“Microsoft said Thursday that it planned to eliminate up to 18,000 jobs over the next year in a shake-up intended to help the company move more quickly in the market,” Nick Wingfield reports for The New York Times. “The cuts are the largest in the company’s 39-year history, representing about 14 percent of its work force.”
“Microsoft will make the deepest cuts from the businesses it acquired from the Finnish phone maker Nokia. About 12,500 of the jobs being eliminated will come from the Nokia groups,” Wingfield reports. “That is about half the number of employees who joined Microsoft from Nokia a few months ago when it completed its acquisition of the company’s mobile business. In related news, Microsoft said it would no longer make Nokia phones based on the Android operating system, switching its low-end phones to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.”
“Microsoft said it would take a charge of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion to cover severance and related costs from the layoffs over the next year,” Wingfield reports. “Previously, the largest layoffs at the company were in 2009, when about 5,800 people were affected.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Karmic.
Vested interests are going to change. And, I think we’ve embarked on that change… We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable. – Steve Jobs, June 1, 2010
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. – Steve Jobs, June 12, 2005
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “chinstrap” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Beleaguered Microsoft CEO lays groundwork for mass layoffs, yet another rearrangement of the deck chairs – July 11, 2014
Beleaguered Microsoft’s Windows Phone: Dead as a doornail – July 9, 2014
Apple is well on its way to devastating Microsoft – July 7, 2014
It terrible that 18k people will lose their jobs, but for us Mac designers/IT guys…
Suck it Microsoft!
Think long term. This will put 18,000 people into the job market where they will end up doing something more productive for the economy.
Keep in mind that 2/3 of those lost jobs are coming from Nokia.
I thought it was talking about the Axe body stuff, that maybe the employees weren’t being good about their hygiene.
Especially after seeing some of Balmer’s shirt stains.
MDN’s Take sounds wistful…sentimental…hopeful for
Microsoft. No harshness detected. Almost sadness. Sympathy.
Death? Please. Call me when Microsoft’s share of the PC market drops below 80%, or when they cease to be the #1 enterprise software company, or when they stop being the #3 (and gaining) cloud company.
Microsoft has 130,000 employees, people. Going down to “only” 100,000 means what? Still being one of the biggest and most successful software companies in the world.
Microsoft could solve their problems tomorrow by:
A) finding a good Linux distro and commercializing it for desktop, tablet and phone (in other words steal Canonical’s idea)
B) using their vast army of programmers to create apps for their own app store
Of course, they could have/should have done both 4 years ago. They still can, any day now …
Yeah. M$ should also find an OpenOffice/LibreOffice distro and make it their own. So the solution to their problems is killing the cash cow.
Similar words were said about Kodak, Xerox, etc. Get a clue!
Down to 80 percent? I remember when they had 98 percent in everything. Wow! It will be sad when tablets replace all those XP related hardware. Whom ever gets the old XP hardware replacement to tablets will drop Microsoft below 50 percent.
Don’t understand the negative feedback. MS should have moved to Unix or Linux years ago and discarded their spaghetti code.
If I recall correctly (I’ve been Linux-free for 6 years), part of the Linux license requires that it be distributed for free, which would be yet another nail in their WIndows coffin.
And besides, people have been harping about “Linux on the desktop” for nearly 20 years. I’ve yet to see anything that could even *remotely* be considered “ready for the masses.”
Ubuntu is the closest I’ve seen, and even as an IT professional myself, I still found it a pain in the rear. Want to install an app? Better be versed in navigating RPM hell, tracking down missing libraries, etc, etc. Yes, Ubuntu made those tasks *less* common and needed, but they still weren’t avoidable.
Note: I was last using Ubuntu 2010, so this may be slightly out of date. Still, I hardly see Microsoft as a company who will bring user-friendliness to a Linux distro. 😀
In 2012 WinTel were down to owning 35% of the OS landscape, from 97% in 2005. Apple has been the only constant in the graph:
I feel sorry for newly joined ex Nokia employees and anyone that has a Nokia Android phone.
I have some sympathy for the the Nokia folks, but when you feel the ship sinking, don’t you as an individual have some responsibility to abandon ship?
They were ‘rescued’ by the Microsoft Behemoth, only to have THAT ship start to sink.
You can blame MS to a degree. But Nokia was in for a world of hurt regardless.
Nothing motivates employees more and makes them strive to create innovative products then to see 14% of the co-workers given the pink slip.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Unfortunately, it motivates people to leave or to do nothing that would make them stand out.
MS is doomed.
For sure it strains and chases the most talented employees.
This news comes 5 days after Nadella’s 3100 word essay essentially saying, ‘People are about to get fired, so we can increase productivity’, and 2 days after the Apple-IBM announcement.
Interesting…
Microshaft can’t move that fast. All of Microshafts moves here have been in the works for likely 60 days for an enterprise the size MS.
I feel sorry for the workers specially the 12,500 who didn’t even choose to work for M$.
Some may argue that they were going to be fired anyway as Nokia wasn’t doing very well before being purchased by M$.
What about the remaining 5,500? that number is only 300 short of the 5,800 who were fired in 2009.
In conclusion: Nuttella’s performance is almost as good as Ballmer’s
and now we know what “mobile first” means: first to go…
Blamer quit because this was the future. Instead of buying the LA Clippers he should use that 2 billion to give each of the 18K employees a severance of $111,111.00. Interesting math..
You left off the cents part…he’d be keeping $2000 for himself.
What sucks is the stock goes up when layoffs are announced. I saw a headline today that Wall Street doesn’t like Main Streets prosperity. Something is out if whack!
It sucks to be Finnish! I feel really bad for those folks, and for the other layoffs as well. I’ve known many hard working Microsoft employees that really believe in the work they do. I’ve also known some that are more interested in bureaucracy and fiefdoms than working as a team. Good luck to those that leave, and to those that stay. I may have zero interest in buying Microsoft products, but that doesn’t mean I want people to suffer.
There are a number of fundamental Islamists who work really hard and believe in what they do, too. But effort and conviction earn no sympathy from me for those who make it their mission to make the world a shitty place.
Nokia made the worst decision ever linking its business with Micro$loth
Whatever became of ZuneTang?
the 18000 are only the first to go, not the last.
not sure if that provides comfort….
Microsoft, the sunset industry.
Why is MDN so transfixed on the word beleaguered? Did anyone think that MSFT would keep all the Nokia employees? Remember MDN, Apple set the tone for how to run a company to the brink! MSFT is just fine and will be very happy streamlining their costs as a means to remain competitive.
Because back in the 90s world + dog referred to Apple as ‘beleaguered’ and expected them to disappear in a giant ball of flames at any moment. Back then, it was inconceivable that the tables would have turned as they have. Make no mistake, Microsoft were an arrogant, ruthless, and ethically dubious company, and now getting their just desserts.
Google and Samsung, the Microsofts of our current era.
Yet look at how the market is reacting … Msft up huge
Apple down…even with this huge IBM news !
It is absurd !!!
Seriously, you all need to read the memo that Elop sent to the workforce; it’s like the worst ‘Dear John’ letter in the history of commerce.
http://nym.ag/1rkHaDl
Damn. And I was hoping Microsoft would spend Spend SPEND themselves to death.
Mortification deferred.