Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattzito | Hacker News Reader

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It's actually an attempt to try to be smart about letting people go.

Sure, yes, they could come up with a master list and just pull the trigger today. But the odds of sweeping up a huge number of "false positives" grow considerably.

The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc.

When that happens, there will be a certain number of people who might have been underperforming that start to thrive, possibly because of having a better manager, or because they're more interested in their new group, etc. Other people who might have been coasting by and taking up space but getting decent reviews might suddenly be under a better manager and have no where to hide.

But basically, you can do layoffs, restructure, and then in 6 months time re-evaluate.

Typically, barring one-off events, they'll do several rounds here, a few months apart. Done properly, it won't be an every day worry, it'll be a concern 2-3 times over the next year.

That's plausible, but also plausible is that the drawn-out process causes the better performers to leave while they can.

It's easy to say from the outside that the layoffs will hit underperformers and people who are just coasting, but the fact is that layoffs of this scale inevitably involve politics. We're talking about an organization that had so much trouble getting the Office people on the same page as the Mobile people that they launched a make-or-break product (Surface) with a buggy beta version of its killer feature (Office). You think that organizational dysfunction won't extend to the restructuring process itself?

At least if you do them and get them done quickly, the people you want to keep know where they stand.

> That's plausible, but if I were at Microsoft I'd be sending out my resume right now.

No -- most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not. We're speaking about 5% of the original (pre-Nokia acquisition) workforce. You must know whether you're in the bottom 5%, or if your product is in the least critical 5%. Of course there are surprises and some good/productive guys will be laid off because of politics (as the process is not completely effective), but in general that's not the case.

I've seen similar things happening inside the financial industry around 2008. Many people left (sometimes much more than 5%), but we could usually guess who's going to be affected (with really high accuracy).

> most people who work at a big company know _exactly_ whether they're in danger or not

Sometimes. I used to work at RIM (BlackBerry) and they announced huge layoffs for August 2012. I knew at that time that my whole team was gone. The rest of the team just talked about how valuable they were and how no one could do the job we were doing. I think they honestly thought that. A lot of people have a tendency to over-value their work and roles.

> A lot of people have a tendency to over-value their work and roles.

I think most people are shitty at it on either side. You can be great at your work and role and still get the axe. Management doesn't often take that into consideration.

In companies and layoffs of this size, it's often not "people" being cut, just teams and divisions and products. In many cases it makes no difference at all who on a given team is and isn't good at their role.

When it's not whole teams, it's generally managers being told they're losing N reports but they can choose which N. Then, effectiveness at one's role is at least part of the equation.

Whether you think you are going to be fired or not, working in a company with that atmosphere is not pleasant. It may not be you, but it could well be those people you like to hang out with in the coffee room.

Generally a company making big layoffs is a sign of a sinking ship. If you are a hot programmer you aren't going to want to hang around waiting for doom. Much better to move to an expanding and thriving company.

People can become illogical when faced with emotional scenarios. "If I loose my job my family/friends will think that I'm a failure". I was at IBM during a similar situations and it was people that were in the top 40%-20% that were the most worried.

Weren't they more worried about not being able to support their family instead of their "image" in the eyes of their family?

Assuming their spouses' incomes wouldn't support their family, I would think so

> or if your product is in the least critical 5%

In the brave new world of "mobile first, cloud first" what's the least critical 5%? In a "mobile first, cloud first" world, somehow the newly-acquired mobile division is getting the brunt of the cuts.

I wouldn't necessarily say that you immediately know whether you're in danger or not. There's no clear statement on how exactly they will "restructure" the company within the next year, this makes it incredible hard to judge whether your department will still be important the next quarter.

I was a Zynga until last June, when the shut down their whole Shared Tech Group (basically the core Tech Support for all Teams / Server Management, Engine Development etc.) overnight, the whole group always had the feeling they would not be in danger because after all, pretty much everyone was dependent upon them. Until management thought otherwise, they announced "some cuts" at the Company Meeting, which was on Friday the next Monday we held the severance agreements in our hands and were instructed to leave the office.

You never really know what management is planning unless you know someone up their or are part of it.

Sure, from the outside it's often not difficult to pick out who's vulnerable and who isn't. However, lots of people really suck at self-assessment, and many don't handle these sort of stresses very well. I've seen this sort of thing 3 times now, and invariably a good portion of your top people immediately leave. It's really easy for them to find new jobs, so they do.

Yes, employees can tell when their project is not a high priority. I don't think they have any visibility to whether they are in the bottom 25% or the bottom 5% though. So that's a quarter of the work force feeling the threat of layoffs.

I think you overlooked his point, which is that corporate politicking inevitably means that it's not just the bottom 5% that will get laid off.

Also, I disagree with your assumption that it's easy to know if you're in the bottom 5% of performers. Of course you will have a general idea of where you stand, but in a company the size of Microsoft with considerable organization dysfunction I really doubt anybody can judge themselves with that sort of granularity.

Layoff decisions are not always so well made, especially in industries were metrics make it harder to tell who the under performers are.

It's even less true when you are talking about merger layoffs. Even if you are good, the Nokia guy might be better.

Seems like this looming threat/uncertainty might also cause people to leave of their own accord. I don't know if that's the strategy, but I could see it being a desirable alternative to actually laying people off.

The downside is that the second this kind of thing gets announced, the good people start to jump ship.

No the good people line up a new job and volunteer to take the redundancy package win win!

> The idea behind waiting is that along with these layoffs are a lot of restructuring work - teams get moved around, some people actually get promoted, newly manager-less teams are absorbed by another team, etc.

or people can get re-hired on as v- contractors or moved to other parts within the company. It's not like other MS employees haven't left and started their own firms using MS technologies.

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