Microsoft announces 5,000 job losses
 

I shouldn't gloat, but given the nature of this corporation and what they have done for computer users, it's only natural. Hopefull the whole damn thing will soon go belly-up. Power to the Penguin People!:)

Yeah, you probably shouldn't. 5,000 people just lost their jobs, and the means they have to support their families.

And while Microsoft is not a company to be liked, they did drive PC's into alot of places where they weren't before, which allowed the 'penguin people' to flourish.

Often middle management make these decisions and fire the best people. This happened to a friend of mine in Minneapolis. There were new owners and they wanted cutbacks. Many of the middle management positions were the ones that should have been cut. The company went into a downhill spiral after that and went out of business.

No, really it's not natural. If ruining peoples livelihood en mass is what it takes for Linux to win, I'd rather see it lose. 5,000 good paying jobs in the computer industry gone sickens me no matter what company disposed of them.

My father has been laid off for a year. I despise Microsoft but more unemployment is not what I had in mind.

I'm also sorry to see so many people being put out of work. I didn't see anything in the news article about severance packages. The company I work for (I'm a consultant so this doesn't apply to me), called a meeting last week and informed everyone that they have no immediate plans for layoffs, but if they do they will give 30 days termination notice plus 30 days pay after termination. They will also assist outgoing employees in a job search.

It really shouldn't be a surprise that Microsoft is feeling the pinch. This economic downturn is hitting them on top of the disappointing sales performance of Vista, which they had practically bet the company on.

MS has very deep pockets. I think it will survive, just like IBM did when faced with a similar situation in the '80s. They may lose some of their dominance, just like IBM did. If anything, that will spark another flurry of competitive technology advancement, and there will probably be some new kids on the block.

No, there are no grounds for gloating here. MS, for good or ill, is only doing what the rest of the industry is doing.

Mind you, you could hope that with fewer programmers they no longer have the headcount to write quite so many bugs, but I think that's probably a vain hope.

This is just the beginning. We are still waaay up front on this whole economic meltdown thing.

Just hope, while you're not gloating, that it isn't you next.

It should be in "General" it think, not in "Linux-General".

It's been moved now

It certainly will NOT be me next. If I had to depend on my computing skills to earn a crust I'd have starved to death years ago! However, I do hope some good will come of this. I have in mind perhaps if at least one of these people who have been laid-off have a copy of the source code and feel embittered enough to post it online....

Am curious, if you worked for Microsoft and you were laid off( cuz seriuosly am thinking you wouldnt turn down a job that paid say handsomely) would you be gloating that "Yipee ive been laid off and am so damn jobless. Take that Bill Gates"?

I dont think so. This is beyond what Microsoft has done and though i personally dont like them one bit, i think these people will go through the same problems and hardships that anyone who was laid off HP/UNIX or Solaris would go through.

What would that accomplish? Still 5k people out of work and microsoft still would have a crappy os. Source code "out there" doesn't mean anything without the license to use it as far as the real world goes.

I wasn't talking about computing jobs, I was talking about jobs. The US economic meltdown is going to cost lots and lots and lots of jobs. Not merely in the US, but around the world.

That ball is just getting rolling. Wait a year, and when you look back you'll be talking about how good things were at the beginning of the year.

Unfortunately, I think you're on the mark there.