting rid of 1000 employees MS will now turn a profit this next quarter.
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It's not that they desperately needed to lay off staff. It's that they no longer need that staff because they are likely planning on doing less and growing slower.
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
How is it an inherent flaw? If you have employees whose work doesn't justify their salary, or whose labor is no longer needed, you SHOULD eliminate their positions. That's how it's supposed to work. It's not like you're going to keep on employing them forever just because the company as a whole is turning a profit.

You're talking about a company that created trillions in wealth and hundreds of thousands of well paying jobs. None of that would exist if they didn't make tough decisions from time to time.
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1. Cuts often place more work on other workers shoulder and isn't just about if the salary is deemed worth it. It's not about the jobs not being worth it anymore but how can you continue to hit record profit in a down market. It comes down to greed because it's not going to impact the bottom line making slightly less one quarter than last to keep 1000 people from entering a tough job market.

2. Companies are not charities. There is barely any job where the wealth created is more than the wealth paid. MS made far more off it's employees than it created for them. And most of the trillions created isn't going back to the market but directly on not investors pocket so yea, I wish companies did have more pressure to keep on workers instead of cutting people to save cost when they are consistently hitting record profits. They are more likely to cut low/medium wage workers than hold bonuses for executives which could literally keep a solid majority of them on.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
Why can't anyone ever criticize capitalisms obvious flaws without them strawmannirg in communism? Company hits record profits and lays people off. They can afford to keep them on and still be massively profitable. Thats not an inherent flaw?
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Companies can change focus and change what they invest in no? That's what happens. I doubt they kept Mixer employees around just cause they can afford it for example. It's not a captialism or communism issue. It's having the skills for what's currently relevant for the company.
 
Gamer_By_Proxy said:
Companies can change focus and change what they invest in no? That's what happens. I doubt they kept Mixer employees around just cause they can afford it for example. It's not a captialism or communism issue. It's having the skills for what's currently relevant for the company.
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Duh. There's no law against it. That doesn't make it right. Profit over peoples livelihood when you can afford both is a failure of the system incentives. You can't just be profitable but profitable to the very last penny regardless of if being slightly less so makes the life of real live people better. I will never understand cooperate bootlicking. No one's saying they gotta go broke, just you might makes 10% less than your current massive profit to keep people employeed.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
Duh. There's no law against it. That doesn't make it right. Profit over peoples livelihood when you can afford both is a failure of the system incentives. You can't just be profitable but profitable to the very last penny regardless of if being slightly less so makes the life of real live people better. I will never understand cooperate bootlicking. No one's saying they gotta go broke, just you might makes 10% less than your current massive profit to keep people employeed.
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It's not corporate bootlicking, it's keeping yourself marketable as an individual. No one owns you anything.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
1. Cuts often place more work on other workers shoulder and isn't just about if the salary is deemed worth it. It's not about the jobs not being worth it anymore but how can you continue to hit record profit in a down market. It comes down to greed because it's not going to impact the bottom line making slightly less one quarter than last to keep 1000 people from entering a tough job market.
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So what? If you can do the same work with less labor, you should. And employing 1000 people you don't need won't impact the bottom line? Ooookay. If you know you wont need those 1000 people, better to let them go now while the economy is still in somewhat decent shape rather than wait until it's an emergency.

Ghost of Johto said:
2. Companies are not charities. There is barely any job where the wealth created is more than the wealth paid. MS made far more off its employees than it created for them. And most of the trillions created isn't going back to the market but directly on not investors pocket so yea, I wish companies did have more pressure to keep on workers instead of cutting people to save cost when they are consistently hitting record profits. They are more likely to cut low/medium wage workers than hold bonuses for executives which could literally keep a solid majority of them on.
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Again, so what? I'm under no illusion that my employer is employing me because of some moral obligation to do so or just because they can afford it. I know 100% that the reason I'm employed is because it's profitable for my employer. And the flip side of that is I can demand more pay or go work for someone else if I feel they're not compensating me for what I'm worth.

That's how the game works. It's a publicly traded company. You are welcome to go find a job at an employee-owned company, a privately held company, or work for the government if you think they compensate you more fairly.
 
Working for Microsoft still looks good on a resume. It sucks but I highly doubt these people will be unemployed for very long, for example, my employer is starved for engineers.
 
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DonkeyPunchJr said:
So what? If you can do the same work with less labor, you should. And employing 1000 people you don't need won't impact the bottom line? Ooookay. If you know you wont need those 1000 people, better to let them go now while the economy is still in somewhat decent shape rather than wait until it's an emergency.


Again, so what? I'm under no illusion that my employer is employing me because of some moral obligation to do so or just because they can afford it. I know 100% that the reason I'm employed is because it's profitable for my employer. And the flip side of that is I can demand more pay or go work for someone else if I feel they're not compensating me for what I'm worth.

That's how the game works. It's a publicly traded company. You are welcome to go find a job at an employee-owned company, a privately held company, or work for the government if you think they compensate you more fairly.
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Your answers just come down to "it is what it is" and that's an unproductive mentality to me. Just because something is done way doesn't mean it impossible to change. Workers rights continue to improve by people knowing this is wrong. And that's just how I look at it. Sorry but all out pessimism just never will resonate with me. I'm hopeful that these piss poor practices which are blatantly wrong will be changed over time.
 
Gamer_By_Proxy said:
It's not corporate bootlicking, it's keeping yourself marketable as an individual. No one owns you anything.
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We are literally owed things when we agreed to live and work together in a society. That's how over time people get more and more rights and quality of life improves. If we went by your mentality would literally be in a lawless society.
 
Foilz said:
It sucks that these people lost their jobs but 1000 people out of 220,000 really doest warrant "massive layoff"
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According to your logic Microsoft could cut many entire teams and cease several services and still have change left to reach 1,000 employees and you'd be sat there going 'no big deal', 'business as usual'.

It isn't just about the raw number, it is about where they come from.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
Duh. There's no law against it. That doesn't make it right. Profit over peoples livelihood when you can afford both is a failure of the system incentives. You can't just be profitable but profitable to the very last penny regardless of if being slightly less so makes the life of real live people better. I will never understand cooperate bootlicking. No one's saying they gotta go broke, just you might makes 10% less than your current massive profit to keep people employeed.
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Lol. Profit vs. livelihoods - it isn't an either or thing. Profit leads to business growth and stability which means the business can hire more people and keep more people employed for longer.

This entitlement in the world needs to go away. Companies shouldn't have to sacrifice the health of the business to run welfare programs for the lazy or obsolete. Layoffs suck. They are also expensive. Companies don't arrive at these decisions without a ton of thought.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
We are literally owed things when we agreed to live and work together in a society. That's how over time people get more and more rights and quality of life improves. If we went by your mentality would literally be in a lawless society.
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What? You're only owned what you produce. Quality of life improves from people getting paid more and being more valuable with more experience. It's literally how we've always been, don't know how that's "lawless". You act like we should be like the Japanese that just have people show up to work and not do anything, cause retirement is shamed by their society.
 
Ghost of Johto said:
Your answers just come down to "it is what it is" and that's an unproductive mentality to me. Just because something is done way doesn't mean it impossible to change. Workers rights continue to improve by people knowing this is wrong. And that's just how I look at it. Sorry but all out pessimism just never will resonate with me. I'm hopeful that these piss poor practices which are blatantly wrong will be changed over time.
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But that's just the thing. I don't think that laying people off is morally wrong, even if your company is profitable. And I don't think that employing people you don't need is morally right.

Heck, if anything, you could argue that the latter is morally wrong since you're squandering your investors' money + demoralizing the employees who actually pull their weight. And even harming society since you're misallocating skilled labor on something that isn't generating wealth.
 
DonkeyPunchJr said:
But that's just the thing. I don't think that laying people off is morally wrong, even if your company is profitable. And I don't think that employing people you don't need is morally right.

Heck, if anything, you could argue that the latter is morally wrong since you're squandering your investors' money + demoralizing the employees who actually pull their weight. And even harming society since you're misallocating skilled labor on something that isn't generating wealth.
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Yup disagree.
 
Some get fired, some get hired, lifecycle of employment.

By the way, if anyone ever want to check how badly are lay offs of any american company I would suggest to check thelayoff.com
 
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James Sawyer Ford said:
ACQUIRE AND FIRE
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yazenov said:
That MS "war chest" should sustain those jobs. But they chose to finance the money sink that is Gamepass instead.

Not blaming them though since its a business after all, and the main goal is profit.
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rofif said:
Gamepass bringing in the profit I see.
Next up - devaluation and cheapening of your games.
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anothertech said:
One year of 0 first party games, and 1000 layoffs later. Thank you gamepass. lol
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There are no layoffs in any of the acquired studios. Mostly Hololens division and people that are in the Xbox division (not studios) for decades. For example,
Dr. Samuel Hayden said:
Listening to Jez on the XB2 show now. Here's a bunch of notes:

- Guarantees he doesn't think we'll see Ross at Microsoft again, or Activision.
- Implies they didn't part on particularly good terms.
- There IS a family medical emergency, but it wasn't entirely about that.
- Has heard there's a chance she may make her own studio (oh boy...)
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Its 1000 people in the entirety of Microsoft not just the gaming division.
remember_spinal said:
Are all those tech companies also making record breaking acquisitions?
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Yes, look it up. Especially, Google is known to buy a lot of companies.
 
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