Microsoft is trying to acquire Activision Blizzard (UPDATE: CMA says NO!).

[footle]

51 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

i don’t know many shareholders that don’t say maximise profits please. 
 

I’m sure we could find a a couple of examples out of the tens of thousands of companies out there but I think the maximise profits point probs my stands well enough right?  
 

 

The whole of the FAANGs for the first fifteen years of their existence.

Disney, prioritising growing their streaming business over profits *today*.

etc.

[scoobysi]

42 minutes ago, RubberJohnny said:

 

They can explain it! These companies were projected, in the pandemic, for a lot of rapid growth - they have to grow and recruit rapidly for this, like hiring 50,000 people in a year. The pandemic growth turned out not to be a permanent shift in habits, but temporary and returned to how it was before, projections for the future market size are now much lower, these companies now have 50,000 more employees than they need for the amount of work they'll have in future, and a possible recession which means that market will shrink further in the short term, making this even worse. All of these companies have had hiring freezes for the first year, attempting to get down to the right size just through general churn of staff and retirements, but that wasn't enough, which is why they're announcing layoffs.

 

Like some people are taking issue with me suggesting some sort of hidden agenda, but all of this is simple stuff, I can't believe you genuinely can't figure this out. We could run you through a simple example of how if a company has 10 staff to deal with a market size of X and then 100 staff to deal with a market size of 10X, then having 100 staff to deal with X is clearly too many, and so on, but we're genuinely in "this one is small, those are far away" territory at that point.

Oh man, if only someone had mentioned fixed term contracts to them.

[rafaqat]

40 minutes ago, footle said:

 

The whole of the FAANGs for the first fifteen years of their existence.

Disney, prioritising growing their streaming business over profits *today*.

etc.

sorry.  I know this sounds like shifting the goalposts. When I talk about profits I mean for the shareholders. Shareholders will generally always want companies to do whatever it takes to make money for THEM.  

 

anyhoo.  Probably a separate discussion on the whole shitfest that capitalism is in the modern world. 

[rafaqat]

22 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

Oh man, if only someone had mentioned fixed term contracts to them.

I can’t imagine that would have been a particularly competitive offer in the job market that existed back then.  My experience is IT and companies were throwing money and any other perk at prospective employees.  Not many were taking up fixed term contracts.  That’s all melted away now.  Feels like a completely different landscape with inflation heading up and everyone convinced that recession is coming for the next 2 years. 

[Gabe]

44 minutes ago, scoobysi said:

Oh man, if only someone had mentioned fixed term contracts to them.

What do you mean? The whole point is that a lot of companies thought - and hired - on the basis of the pandemic would lead to a whole shift (not just MS or tech, but places like Amazon too and companies that built warehousing etc) and that has not come to pass to the extent believed, meaning they are now overstaffed.

 

Why would you offer short-term contracts if you thought the change was for the long-term? 

 

Not withstanding the above, the timing of the announcements from MS is horrendous and they deserve all the flack they are getting for it. 

[scoobysi]

5 minutes ago, Gabe said:

Why would you offer short-term contracts if you thought the change was for the long-term? 

Because during a pandemic you would hedge, until you see how it pans out.

[MidWalian]

343 hit hard by job losses, some others from Coalition and Bethesda but no idea of the scale there. 

 

AltSpaceVR, MRTK stuff sounds like it has been scrapped. HoloLens also having losses because they are having issues with contracts and the US military.

 

[rafaqat]

1 hour ago, scoobysi said:

Because during a pandemic you would hedge, until you see how it pans out.

what if you couldn’t hedge because no one wanted a short term contract because the jobs market was booming and employees could pick and choose what they wanted when they wanted? I say what if but that’s pretty much what happened. 
 

 

[scoobysi]

16 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

what if you couldn’t hedge because no one wanted a short term contract because the jobs market was booming and employees could pick and choose what they wanted when they wanted? I say what if but that’s pretty much what happened. 

My experience of a booming IT job market is more people contract because the rates go up and the fear of being without work goes down. 

[RubberJohnny]

Having spoke to people in tech in the US, that's not really how their local market works, it's much more important to get a salaried position because of healthcare (especially in a pandemic!), and you can get insane salaries up to $200k, the whole "go self-employed to get better money" is pretty UK specific.

[Peter St John]

FAANG level is often even higher than that - you can be at $200k a few years out of uni (even in terms of bare salary - once you factor in stock options it gets mind-boggling for some). It's been interesting to see that the Google layoffs seem to have been hitting people with salaries over $500k, perhaps more so than your basic stack-ranking-based layoff might do.

 

There is something of a "go into consultancy to make more than non-FAANG tech jobs" attitude that I've seen over years of living here, but definitely nothing on the scale of, say, how much of the UK IT industry knows the ins and outs of IR35.

[mikeyl]

This thread

 

 

[Stanley]

What three words? 

[Unofficial Who]

1 minute ago, Stanley said:

What three words? 

 

Value for shareholders.

[Unofficial Who]

Seriously though it's this.

 

https://www.inc-aus.com/jason-aten/with-3-words-microsofts-ceo-showed-that-you-can-lay-off-10000-people-with-empathy.html

 

Quote

We know this is a challenging time for each person impacted. The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible.

 

Edit To be fair they are walking the walk in a way twitter is failing to.

 

Quote

What does that mean in practice? Microsoft says it will provide employees with “above-market severance pay, continuing health care coverage for six months, and continued vesting of stock awards for six months.” Contrast that with the fact that Twitter employees are still waiting for the severance they were promised when the company announced layoffs without any notice at all.

 

Edited January 23 by Unofficial Who

[Stanley]

3 minutes ago, Unofficial Who said:

 

Value for shareholders.

That’s what I was thinking 

[Benny]

Thoughtful: we thought about it, and we decided to fire you.

 

Transparent: we decided to publicly fire you.

[scoobysi]

Timing Is Everything 

[layten]

2 hours ago, Stanley said:

What three words? 

Clear your desk.

[Stanley]

3-4-3 aaaye 

 

[Haribokart]

3 hours ago, mikeyl said:

 

For anybody else wondering, I just checked as I couldn't quite believe it and yes this bullshit is real.

[Stanley]

Sycophantic bullshit, no idea who the guy who wrote that piece is, but his nickname should be ‘ankles’ he’s so far up Satya Nadella‘s arse, cringeworthy. 

[rgraves]

Yes it sucks that they are laying people off, OF COURSE IT DOES, but let's not make out it's not something that happens all of the time across multiple industries. The best we can hope for is that when it does happen stuff like the below is true:

 

Quote

Microsoft says it will provide employees with “above-market severance pay, continuing health care coverage for six months, and continued vesting of stock awards for six months.” 

 

I bet you there are well over 10,000 people that have been let go over the past few months that would look at that and wish they'd had the same treatment.

 

Again, for clarity, I'm not saying it's nice to see this stuff - but I am kind of saying it's not the first time we've seen it, it won't be the last time we see it - all we can do is hope that everyone involved is treated with a bit of care and respect - and the above quote, if true, goes some way towards that IMO. Google apparently had people turning up, scanning their badge and being turned away at the door - that's just not needed at all IMO.

[mikeyl]

42 minutes ago, rgraves said:

Google apparently had people turning up, scanning their badge and being turned away at the door - that's just not needed at all IMO.

What they should've done, is to do the sackings with empathy

[rgraves]

11 minutes ago, mikeyl said:

What they should've done, is to do the sackings with empathy

 

Nobody likes letting people go - it's a horrible situation for virtually everyone involved (especially managers who have to deliver the news they most likely had very little input on and maybe even don't agree with). But, it is part and parcel of corporate life - big companies let large groups of people go all the time. Doing it the right way (initially communicating directly and privately with those involved, providing good severage, helping to support efforts to find new roles, only going public when those involved already have the info etc) is far better than just saying "we're making 5k people redundent today, turn up at the door to find out if it's you".

[rafaqat]

59 minutes ago, rgraves said:

 

Nobody likes letting people go - it's a horrible situation for virtually everyone involved (especially managers who have to deliver the news they most likely had very little input on and maybe even don't agree with). But, it is part and parcel of corporate life - big companies let large groups of people go all the time. Doing it the right way (initially communicating directly and privately with those involved, providing good severage, helping to support efforts to find new roles, only going public when those involved already have the info etc) is far better than just saying "we're making 5k people redundent today, turn up at the door to find out if it's you".

 

Take your logic and GTFO.  We're here to be outraged.

 

 

[mikeyl]

If I was Mr Business Man, I’d rather just pick 10,000 people randomly out of a hat.

[Giddas]

40 minutes ago, rafaqat said:

 

Take your logic and GTFO.  We're here to be outraged.

 

 

 

Not everyone tbh, people without a Playstation are pretty cool with it

[scoobysi]

2 minutes ago, Giddas said:

 

Not everyone tbh, people without a Playstation are pretty cool with it

 

Never change rllmuk.

[MidWalian]