Holy shit that’s a lot of people. Wow. Fuck
Out of the playbook: “So you need to make number go up while paying for silicon valley’s money burning scam!”
Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab said on Monday it is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, or more than a quarter of its global workforce, as the technology giant looks to contain costs and help fund its massive AI investments.
Meaning, fund their losses. The receipts are coming due.
If microsoft is a casualty of the upcoming market crash, that would be so hilarious.
They’re already making losing plays. They spent too much building out worthless technology that no one wants, and now they’re amputating parts of the company to help pay off the debt.
They’re just trying to fail gracefully at this point.
I guess time will tell if they’re an AOL or a Bear Sterns.
They were struggling before and Copilot has been a disappointment they can’t admit to. They were going to be the first to fall. But not last.
An alternate read would be: freeing cash to pour into AI. Something something eggs and baskets… either way, they’re fucked.
Maybe I’m missing something but how is buying out 60,000 jobs freeing up money? That seems like a huge amount of money.
I suspect it would be something like: massive layoffs -> stock prices rise -> issue new stock -> waste on AI -> rehire new staff at lower wages -> rinse and repeat
Because it comes out of one-time capital and reduces ongoing liability. Stupid, I know, but the accountants say it good.
Freeing cash to pay for the debt they’ve already accumulated from AI expenditures which will never be profitable.
Instead of making a better product.
I can’t believe I’m going to watch Microsoft go bankrupt in my lifetime.
I fucking wish.
Units such as marketing, commercial business and security will be excluded, the source added.
I suspect commercial business might mean Microsoft Dynamics, which apparently has even more customers than SAP (though SAP targets bigger companies as I understand).
ERPs print money. Apparently the Essentials license for Dynamics Business Central is 80 dollars per user per month paid annually and if you want for example manufacturing, you’re getting the premium license at 110 dollars per user per month. Line employees who only get access to stuff like time sheets and expenses are still 8 bucks a month. This pricing model makes Odoo look pretty damn cheap. They’re selling this shit to over 90,000 customers, who knows how many users the average customer has.
And then they’ve got that little office thingy
Genuinely I’m curious what will happen if that’s the case and windows just ceases to exist
Broadcom will buy it. Technologies go to Broadcom to die…
And then will come The Age of Linux!
Well, it used to be Computer Associates where products went to die…
So I guess that means there has been progress… Maybe???
Something something year of the linux desktop?
(Spoiler: every year is the year of the linux desktop… pre-installed windows is the only reason why most people don’t notice)
People will use ‘AI’ to vibecode their own OS. Some will even sell them. Thousands of similar ‘Microsoft Lite’ companies will pop up. Most will fail.
There is civil infrasructure still running Windows 3.1, unfortunately.
Windows will continue to exist for a long time after any fall. And once it finally becomes impractical to remain on that platform, most users will go to MacOS and most businesses will go to Linux. And a lot of Windows software will run in emulation on both platforms for the foreseeable future.
Not a fan of it, but what if the older versions still needed by some places get reverse engineered by AI and upgraded to be up to date? For some things you don’t need the latest, you just need what has worked for years. Just need to keep it air gaped from the internet, but that could be patched.
Old stuff shouldn’t be changed. As long as it’s offline and it’s reliable, it will keep chugging.
The only problem is when it doesn’t, parts replacement gets much more difficult.
Using AI would be antithetical to patching old software. That said, there are groups keeeping older OSes secure with fan patches.
The company will be deemed too big to fail and will get a big bailout from the US government.
handed to larry ellison for pennies-on-the-dollar in exchange for another subscribe-and-save gift order of presidential diapers.
PCs will die with Windows. The younger generations already don’t use PCs. The tech industry could fill the void with thin clients for office use…
This has been Google’s angle for years. They’ve been pushing chromium browser apps. Who really uses Windows anymore. It’s just layer that gets users to a browser. Browsers are cross platform. Windows is already kind of obsolete.
Good things Google didn’t fuck that up and kill off their Chrome-based operating system… Wait
Eh some other company will buy it. Windows is still one of Microsoft’s main money maker. Also what company would want to miss on the sweet sweet data Windows is collecting, that alone is worth tens of billions.
No it is not their main money generator. Their personal computing segment of the company which includes Windows, Xbox, Bing and surface is less than 15B in revenue compared with 100B for Azure. So windows is literally a single digit percentage of their revenue.
Yeah the way I see it either A) Someone buys it although it probably will lose user share maybe it becomes a corporate OS B) A bunch of proprietary Linux distros / forks crop up C) MacOS
Novell Windows?
And on the annual eve of the $1000+ Project Helix too!
What’s that?
The next Xbox gaming system.
Fortune says it will be $1200-1800, insane.
How can that be? I’d envision it’s simply a device to play cloud games. How much could it cost?
Not really asking you but I’m baffled by that price. MS is outta their minds
It won’t be fully cloud, if the rumors true it’ll be close to a 5080 quality. With how insane the ram and storage market is in right now, those components alone are estimated to cost 700-800 bucks.
The rumors I’m finding is that they’re making a more powerful console that can play Windows games (so the OS will probably be pretty much just a restricted Windows). It’s supposed to make you not even want to buy a gaming PC anymore.
These things all seem to be timed together. I was listening to If Books Could Kill, and they talk about how so much of management is largely just fads, often used to drive down wages, but are not really all that economically rational.
This is when they were covering Who Moved My Cheese?
Anyway, they are so right about this. They were talking about the 90s trends of companies doing deep cuts because that’s what MBAs thought was what all the cool kids were doing. I noticed tons of people laying people off in the dot-com bust, and they were not even in the dot-com space. Their company was still doing just fine but they saw everyone else doing it…
Would not surprise me to see other large tech firms doing very similar things, even if they don’t even need to and even if it actively harms even their stock price.
And then of course, lots of copy cats, maybe also in tech, but not even doing the same things that MS and other large tech companies are doing.
A buyout like this is a huge upfront cost, the savings come much later. Risky move that implies Microsoft is sure about its funding short term. Should that dry up, the whole company collapses?
I imagine there’s also an element of obfuscating that these are effectively layoffs. Offer a small amount upfront and stem the anger to prevent worker organizing and work stoppages.
The company is definitely going to be massively brightsizing: everybody with an opportunity will move on and take the money, and the ones remaining are going to be both demoralized and less re-employable.
Glad they got all that AI investment going, then! And Xbox is almost out of the red!
Right?
Right?
I’d take it!
Honestly shame on anyone still working there.
Corporate branches are viruses that kill their host.
They could probably cut the entire Copilot division and a third of middle management and come out well ahead.
I still have a theory that they never really got rid of Clippy. They turned it into a black ops project, and then years later, surprise!
It’s CoPilot!
poor clippy deserved better :(
Apparently they need a good quarter and don’t care about the next couple of years. Linux wins.
Anyone able to interpret this, levels?
“This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States at level 70 and below,”
Geez - so first come first serve for titles under VP?
