Journal Journal: Another Rejected Story: Microsoft Layoffs
Well, yet another story I submitted got rejected by the
Here is the full story for everyone else...
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July 1, 2003
Microsoft plans largest lay-off of full-time employees in company history
WashTech News
By Jeff Nachtigal
When Eric Poore began working as a customer service representative for Microsofts technical call-routing center in 1997, he was told his advancement opportunities were endless.
Two years into his Microsoft career Poores hard work paid off with a promotion to Outlook Technical Router, where he managed technical questions about Microsofts email program. But less than a year later, the position was outsourced a handy euphemism for being sent to India or elsewhere to cut labor costs - and he was demoted back to his original customer service job.
Four years after Poore lost his first position to outsourcing, he is about to lose his six-year career because Microsoft is in the process of a massive relocation of Customer Central call center jobs to India and Canada.
Employees estimate that Microsoft is planning to eliminate at least 800 jobs in the next fiscal year at the company's Las Colinas facility outside of Dallas, Texas and shift the work offshore.
If this outsourcing goes as expected, it will be the largest one-time firing of full-time Microsoft employees - in the companys history.
Lori Moore, Vice President of Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS), visited the Las Colinas site in April for a company-wide meeting to talk about fiscal year 2004 plans. The message, according to Poore, was exceedingly clear.
It was an open forum and people were asking about Las Colinas expansion plans, but Moore was giving us the standard corporate bob-and-weave answers, clearly giving us the message that there were no plans for expansion or development of our site. She said that Microsoft would focus all of its efforts on India to position them for global expansion, Poore said.
The managers here are very clear - by the end of fiscal year 2004, our jobs will all be gone, Poore said.
There are over 1,300 Microsoft workers at the Las Colinas, Texas, Customer Central site, the first contact for help desk phone questions about Microsoft products, and according to Poore, hundreds of full-time Microsoft employees may be laid off as Microsoft moves their positions offshore to India and Nova Scotia, Canada.
In addition, Poore has heard from Las Colinas managers that many more jobs will be outsourced from Microsoft call centers located in Charlotte, NC, and Issaquah, WA.
Managers in Las Colinas have been telling employees for months that they should start looking for work because their jobs are going to India. Poore expects to lose his job soon.
Microsoft has stated on many occasions that they will not lay off U.S. workers and send the jobs offshore. In response to questions about Microsoft offshoring jobs, company spokesperson Stacy Drake told the San Jose Mercury News in January, We are not replacing U.S. jobs or laying off workers.
(http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/business/5029306.htm)
Drake also said that Microsoft would be adding 4,000 new positions in the United States this year and 1,000 positions overseas.
Writing on the wall in Las Colinas
Emerging details in Las Colinas appear to contradict Microsofts statements about not outsourcing U.S. high-tech jobs. Internal Microsoft emails have extolled a new call center in Hyderabad, India, and the steady attrition of Las Colinas workers whose positions go unfilled have caused many employees to wonder how safe their jobs really are.
An email from Microsoft manager Aiden Wayne entitled Systems India Plans, dated May 5, circulated among Las Colinas employees, causing the rumor mill to churn over the past few months.
Wayne wrote, I want to alleviate concerns about Redmond, Dublin and Singapore job impact specific to our group. To date we have grown our Hyderabad group by transplanting a small number of open employee positions and focusing on migration of vendor dev, test, and support, roles.
The FY04 emphasize (sic) will be on global productivity and quality improvements; our Hyderabad team will continue to grow, though at a slower pace than FY 03.
An article in the December 2002 issue of an internal Microsoft Web publication called Interface, titled "Our expanding relationship with vendors in India," leads with a story about the increasing reliance on Indian workers:
"This exploding growth, combined with the emergence of dependable, high-quality vendors in India and some significant cost advantages, has led Microsoft to rapidly expand its outsourcing program in India. Several hundred vendor employees in India are already working on projects for various Microsoft product teams, a number that is doubling every year."
If Microsoft has in fact doubled their business with Indian vendors for the last four years, it raises the question of whether new Microsoft jobs are being created in India, or whether U.S. jobs are being offshored to India to save on labor costs.
Another Interface article titled Outsourcing 101: Planning, Selection, Negotiation and Best Practices offers Microsoft managers a robust set of resources, including an internal legal team and workforce consultants, that cover all the facets outsourcing presumably to make it as easy as possible to offshore jobs.
And of course there is the now-infamous line uttered by the Senior Vice President of the Windows Division, Brian Valentine, in a presentation to company managers in which he said: Pick a project to outsource today.
Valentine said that Microsoft could get the same work at roughly half the price by shipping jobs to India, which clearly the company has decided will be its course of action with its call centers.
Valentine has since said that Microsoft outsources work as a way of staying competitive in the global market which certainly may be true, but at a high cost to U.S. high-tech workers who find themselves out of work in a tough economy.
Its not secret in Las Colinas that Microsoft is tapping India for well-educated software developers and is opening offices there. But workers in Las Colinas and at other Microsoft sites worry that big expansion plans will equate to their jobs heading overseas. Many employees will not speak out about the possibility of their jobs being offshored for fear of reprisal; however, a few have spoken out about the situation.
Corey Goode, a vendor Internal Support Technician in Las Colinas, said he inquired about his job security and received a not-so-cryptic response from his manager: I feel safe, but if youre in the tech field, you might think about moving to India.
Incontrovertible evidence of Microsofts outsourcing came to light for Goode when he participated in a regular weekly conference call with supervisors at Microsofts headquarters in Redmond, WA. Lisa Chiang, a Microsoft Service Readiness Manager, let slip comments about the scheduled closures of facilities in North Carolina and Texas and the training of call-center workers in India. The cat was out of the bag for Goode, and his manager knew it.
Goodes manager told him: Six weeks from now your position will be ending because all the call-routing operations in Texas and North Carolina will be handled in India.
Goode knew that the first firings in Las Colinas would be the vendors, and he was correct. He, along with all the other contract employees in Las Colinas, was laid off June 27.
Goode, like many high-tech workers, has struggled to reconcile the steady offshoring of U.S. high-tech jobs.
I am dumbfounded to find out that our largest and most profitable corporations are offshoring the jobs that fueled the middle class through the boom of the '90s. Now is not the time for our corporations to sell us out again. After the corporate corruption that has dominated the news for the last few years, is this the next embarrassing spotlight on American business ethics?
Shortly before he was laid off, Goode received an ironic send off that encapsulates Microsofts attitude towards employees soon to lose their jobs to offshoring.
Upon recently passing a key performance audit, Microsofts Texas and North Carolina Customer Central call-center workers were sent a congratulatory email from manager Lisa Chaing:
YOU did it!! Thanks to everyone for your dedication to making this happen. I know that there were some pain points along the way, but it is really awesome for us to accomplish this the first time. Im so proud of us, Chiang wrote.
Goode wasnt impressed.
In spite of this great performance audit, they are still laying off people to send their jobs to India. Go figure, Goode wrote, amazed at Microsofts gall to congratulate their employees while at the same time making plans to dump them.
Frustration and dismay
During a recent speech in Seattle, Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said there is a shortage of skilled labor in the hiring market, as Microsoft tries to fill 2,000 local openings.
With 2000 open positions, it would stand to reason that Microsoft would consider its hiring own employees first. But that hasnt happened in Las Colinas, where frustration over possible unemployment has the rumor-mill running overtime. In the Dallas area, the unemployment rate currently stands at 6.6%, a fact of which high-tech workers are all too aware.
One little-known point is the domino effect on communities when high-tech layoffs occur. It has been estimated that for every one high-tech job lost, three other local ancillary jobs also go. Multiple four unemployed workers by a few hundred projected Las Colinas positions, and the numbers start affecting the well-being of the surrounding communities.
Microsofts plan appears to be to lay off employees in small groups over an extended period of time by the end of the fiscal year 2004, according to Waynes email which puts everyone on a hot seat wondering if they will be next to go.
After six years of outstanding performance reviews and a concerted effort to increase his technical skills by obtaining several Microsoft certifications in MCSE and MCSA for Windows 2000, Poore feels betrayed by Microsoft.
So here I am, 6-plus years at Microsoft and no future. My questioning of Microsoft's ethics and values obviously came with a price. My biggest problem is I just can't quit; I have a wife and a four-year old daughter. So I continue to work my ass off and keep my performance above average to prevent Microsoft with any reason to fire me. It's inevitable that my group is going to get outsourced so I've decided to grin and bear it until the end, Poore said, aware that his words might hasten his inevitable lay off.
Another full-time employee, who wished to remain anonymous, expressed her frustration at the situation in Las Colinas.
Now we are faced with being laid off due to the migration of tech workers to India. My greatest concern about being laid off is that management will start looking for any reason to fire us so that they won't have to give us severance packages. Were all paranoid as hell now, and thats no way to live a life! she said.
This is just about all everyone is talking about and the mood is pretty grim. Our motivation now is to not do anything at all to get fired. And yes, we all are afraid that MS will nitpick people to fire so that there won't be as many severance packages they have to give out.
But even the cushion of a severance package may not go with these exiting employees.
With yearly evaluations for blue badges (full-time employees) coming up at the end of June, many full-time employees will be getting some surprising feedback on their reviews, Goode said.
I was told by my manager, Goode said, that a lot of these people are going to be released, on quote, performance issues so they (Microsoft) dont have to pay severance. Microsoft is going to start releasing people a little at a time. She said by the end of this fiscal year, they were going to release a good amount. By the end of the next fiscal year they would have it complete.
Goode and Poore are resigned to their jobs being outsourced Goodes last day was Friday, June 27, and Poore believes that his pink slip isnt far behind.
Goode has started a Web site to publicize Microsofts outsourcing (www.goodetech.com) and organize laid-off workers.
For many Microsoft Customer Central employees, the companys offshoring tactics have dashed the promises of bright futures within Microsoft.
Goode and Poore wonder, along with the majority of U.S. high-tech workers, wonder why a company with more than $46 billion in the bank would decide dump its own dedicated, highly motivated full-time employees in favor of training brand new workers in another country.
"Short-sighted corporate policy focused on saving a few bucks in the short run will have an enormous deleterious impact on the entire U.S. economy if not checked soon," warned Paul Almeida, the AFL-CIO Department of Professional Employees President at a House panel on June 18.
One employee is all too aware of that fact.
Sheesh! It'd be easier to change careers! Maybe I'll find a receptionist job or just go back to waiting tables. They can't outsource waiters to India, now can they?
