Microsoft CEO To Slash 18,000 Jobs, 12,500 From Nokia To Go 383
DW100 (2227906) writes "Satya Nadella has taken an axe to Microsoft's 127,000-strong workforce by announcing a whopping 18,000 job cuts, including 12,500 from the recently integrated Nokia division. At least 13,000 jobs will go within the next six months."
It's official, Ballmer's layoff record has been smashed. From the email sent to employees: "The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months."
I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Funny)
Right, right? No way would they need anyone from overseas for any upcoming jobs, no sirree. Won't see any work of any kind going to other countries, nope!
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Insightful)
(Oh, and we also resent having to pay those scarce and valuable individuals more than $15 / hour. So we'll still need some foreign worker visas, thanks).
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Informative)
As a foreign worker in the US, I have no idea where you got that $15 an hour from. I can assure you, I'm paid substantially more than that.
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Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you are not making $45 or more an hour you are being robbed. Programmers are massively underpaid compared to the skillset we need to do our jobs. Why the hell do we tolerate deflating the job down to the level of a factory worker?
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Are programmers willing to work for $45/hr? Then that is what they are worth. Did you think the laws of supply and demand don't apply to you (you precious thing)?
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Insightful)
Programmers are massively underpaid compared to the skillset we need to do our jobs.
A bachelors degree? We don't 'deserve' to get paid more than chemists, but we do. Like everything else, we get paid according to supply and demand. The skillset required to be an artist is tough to develop, but those guys don't get paid much.
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"You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product. "
nope. That does not impact pay. Get thing out at the arbitrary schedule, regardless of quality, mean you are a team player, and as such worth more.
Look at you own post. It seems Oracle, SAP, MS, et all make a lot of money with their crappy products.
Yeah, I work with them to.
We need a solid push for actual engineer in software. Not just some coder who calls themselves an engineer(often illegally), but someone who is certified and needs to sigh off o
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You want to be paid more money? Produce a better product.
Apparently you don't work in the field. Because management doesn't want a better product. They want it fast and they want it cheap and if we don't meet those demands then we're hit with the "There are people in [Third World Country] who'd be GLAD to do your job faster and for less money!"/
It's not likely to be a co-incidence that your samples of producers of notably bad products are also very heavily invested in just such cheap resources. Because A), they're big enough not to care if some two bit customer d
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As a foreign worker in the US, I have no idea where you got that $15 an hour from. I can assure you, I'm paid substantially more than that.
I once shared an office with two foreign workers from Eastern Europe. One was being paid $1000/mo., the other $500/mo. Don't know how the company got away with it, but they did.
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more than $140,000 a year, but less than $180,000 (plus various other things like stock etc)
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more than $140,000 a year, but less than $180,000 (plus various other things like stock etc)
Unless you are doing the job of someone they would usually be paying $200,000 per year, then I would say you are probably a good example of when H1B works. But looking at the numbers and average salaries I see a lot of average salaries in the $50k and $60k range which is really very low and likely is undermining the market for entry level jobs in the US [globalcare...tegies.org].
Microsoft does seem to be competitive with an average salary in the $100k range for H1B Visas, but that also means that there could be hundreds of people t
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Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, somehow, a figure picked out of GP's ass to cause a stir... is?
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"In order to ensure continued access to scarce skillsets that are key to our ability to innovate, we need to be able to draw flexibly from a global pool of professionals."
Wait a minute. Microsoft has the ability to innovate? Who knew!
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Insightful)
They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.
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They continually invent new and creative kinds of suck.
No they don't. They just change the suck icons, names, and desktop locations with each new edition. Still the same old suck.
IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what IBM does: lays off thousands here in the USA and just hires overseas.
And they still charge an obscene amount for their products and services.
It's all about cost arbitrage now: really cheap technical labor overseas and charge like you have 100% American or Western European labor.
Our country and economy is being bled dry by the multinationals.
While we are distracted by cheaper big screen TV and other electronic toys, the things that really matter are becoming more expensive while our pay is declining - and it's not just inflation. I see jobs here in Metro Atl that are paying $60K+ that once paid $80K+ back in the late 90s. If you include inflation, that's a hell of a pay cut.
But in the meantime, fuel, medical, education, food, housing (rents are going back up) and essentials to living are going up.
We are in a spiral to the bottom because multinational companies are importing poverty from the Third World.
Solution? I stopped buying shit. It helps that retailers are becoming more and more obnoxious. No more rip-off cable or other services like that. Smart phone? Shove it.
Food? I cook and it's all unprocessed - no packaged shit with shit additives.
Car? 20 years old and counting. And I do the maintenance: clutch, head gasket, brakes, you names it. Sorry for the local mechanic, but that's the new reality of our country.
Re:IBM (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to do with IBM. The oligarchs have seized power over the last 20 years and now the screw is being turned. The more they turn, the more scared you become. All around the world, policy is dictated by the corporations and they're invariably directly working against the population.
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As eloquently said by Truxton Spangler (portrayed by Michael Cristofer) at the end of the show Rubicon (which was pulled off the air after 1 season, IMHO, because it hit too close to home for the oligarchs):
"Do you think anyone will give a shit?"
That's the problem. It's the boiling frog problem. Most people will downplay this move as Microsoft exiting the mobile business. But it's much more than that. It's just one more step down the ladder into tyranny.
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Most of these layoffs are around an acquisition. This is very common, and you're only hearing about it in advance from MS because they're laying off enough in the US to trigger the WARN act, or a similar law in Finland.
MS has a bunch of people who make phones that don't sell.. Nokia has a bunch of people who make phones that don't sell. I'm guessing all the overlap will be jettisoned, along with a significant reduction to adjust to poor sales.
So far what we've heard is constrained to the failing mobile bu
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None of the stuff he lists is particularly time expensive.
Cooking? It's fun anyway, and there's no need to cook a five star gourmet meal every meal. Most days just simple, good tasting food - 5 or 10 minutes prep and cooking time.
Car? Even an old car doesn't need that much time spent on it. I've just finished with my nearly 20 year old Audi, I spent about an hour or two PER YEAR on maintenance.
Not buying shit? This actually gives you MORE time not less since you're not driving to and from a shop and browsin
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Funny)
At least one of these stupid companies finally got around to outsourcing their CEO from India as well. It has gone full circle.
Re:I guess they won't need any more foreign Visas? (Score:5, Interesting)
justice (Score:2, Insightful)
revenge for the start button
I really really hate (Score:5, Insightful)
CEO-speak.. "building the right organization" "work towards synergies and strategic alignment" gobbledygoop
I'm all for cutting out bureaucracy where it isn't needed but come on man..
Re:I really really hate (Score:5, Interesting)
You should listen to a song on the latest Weird Al album: Mission Statement. Sung in the style of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, it's a perfect parody of those managers who love to speak in "corporate talk." Next time you go to a meeting with one of those managers, recite some of the lyrics (spoken, not sung, of course) and see whether they nod their heads in agreement.
"We'll set a brand trajectory
Using management philosophy
Advance our market share vis-à-vis
Our proven methodology
With strong commitment to quality
Effectively enhancing corporate synergy"
Buzzword speak (Score:5, Funny)
The synergy will get you.
Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1Bs (Score:2, Insightful)
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Right, because getting ah H-1B is /really/ easy!
No bureaucratic nonsense there!
And they are also a lot cheaper, because they can be lower than comparable US workers, right, right?
http://www.h1bwage.com/index.php /sarcasm
http://www.flcdatacenter.com/
Can we skip this useless blabber?
You hire someone on H-1B because they possess quality you can't find in the country.
Hiring H-1B for cost-reduction is idiocy! (better just ship your production overseas)
Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B (Score:5, Informative)
[Posting AC because I'm talking about my own employer.]
Bullshit. H1-Bs save employers more than enough to pay for the bureaucratic overhead of hiring them. That's a one-time cost that's easily amortized over the three or six years of the visa, and if you hire lots of H1-Bs, the process can be pretty well streamlined. You can even outsource the paperwork.
The last time I had to hire two code monkeys, the company hired an agency in India to find H1-B candidates. We interviewed over 20 candidates, and made offers to ten. Two of them turned out to have misrepresented their work histories, we finally hired two, and the rest ran screaming the other way when they saw what we offered. It was infuriating, but the bean-counters wouldn't budge. Get people who will take what we offer or do without.
This is what companies do. Their employees aren't their greatest asset, they're their greatest cost center. In the long term, it's stupid, but the suits don't care. They only care about this quarter's (or this week's) results. Why buy socks at Nordstrom when you can buy them at Walmart?
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And when you had to present evidence of how much a US citizen earned doing the same job, and why the salary you were paying these guys was at least as high, how did you prove that?
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Bullshit, the forms you need to fill in when you submit your H1-B application require you to provide listings of similar jobs, and how much you pay them. I'm from the UK, but I live in the US, under an H1-B, hence knowing what you have to fill in on the forms ;).
Re:Translation: Slash 18K jobs, apply for 18K H-1B (Score:4, Informative)
I hope you're enjoying your time in the colonies, anyway.
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I am a foreign worker under H1B and currently in the process of applying for PERM. I don't know how other places are doing, but where I work (a US university) all these forms are posted on the boards of the building. They are right there for anybody to see AND complain if they think something is wrong or the position is unnecessary.
I know many H1B and they are not underpaid compared to the other people in the same company.
In this story, they are mostly firing assembly line workers from nokia it seems. Do yo
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But they are Nokia employees, the majority of which are in Finland. They don't have H-1B visas in Finland.
Beware these muppets (Score:4, Insightful)
Just another puppet inheriting the stink barge. Nothing will change at Microsoft. Cuts, layoffs, and generally contribution to economic stagnation is all these clowns are about. Pay no attention to what they ever say. Watch what they do... and it's always the same...
The cycle begins again (Score:3, Insightful)
Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.
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Re:The cycle begins again (Score:4, Insightful)
Just remember that companies like Valve were founded by ex-Microsoft software engineers.
Many of the early employees of Microsoft became millionaires due to stock options, so they could afford to jump ship and do their own thing. I doubt that's true of the people being laid off.
The other 5500 jobs (Score:3)
The article mentions where 12,500 of the 18,000 jobs to be cut are coming from, but doesn't account for the other 5,500 jobs. There was another article on this a few days ago that mentioned people being cut from marketing teams and people cut from the Xbox division, but I wish the article would go into more detail.
Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem in real life, as it is in Dilbert, is the things we cringe at are the things the executives think "now there's a damned fine idea".
There's a huge disconnect between how management people respond to those things versus what the rest of us do.
Unfortunately, they're the ones calling the shots -- and what we see as parody and satire, they see as an instruction manual.
I don't believe I've ever worked at a company where the management team didn't (on a semi regular basis) take a page straight out of the Dilbert playbook and begin to implement it.
It's like we experience an entirely different reality.
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It's like we experience an entirely different reality.
Well of course you do. Your reality is working on a project, shielded from higher-level concerns. Their reality is trying to shield you from higher-level concerns by managing them. You are no more equipped to understand their job than they are to understand yours. Dilbert does a great job lampooning the aspects that are visible to you, but a poor job of explaining the aspects that are not. You won't get this until you become a manager, I'm afraid.
Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh what utter rubbish! Management is mostly irrelevant - especially the over paid CEO types who can't seem to figure out what the company does - but they can sure "manage" it. Good, driven, visionary management can keep a company healthy and profitable for centuries, but most of these managers are about as useful as pot holes. What they are really good at is convincing themselves and their cronies on the board of directors that they deserve more pay, more bonuses, because well, they are paid millions so they must be worth millions more! In reality, the average manager is not any smarter than the guy running the project and certainly not better at predicting where the market it is headed, or what the economy is going to do, or what the sales for next quarter will be. AS for the higher level concerns . . . what higher level concerns? A business has all the same issues as a family - income, taxes, the crazy dude next door with the chainsaw and the lawyer...which church to go to for the tax breaks and legal loop holes. Please don't put any faith in management - they either understand the company because they've worked there (and can do an adequate job of keeping the place running) or they are just some rich dude in a suit with less clue about how to run a company than a chimpanzee has of running a zoo.
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If they can't understand my job, they damn sure aren't competent to manage it.
Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Horseshit.
I once worked at a company which primarily grew by acquisition.
The running joke (albeit real) was that the VP of R&D from the last major acquisition was now the VP of R&D for the entire company.
And that VP would develop a huge sense of "Not Invented Here", and start to decide that any product which wasn't invented by his company wasn't worth pursuing.
In several instances they tried to fiddle with the core competencies, get rid of things which were absolutely central to the business model, and generally fsck things up. Because the particular brand of hammer they sold was all they understood, and anything else must therefore be unimportant.
I can't even count how many MBAs I've met who had precisely zero experience in the industry they were suddenly in, who started to make decisions which demonstrated that, other than the case studies they did in school, they didn't have a frigging clue. In fact, I've seen numerous examples where their understanding of the technology was so non-existent they couldn't understand what it did, and why their arbitrary choices were disconnected from the real world.
People get parachuted into management positions in companies they know nothing about and don't fully understand, and then apply their one size fits all solution -- even if that solution is a terrible idea.
This belief that someone who has studied management understand either the business or the process of management is a crock of shit. Because anybody who has worked in tech long enough knows damned well that most of them are doing things just to make themselves look important.
We once had a departmental manager insist on building ER diagrams for our product. The problem was, the software wasn't based on an RDB, the ER diagrams were meaningless and misleading, and had absolutely nothing to do with anything.
I've seen situations in which the guy who owned a piece of technology was responsible for deciding that it was the one we should go with, despite overwhelming evidence that the piece of software he was responsible for wasn't capable of doing what it was supposed to replace. This was purely ego, politics, and carving out their own little fiefdom.
You think Elon Musk went into Nokia with an understanding of what Nokia needed as a business? Or merely a view that whatever they were doing was wrong because it wasn't based on Microsoft stuff?
If I hadn't seen so many examples of gross incompetence in management, I might actually believe there is a kernel of truth here.
But since I have, I don't.
Management isn't some elite bunch of people with all of the answers. They're a bunch of people who were chosen by a bunch of people like them to carry out policies which have already been decided upon.
And it is as much about politics as it is reality.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Elon Musk at Nokia?... (Score:4, Funny)
Apparently, yes ... I knew there was an "Elo" in there somewhere. :-P
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You think Elon Musk went into Nokia with an understanding of what Nokia needed as a business? Or merely a view that whatever they were doing was wrong because it wasn't based on Microsoft stuff?
You mean Stephen Elop, not Elon Musk. Quite a difference, but I can see myself making the same Elop flip-flop.
Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Citation Provided (Score:4, Interesting)
Most CEO's and Executive Level types are sociopaths.
Perhaps not "Most CEO's", but the position tends to attract them: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ke... [forbes.com]
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I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
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I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
And now you should understand why they call it the Human Resources department and not Human Relations.
Re:Dilbert words: Can anything be as demoralizing? (Score:4, Insightful)
The latest buzzword is Human Capital Management. Note the use of the word Capital, as in asset. You, as an employee, are nothing more than a piece of furniture in their eyes. In the old days they called it the Personnel department. At least that had some sort of human element to it.
The morals of the story?
1) Don't trust management. They will cast you aside at the blink of an eye to save their own ass.
2) Don't get fooled into thinking you have lifetime employment with anyone.
3) Even when you have a job, never stop looking for the next one.
Employees are assets - in a good way (Score:2)
I particularly like it how big companies use the same terms to get rid of a junk computer as they do to get rid of people. It is time to surplus or excess uneeded assets...
Just playing devils advocate here but what terms would you suggest? Take the emotion out of it for a moment. I agree that it is rather cold but its hard to argue that employees are not a type of asset to the company. The most valuable kind of asset in many ways. Not one the company owns of course but you do not have to own an asset for it to be beneficial to the company. If someone is hired by the company to do specific work and the work they perform is no longer needed, exactly how is that functionall
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"Just playing devils advocate here but what terms would you suggest?"
Be honest and call it what it is...
Human resources will be renamed to "human trafficking and exploitation" so that it will be more accurate.
Burning platforms (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess Nokia's platform really was burning after all. It's just that it was arson.
Half of their employees to be fired. (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft brought over 25,000 Nokia employees in the merger of which 12,500 are to be laid off in the next 6 months. Probably all that's left is the hardware engineers, with nearly all of software, marketing and management getting the boot.
h1b going first? (Score:2)
I can't even type that without laughing.
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Probably true. The H1Bs are easier to dispose of, so the ones they are letting go will be let go first.
Nokia sure has bad luck (Score:2)
It's sad that they got bought just at the moment when Microsoft's CEO was going to change. I fully expect the new CEO to soon admit that the mobile market has been lost forever, and discard Nokia. In the end, all the Nokia saga would have been for nothing.
Re:Nokia sure has bad luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Nokia can only blame itself for letting Elop become their CEO years ago.
Re:Nokia sure has bad luck (Score:5, Insightful)
Very true. How the board was misinformed to the point of doing a such clear suicide is still part of the hidden story. Even more strange is the constant support the board give to the CEO even after all the alarms was turning full red. The "No plan B" concept was the biggest mistake ever from a board.
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Nokia was just for getting the patents which are worth a lot of money. Everyone has figured their angle a long time ago. The smartphones, as Microsoft usually does, will just be outsourced to someone in China.
Lets cut the H1B's! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sign the petition, lets get Obama to address why we still have H1B's
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/discuss-why-we-still-allow-h1b-visas-during-slow-economy/BxntX3JC
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what this says (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't ask; I'm not telling ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, my company escorted me out the gate because I was a network jockey and they didn't want me to sabotage the system.
Two days later they're calling me with, "How do we ...," and "What's the passwords for ...," and "Where are the ..."
I offered to respond by email:
"The Firm has made the decision to "right-size" its IT department to better align with strategies going forward. In support of that decision, I know the Firm has retained the very best-of-breed systems analysts and I think we should rely on those superior personnel to figure out what knowledge I departed with. I know you will agree that Firm policy prohibits sensitive communication with non-employees and it is with a spirit of cooperation that I decline to ever speak to any of you ever again."
Re:Don't ask; I'm not telling ... (Score:5, Informative)
You should have offered to help.
For $200/hour + expenses.
Stephen Elop (Score:5, Insightful)
It's amazing that this guy can run the company into the ground and still have a job. How badly do you have to screw up to get fired as a CEO?
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It's amazing that this guy can run the company into the ground and still have a job. How badly do you have to screw up to get fired as a CEO?
looks a Ballmer
Pretty bad, apparently...
Re:Stephen Elop (Score:5, Interesting)
He ran Nokia into the ground so it could be acquired by Microsoft for peanuts. Now that he has done his job he gets the reward of a cushy job at Microsoft. I do not see anything strange here.
Re:Stephen Elop (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone left at Nokia afterwards? (Score:3)
BINGO in the first paragraph alone (Score:3)
We have buzzword BINGO in the first paragraph. Holy cow.
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-02-22/
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I have yet to hear a CEO speak without winning buzzword bingo in the first few sentences.
It's funny (and cringeworthy) because it's true.
I honestly can't decide if they know what they say sounds absurd, or if they really think they're saying intelligible things.
Years ago at another job, during the quarterly "Kool Aid/Rah Rah" speeches, if they were on a conference call ... people openly played buzzword bingo in the meeting room. With HR in the room.
He
Re:BINGO in the first paragraph alone (Score:4, Informative)
I think in this case, it's to avoid lawsuits. "Buzzword Bingo" speeches are made specifically to be as vague and neutral as possible so that there's zero chance of a discrimination lawsuit from someone who gets laid off as a result of these job cuts. A friend of mine just recently showed me a good example of why executives do this. His company went through a round of layoffs, and his was one of the jobs that was cut. Rather than simply use CEO-speak and lay him off, they fired him in an attempt to dodge paying him unemployment benefits - they claimed he was sleeping on the job, but none of the statements the managers there gave to the unemployment office matched up. He brought this up in an appeal to the unemployment office, and they awarded him benefits because they saw through the company's BS.
Outside of that, though? I think it's a Jungian thing. The CEOs think that successful CEOs speak in buzzwords all the time, so they form their own CEO persona and start acting like that because they want to be successful as well. What they probably don't realize is that the truly successful CEOs don't actually do that unless it's absolutely necessary and just assume they're doing the right thing by using buzzwords all the time. Whatever gets them promoted, I guess.
Favorite buzzword used 3 times in her email (Score:2)
Ballmer: "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
Nadella: "Synergies! Synergies! Synergies!"
I predict that these layoffs will not prevent (Score:3, Insightful)
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You can be pretty sure they're not going to lay off senior engineers, unless they're closing down certain offices and said engineers don't want to relocate, and its those they have issues finding. The junior mobile app devs and the HR people? Tough luck for them.
Just when you thought morale could not go lower (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Just when you thought morale could not go lower (Score:5, Informative)
Actually: http://tech.slashdot.org/story/13/11/12/2046214/microsoft-kills-stack-ranking [slashdot.org]
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Dead Sea effect looming? (Score:3)
same old, same old (Score:3)
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Wall Street is that free loader who somehow convinced you to let him into the house. Every time one of your family members dies, he celebrates because it means more food for him.
On a more serious note, the moment you compromise your mission statement as a company in order to make money a group of people who are using you as a racing horse, sometimes even betting against you, to make a betting number go up you've lost all sense of reality and its usually just a matter of time. If Microsoft was actually all a
Re:And in totally unrelated news.... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the thing.
We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months."
They are announcing layoffs that will not be implemented, in some cases for over 6 months in the future. That means, for over 6 months, Microsoft employees won't know for sure whether they will be laid off or kept. In management terms, that is going to result in dramatically lower morale and productivity for half a year for what? So that Microsoft can announce 5,000 more layoffs than they are actually capable of firing right now.
It really just shows how much more Microsoft cares about stock value than running a good company.
Re:And in totally unrelated news.... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's been true of most companies since the .com era.
Long term thinking is out the window in favor of short term increases to the stock, which increases the net worth of the CEO and makes them darlings of Wall Street.
That they might be actually harming the company long term is irrelevant.
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Re:And in totally unrelated news.... (Score:5, Insightful)
That means, for over 6 months, Microsoft employees won't know for sure whether they will be laid off or kept.
Which means the most talented and valuable employees will find new jobs before there are layoffs, and Microsoft will end up keeping the ones that couldn't find a job elsewhere.
How does this make Microsoft better?
Re:And in totally unrelated news.... (Score:5, Informative)
In some (many?) countries, sizable lay-offs have to be announced well in advanced by law - they may just be trying to accommodate for this.
Re:Freak out everyone for 6 months?! (Score:4, Interesting)
>the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months.
Really? With that one half of a sentence, you've just killed morale for 6+ months.
You're looking at it all wrong, from an employee mentality.
You need to look at it from a PHB mentality - telling people they *might* get fired in the next 6 months is incentive for them to work harder so that their job isn't the one that's cut (nevermind the fact that management decided who was to go a long, long time ago).
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Not exactly a surprise
http://www.theverge.com/2014/7... [theverge.com]
No way, MS kill a phone off after they just release it? They'd never do that, twice!!!!!
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The Wikipedia page says Nokia has 91 K employees. This layoff number seems mostly arbitrary. It is the typical management rack em up tactic of firing 10% of employees when the company is losing ground.
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Re:Surprised? More to come (Score:4, Informative)
Mergers & Acquisitions. It's a Wall Street Term of Art that describes the rape and murder of smaller companies by bigger ones.