Microsoft sharpens axe as PC sales drop?

Fresh reports of Microsoft's first-ever job cuts are again circulating, with the Wall St Journal writing that the company is reviewing its options. The Journal has reported that the cuts could come next week but that Microsoft is considering cutting fewer than the 15,000 staff rumored in recent weeks - a figure that would …

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Couldn't happen to a nicer company.

I hope all 91,000 lose their jobs. Microsoft are criminals and they don't deserve to stay in business. I would rather see all 91,000 of them starve.

[Efros]

MS should

bear in mind that the best thing to get sales going is to drop prices, like by at least half!! I wonder what proportion of a new PCs cost a fully licensed version of Se7en is going to be, not the knock down OEM price but for us individual home builders. Must be hard to keep a 60% profit margin on your office products and a circa 81% margin on windows in such difficult economic times.

Efros

[Anonymous Coward]

@IGnatius T Foobar

Sorry you have your panties in a bunch over Microsoft, but I fail to see the good in laying off thousands of IT workers that are just trying to survive and make a buck like the rest of us.

Like everywhere else, the people responsible for the problem, namely upper management, will continue myopically floundering along and collecting hefty paychecks while the (mostly) innocent suffer their mistakes.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft Web Search hides OpenOffice site

Search for Open Office on Google and it recommends openoffice.ORG (the real site), do the same on MSN and it recommends openoffice.nl (a site that tries to SELL you Ubuntu), open-office.org (an advertising shim), etc. The real site it nowhere on the first page.

You see how desperate they've become.

Seriously, they'll start their FUD campaigns next, when Microsoft can't show why it's a better choice, it attacks it's competitors to make you think they're a worse choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

IGnatius.........

I work for Microsoft. I have been there 9 years and am unlikely to starve because I have made so much goddam $$. I bet I have LOTS more money than you and that my job is more secure (how many billions do we have in the bank? I have lost track...). Maybe you should quit moaning and try to come and get a job with us. Doubt we would hire you though....

[Francis Fish]

@Captain Foobar

Have you ever been made redundant? It is really horrible, particularly if you have no respect for the people who are telling you you haven't got a job any more. Or are you just an arrogant git? I don't like Windows and don't use it, but I don't hate it either. This kind of unfunny hatred is really out of order.

Wishing that people would starve - grow up.

You'll be telling me next that natural disasters are function of people's sexuality.

Get your head out of your arse, please.

[Anonymous Coward]

@IGnatius T Foobar

What the hell is wrong with you? Do you seriously think all 91000 employees influence MS's business practices? Get lost.

[Flocke Kroes]

What are they worried about?

They can simply triple the price of XP again. The beauty of lock-in is that their users are addicted and will pay any price when supply is short.

[kain preacher]

IGnatius T Foobar

You're real bastard. I hope you never lose your job. Hmm last time I checked MS was never convicted in any court.

[Anonymous Coward]

you wish unemployement on 91000 people??? knob rot is too good for you

wow,IGnatius T Foobar is such a nice guy. I dont wish horrible diseases on many people, but anyone who wishes unemployment on 910000 people, regardless of where they work, well, man, you deserve the worst of whats going out there. Ebola is just too good for you.

aside from your petty gripe with microsoft, try to let go of your tiny insignificant view of the world for a second and imagine if microsoft disappeared. think how it would effect the computer industry, or worse, think if microsoft never existed. you think you would be able to post on the register? you think the register would exist? you think you would have a job? jerk

[Linbox]

If I have to come down there and hit you with a 4 by clue ...

Save the consultancy fees. -- If they don't work for the Windows, Office or Servers teams = pink slip.

Zune, XBox, Live, Web, MSN, Dynamics, Photosynth, virtual earth, silverlight, Mobile, blah, blah and blah = FAIL.

Windows, Servers, Office = WIN.

kthxbai

[Herby]

Why not have a pay cut at the top

Of course starting with Steve Ballmer. Cut his toupee allowance.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the contractors?

Bet they're being mowed down like a field of wheat - and nothing will be mentioned in the press, because it isn't a headcount reduction, just "contract not renewed".

[Anonymous Coward]

@Anonymous Coward

"I work for Microsoft. I have been there 9 years and am unlikely to starve because I have made so much goddam $$"

I bet he doesn't.

[Schroeder]

@Foobar and poor outed AC shill

Well done mate!

I originally thought your evil tirade was piece of reverse MS shilling attempting to make Open Source advocates look bad.

But , you've gotten an AC to stupidly bite and out themselves as a Microsoft employee. So the next time an Unbuntu story comments gets flooded with 100+ AC comments posting out of date FUD, we can just refer them back to here, and say 'Hey look, there are Microsoft employees preferring to post as AC in the Register comments, now why would that be? I mean its not like the company has a history of astroturfing now is it?'.

Oops.

[Chris]

Re: Microsoft Web Search hides OpenOffice site

No it doesn't-

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=+openoffice&mkt=en-GB&FORM=IEFM&src=IE-SearchBox

[Lager And Crisps]

R.E. kain preacher/IGnatius T Foobar

Microsoft has been convicted in America, Europe and Asia for various crimes. I bet you get all your information from MSN.

To IGnatius T Foobar. I hate Microsoft's business practices and lack of moral ethics as much as the next rabid penguin loving Linux user, but to wish loss of employment and livelihood on 91,000 people in these dark times...well I'm lost for words on how to reply.

[Anonymous Coward]

For soon to be Ex-MS employees

We are now offering re-training in LINUX

[Daniel]

I've known people who really DO work for Microsoft

Most of them are decent, well meaning people, pressed down upon and confined by layers and layers of insensitive burocracy and a legacy of badly-written, poorly maintained code, based on assumptions long since proven to be wrong. The spend their entire lives wrestling with stupid circular dependencies, or writing yet another document-spec, justifying the effort. Your Vista is a dog because these people find themselves overruled by stupid, lazy managers: not because of any lack of effort on their part.

None of them were especially rich, because the money does not thrickle down much beyond senior partner level.

On the basis of this, I will definitely say that AC, above there - caliming to be some fabulously rich Microsoft employee - is either a senior partner, or (much more likely) some hopeless little SQL Server jockey, who thinks that his OWN payslip lies in making sure the boss never takes a look at using something he hasn't got a MCSE in. Either way, that qualifies him for the title of Clueless Leech. Both he, and IGnatius, there, are a poison in our industry, and the sooner we loose both of them, the sooner we can stop worrying abou good, decent, hard working people getting sacked instead.

[Anonymous Coward]

XP

They could just re-release XP at 1/4 price

I might actually go out and get my own copy

I still live off the copies that just lie about from old computers !

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it..

.. be possible for el reg to ban "IGnatius T Foobar" for being a utter idiot. Weather or not you like MS (and as half of the readership here is self appointed linux gurus who hate ms cause there cool mates do) most people agree that losing 91000 jobs is bad. s/he is just a troll, kick him out.

[N]

Drop your prices

You cant treat customers like shit & expect them to come back for more, Its over priced half finished slop, no wonder people are looking elsewhere.

The £ may have dropped like a brick as a result of Gordon Clowns interference with things he dosnt understand but despite that its still worth a lot more than 1$

Then try & regain some customers loyalty by offering an olive branch in the form of XP to those who got fucked up with Vista (not just the ones who bought the most expensive versions).

[Mark]

re: @IGnatius T Foobar

Well, AC, one use for the loss of these 9100 jobs is that the closed source windows will disappear. The shock of finding out what this means will halt the rediculous closed source mantra (where code doesn't have to be expressive to be covered by copyright, trade secret AND patent all at the same time).

NOTE: this doesn't mean that you get to include Bob's OS code into your work if he hasn't given you a license, just that you get to see Bob's OS code and, if he goes titsup, support yourself if nobody else can (if you aren't extracting value from the code, how can you ask for damages from someone using it?).

[Mark]

To all those complaining ig ignatious:

Read kain's comment:

"You're real bastard. I hope you never lose your job. Hmm last time I checked MS was never convicted in any court."

He's just as bad. Anyone complaining about him?

And MS WAS CONVICTED. What the frigging hell do you think the court oversight and constraints on MS was from????

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe...

...nobody yet mentioned cutting the chair budget

[Mark]

@Daniel

And so losing your job

a) doesn't put a mark on your CV

b) means you're eligible for redundancy pay

c) means you're eligible for welfare

d) get away from that crushing burocracy

So getting the sack because the company goes titsup is actually quite nice for them.

Ignatious is just trolling. You'll see the type on ZDNet. Saying they're a linux user and being an arsehole so that they can (as a windows user) point to the childishness of linux zealots.

A less extreme example is the troll starting with "I use linux but...".

[Mark]

@Chris

Now try with a space in Open Office.

First link? MS Office. What's ***Open*** about that???

And note, there was a time when they were even more right: Open Office came on the third page on a live search.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not feed the trolls

The more you answer the troll posters (like the first one), the more they answer.

They feed on the attention, negative or not.

Ignore, and they'll eventually drift away to another unsuspecting forum/comments area.

[Chris]

"Now try with a space in Open Office."

OK. Still nothing about MS Office.

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=open+office&sourceid=Mozilla-search&form=CHROME

Also- "Well, AC, one use for the loss of these 9100 jobs is that the closed source windows will disappear."

You'd sacrifice the livelihoods of 91000 people for this? Bizarre. Everyone would just move to lovely, cuddly Apple anyway.

[Mark]

Counter the trolls

However, if you leave the trolls ALWAYS with the last word or no rebuttal, the frequent lie is believed.

Don't give in.

And why is giving attention to trolls so bad? They only move on somewhere else (and from somewhere else to here), so there's no guarantee that you'll have any less trolling. Yet the trolls will get the last word. Because THAT is as important as notoriety.

Unfortunately, beheading (on Youtube for extra irony) is not possible.

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually work at MS

The admins can do a Whois against my IP, should be something in the 131.107.0.x range, the Redmond proxy cluster.

In any case, I'm a contractor and have seen in the last week two of my office mates not having their contracts renewed and now I have to learn Chinese to talk with the two people replacing them ('vendors' that will remote in from China). I'm the last one left to manage about 3500+ servers in our test labs, at least the only one in the US....

Although most of the first job cuts will be in the Bean Counting, Colored Pencils and the 'LOL, OMG' divisions... Luckily I'm in Ray's pet cloud project, but that'll only last til August...

[kain preacher]

Not criminal

Microsoft has been convicted in America, Europe and Asia for various crimes. I bet you get all your information from MSN..

Civil trial not a criminal.hence not a convicted criminal. Being found liable in civil court in the US not the same as a conviction. If was a convicted criminal they could not just push of the DOJ.

[Mark]

@kain preacher

And copyright infringement is a civil action. Yet it still counts as criminal.

[elderlybloke]

Is evasion of paying Tax , Criminal or Civil ?

The citizen of the USA , a prominent business man , Mr. Al Capone got convicted on charge of Tax

Evasion.

Could not get evidence from cowed citizens to give evidence on the 400 + murders he was responsible for.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dearest Daniel....

Really Daniel?

You wrote:

"Most of them are decent, well meaning people, pressed down upon and confined by layers and layers of insensitive burocracy and a legacy of badly-written, poorly maintained code, based on assumptions long since proven to be wrong. The spend their entire lives wrestling with stupid circular dependencies, or writing yet another document-spec, justifying the effort. Your Vista is a dog because these people find themselves overruled by stupid, lazy managers: not because of any lack of effort on their part"

That does not sound like the company I work for. I do not think you have a clue. Personally, I spend most of my time talking to genuinely interested customers about the class leading products I sell (yes, I am a sales guy...). Thing is, I talk to proper, senior, business people as opposed to junior, disgruntled linux admins with failed careers. Would you believe, the business people love our stuff. Which is why I have made so much $$$

And the reason I post as AC is that MS does give a damn about image and reputation. So I probably would get told off for boasting too much if I used my name.

[Anonymous Coward]

@ For soon to be Ex-MS employees

Don't forget about the BSDs, being Canadian, I'm partial to OpenBSD, but sadly I believe the encryption OpenBSD uses is still illegal in the US of A, you know being, " the home of the free" and all.