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.

That whole stuff is really repulsive - MS makes a couple billion profit -> fires 5000,IBM posts profits that far exceed expectations -> fires 16.000 or so...

Of course its all the fault of the economy - making billions in profits and all...

If the carmakers,AMD,Intel and companies in their position fire people it does make sense.This doesn't.

I heard that Microsoft pays part of salary using its' shares/stocks. I don't know if it is true (or if it was true), but if it is, then fired ex-employees still can get benefit from profit microsoft makes.

With respect, I think you misunderstand what I was trying to say. The "computer community" would be able to analyse it (the source) for all the back-doors that are claimed to be written into it.

Agreed, but what the rest of us face (outside of the US) isn't simply a consequence of the "US economic meltdown" - our countries are equally culpable for their own macroeconomic mismanagement. I'm thinking Iceland, Ireland, Spain, Germany and the UK in particular. But there are plenty more who also danced to the bankers' tune and allowed things to spiral out of control whereas stricter regulation WOULD HAVE prevented this God-awful mess from ever arising in the first place. We're in for a bitter and bleak few years ahead even if this downward trend were corrected tomorrow.

Well common people know it for a long time now.
It does not matter if it is a household , company , country ,you can not spend more than you earn.
If you do on a bad day it meltdown.
The economics seems to be build on one factor believe

Yes, it's all phony. Paper currencies ("fiat money" which is based literally on faith) are becoming increasingly worthless. If you don't believe we're heading towards disaster, check out the movements in the gold price recently!

What I believe is true is that Microsoft doesn't pay 'class-leading' salaries, but, if you take into account a profit on stock options, it can still be attractive to sign up for Microsoft's pieces of silver.

That is, of course, if there are profits on stock options, which there won't be if the stock tanks. And, perhaps more relevantly, there won't be for anyone who gets shown the door before their stock options become valid.

Damn ... This is horrible news ... This recession thing better move by quick ... It's getting on everybody's nerves!!!
:(

Linux Archive

Well I can still remember the days that the money of a country is covered
by a gold bar in the central bank
The amount of the paper money and coins many not be more than a certain percentage of the gold bar keep in stock

intel, sun, western digital, ibm, amd, xerox, HP, and many other big names have laid off workers in the past month. but don't worry, obama will save us by destroying the currency.

Central banks probably don't have any gold left in their vaults, it's all out on lease and they're never going to get it back.

There are also credible rumours circulating that the US government have been stalling on the issue of an audit of the gold stocks in Fort Knox. I wonder just how much has been spirited away into thin air since the last one....

That wouldn't be such a good idea these days - even bach when there was trouble.

Read something about a couple of guys that almost managed to corner the silver market back when I was young and that would give you an instant meltdown if your currency was based on it.

With todays 'financial instruments' (what a f**** joke phrase) people woud be able to corner any raw material market if there was an incentive large enough to offset the cost - like plunging the $ for example and cash in on bets there.

Maybe not , but what is backbone of the currency in this days FAITH ?
Well if the FAITH is gone the backbone is gone

You do realize that "big companies" can license source for most microsoft products right? Microsoft does enough publicly and openly without needing to find conspiracy theories.

That would be called "the gold standard", we're not on it, and I don't think many first world countries are.

True enough. The link was severed as it was felt that being tied to gold was and impediment to growth. That's quite correct, however the trouble is it was also an impediment to RUNAWAY growth and consequent BUST. I wonder how long it'll be before we're required to surrender up to the government all our gold jewellery and fillings so they start the whole scam-cycle over again.

It's basically based on BS - the problem now is that people start to recognize the smell....

Think about it: You got stocks that are trading for 100's of $$ with a nominal value of 5 $ and at the same time the company (that has a market capitalisation of a couple of billion) makes like 10 cent profit per share.
Of course people buy into those papers because they assume they are going to rise in value not because of the profit a company makes.

If the company needs money for a merger or whatever the have 5$ nominal shares printed at 5 cents a piece and trade them for 100$ - yes something might be wrong twith this picture.

The papers that did cause the shit to hit the fan don't behave fundamentally different -> people sell loans -> trade them above reasonable value -> suckers buy them -> money that never really existed (because there is no collateral)seizes to exist in fantasy world,too.

US dollar isn't supported by gold at least since 1971, (although moving away from gold standard started much earlier, approximately in 1933). It is called "Fiat Currency".
All this is explained here.

Yet they sure have an interest in manipulating the price of gold down.

Yes, the US government was quite recently (some time last year) operating covertly through a proxy (think it was JP Morgan but I can't be sure) to manipulate the price of gold artificially lower in an attempt to forestall inflationary expectations. Judging by the very recent jump in gold prices, however, it appears they may well have since given up!

So jiml8 you are saying that we are on the verge of a Great Depression?

Either way, the day I hear on the news "M$ has finally gone belly up today, the former software giant has been in a heap of trouble for the past few years, with the 3 failed attempts to produce something other than an impotent, DRM-filled, POS OS (put in politically correct terms), its life flashed before its eyes, and the great undead demon fell with a loud "thud". Its carcass then disintegrated, a sign that it was living on borrowed time and should have passed away decades ago." I will open a bottle of champagne.

As for the fate of the staff and devs that M$ fired, it doesn't concern me too much. They are responsible for Vi$ta, now they pay the price. Besides, if they really were good at something, they should be able to get a job at Red Hat, which has been doing quite well.

Amen, brother! <cue Gospel music> Testify.. oh yeah Lord, testify....!

Redhat indeed isn't doing as bad as most other IT companies, but honestly, with ~$20M/quarter in profits the company is microscopic compared to everyone else-- it's an anomaly. And many of the other companies involved in linux/open-source (sun, IBM) are doing terribly.

Right, so it's not managements fault - the Vista OS was completely developed, managed by the coders. They all sat around the table and decided what features to put in, time scales of the development cycle and how they were going to implement it. Understood.

I assume you work or have worked in a large company before, so i would of thought you would of realised that decisions in said companys come from the top in a "do as i say" attitude and not from the bottom. With only (i can recall) Google being different in this case.

And still not understanding the hate for Windows OS's here (yes it's a Linux forum), but i figured the "mines better than yours" attitude was reserved for school children. It's an OS, it's lines of code, it's a free market you can choose what OS you want to use, no one is forcing anyone to use Windows. If your job requires it - find another job.

Amazing that some people here believe that people's and their families lively hoods are less important than some lines of code.

Funny that came up - the market capitalisation of redhat is getting close to sun.It's not microscopic at all in that point.

Of course something is bound to crash there soon if the profits don't get in line.....

Open source bubble burst - cool.

I agree with every word you said stevemassey. A little tip though: some users like H_TeXMeX_H are just trolling. If you search his posts, he is basically searching for anything related to Java, Microsoft and Ubuntu just to start a little "it sucks". No arguments or anything valid comes from him.

I don't particularly have a problem with Windows (in fact, I like it) and you will not believe how many times I've got flamed for saying that. Do yourself a favor and learn one of the most important features in this forum - the ignore list, and start by adding trolls to it right away ;)

Well, some people stay children forever ;) (generally speaking, not directing it at anyone here now...)

Windows has its place, as Linux has too, I don't think anyone will argue that.
If it weren't for MS, we would probably still be some years back regarding computers in every house and for every family.

In one way you could say that even also promoted the use of Open Source.
If the computers weren't wide spread as they are now, there'd be way less
FOSS out there.

In the end they're coders, just like many of us.
I.e. our fate can sooner or later be quite similar to theirs.

Too bad, because it is very easy to understand.
Keeping aside DRM, hardware requirements, and all other stuff that was discussed many times.
Windows is inferior product (if you disagree with that statement this is not my problem), when compared to opensource *nix-like system (like linux). Yet it is widely used. People who use better OS do not understand why windows is being used. Having to deal with windows instead of your favorite OS will make you dislike windows. Because most likely you will have to deal with windows OS frequently, and because you will meet a lot of people that won't understand why you aren't using windows, and because you'll have a lot of troubles with, for example, ISP's that supports only windows, sites that support internet explorer only, devices that have windows-only drivers (because manufacturer decided it this way), and many similarly annoying problems, eventually you will begin to hate windows. It is quite easy to understand.


Most people don't care about people they never met or never heard about.
In short - feeding family of a bad coder is a problem of a bad coder, not mine. If he got fired - that is his problem and probably his fault. That's how life works.

Well, maybe, but I heard M$ is not all that mechanistic ... or as much as they say.

As for people, well an incorrect philosophy can do much more damage than a few laid-off workers. M$ sucks up money like a sponge and almost all of it goes into Gates' and Ballmer's pockets. Yeah, sure, they give to charities ... to lower their taxes, and they tend give computer with Window$ on them. Imagine if all that money were used for better purposes ... with M$ having more money than all of Eastern Europe they could probably end the recession today.

I read this post, and lots of good points. There is a poll on Microsoft here in General too:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...nd-oss-700708/

That's aload of rubbish. The hardware requirements are actually a good thing. I know, people like to continue to use their 486 CPU's and 64MB's of RAM, but in the real world, having a new product which pushes the hardware manufacturers to deploy better hardware in a more massive scale, drives down costs for said hardware and hence makes it more cheaper to purchase.

(If every OS released required the exact same hardware requirements, would we have the same advances in Tech we do today? Open question).

Yes the "Can run Vista" adverts was a load of rubbish, and a load of lies, but that's the marketing side of the company and is now getting them into trouble.

"ISP's that supports only windows" - ISP's fault and being lazy. (And i would like to know which ISP's only support the Windows TCP/IP stack.... or are we just talking about the "install" CD which is nothing other than a "nice" way of helping none IT knowledgable people?

"sites that support internet explorer only" - Sites fault and being lazy.

"devices that have windows-only drivers (because manufacturer decided it this way)" - You said it - it's the manufacturers fault and being lazy.

"eventually you will begin to hate windows. It is quite easy to understand" - Used Windows for over 10 years, there are some annoying issues, but it hasn't stopped me using it, nor wishing bad omens on the people who helped created it. Used Linux (mainly Red Hat) for over 3 years. It's like asking which is better a Ford car or a Volvo car?

Edit on this:

"Most people don't care about people they never met or never heard about.
In short - feeding family of a bad coder is a problem of a bad coder, not mine. If he got fired - that is his problem and probably his fault. That's how life works."

That's funny, as i'm sure there are a shedload of charities which collect alot of money to help people - people they have never even met as well. Of course it's much easier to say this on an internet forum though.

And to go onto your statement. MS Flight Simulator was probably one of the best flight simulators around and available for the public... Oh.. what's that MS just dropped the entire team. So it appears that even if your are a good coder and help release a good product then you're in the firing line regardless of being a bad or good coder.