No RIF'd Employees Need Apply For Microsoft External Staff Jobs For 6 Months 282
theodp (442580) writes So, what does Microsoft do for an encore after laying off 18,000 employees with a hilariously bad memo? Issue another bad memo — Changes to Microsoft Network and Building Access for External Staff — "to introduce a new policy [retroactive to July 1] that will better protect our Microsoft IP and confidential information." How so? "The policy change affects [only] US-based external staff (including Agency Temporaries, Vendors and Business Guests)," Microsoft adds, "and limits their access to Microsoft buildings and the Microsoft corporate network to a period of 18 months, with a required six-month break before access may be granted again." Suppose Microsoft feels that's where the NSA went wrong with Edward Snowden? And if any soon-to-be-terminated Microsoft employees hope to latch on to a job with a Microsoft external vendor to keep their income flowing, they best think again. "Any Microsoft employee who separated from Microsoft on or after July 1, 2014," the kick-em-while-they're-down memo explains, "will be required to take a minimum 6-month break from access between the day the employee separates from Microsoft and the date when the former employee may begin an assignment as an External Staff performing services for Microsoft."
Likely not just to prevent leaks, but also to prevent any contractors from being reclassified as employees.
Not about leaks (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure what blocking re-employment has to do with leaks. If anything driving people to other companies is likely to cause MORE leaks.
This is almost certainly about eliminating the risk of contingent workforce being classified as employees. My own employer does the same thing, though it does not bar long-term relationships as long as the company doesn't interview individual workers. That is, if we hire Fred to help out with something, then Fred is gone in two years and must take a break. On the other hand, if we hire Acme janitorial to clean our trash and they send over Fred then he can work for years, but we don't get a veto on who they send/etc.
I have mixed feelings. On one hand it does make things harder on those who end up having to move on. On the other hand, before the policy we used to have a LOT of people who would be dragged along in a contract position with the elusive promise of a hire that would take years to happen. The policy forces managers to act if they don't want to lose somebody.
Specifically... (Score:5, Informative)
Specifically, states like California are now trying to reclassify temporary employees as permanent in order to collect additional tax revenue. This happened with Apple before, and they also now have a 6 month rule. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I... [wikipedia.org]
Microsoft is particularly sensitive to the issue, given that it was a lawsuit against them that triggered the whole idea: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P... [wikipedia.org]
So this has nothing to do with the laid off employees (unless they are laying off contractors first, which is pretty common, if they can).
NTFS, exFAT, UDF (Score:4, Informative)
Suddenly you forget that any filesystem other than NTFS exists.
Not This Fscking S#!+ again. True, Microsoft has been trolling the IT world by patenting exFAT and getting SD Card Association to mandate its use in SDXC. But supported Windows desktop operating systems (since Vista) can read and write UDF on flash drives [superuser.com]. Or do specific Microsoft products have problems with UDF?
Re:Question for someone with Legal? (Score:2, Informative)
#1: WA state is employment at will. (Read: Sign this... or we will have no more will) ... it is "temporary employment". -- aka "contingent staffing" )
#2: Sign this or we end the "contract" (Note: There is no "contract"
I recently had my contract ended at MS when another (temp) employee screwed up ... and the manager said that *they* screwed up. (Still scratching my head on that one). I have NO interest in working at MS again.
Re:Not about leaks (Score:3, Informative)
"so why didn't Nokia hire me directly, they knew I was on the job market, they knew I was uncontracted at that point in time? well, for easier layoffs and so that some good buddy guys could get to shave my pay on two layers."
You are wrong here. Nokia uses temp workers because the low level managers can't get permissions to hire staff, but have a different budget for buying work from other companies. They are basically playing around the company bureucracy. It's not uncommon. It happens in other big companies also. The work has to get done, but hiring people is so burdensome and slow they use other companies to do the actual hiring part. It's not even cheaper for the company, even when accounting for the possible layoffs. That's not the only place where people dodge company bureucracy to actually get things done. I'm sure slashdot can tell many examples of this.
Re:What does RIF mean? (Score:5, Informative)
"Reduction In Force".
Companies like to use that term instead of "Mass Layoffs". They think it sounds nicer.