Tech job bonfire rages on as Microsoft, GitLab and others join in

It was another bad week for tech professionals amid further bloodletting by an industry feeling the squeeze of inflation and higher interest rates as Microsoft, Zoom and Yahoo all dished out the pink slips. Microsoft, which confirmed last month it intends to chop 5 percent or about 10,000 heads from its workforce, has today …

[elsergiovolador]

Unions

Don't worry, they all are going to come back as "contractors".

Corporations got spooked by unions able to put spanners in the works and getting workers to be paid what they should be paid.

Here in the UK, one simple trick can let corporation avoid all of that.

Let workers go.

Wait some time.

Hire them back in scope of IR35. No more fear about unions or pesky employment rights.

[Dinanziame]

Re: Unions

That seems to be a pretty uniquely British case. Whether in the US or in other countries, it is exceedingly rare that software engineers are hired as contractors for long periods of time.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Unions

It's partially determined by corruption factor in a given country. Why would you let go of a good service provider?

Big corporation using services of big corporation for years? Fine.

Small business using services of big corporation for years? Fine.

Big corporation using services of small business for years? Blasphemy.

[ecofeco]

Re: Unions

In the U.S. they will be hired back as temps, through a body shop, and mistakenly called contractors and treated as bastard offspring, with all of the previous responsibilities and none of the privileges.

Ask me how I know this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Employ more techs than you actually need. Cut tech jobs. Add a dash of the fear of losing your job. Lower wages. More profit.

Welcome to the wonderful word of capitalism and the media.

[sarusa]

Yahoo?

Why does Yahoo have 8,000 employees, or even 800? Are they all cold call ad salesmen?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Yahoo?

Exclamation mark installation experts

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Yahoo?

Removal experts, now.

(I'd like to say that the editorial insertion in the article re Yahoo was priceless.)

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Yahoo?

I post over there from time to time, and they seem to have a lot of moderators censoring posts for dirty words and content. There's no consistency either.

[An_Old_Dog]

"Gaming Ecosystem Group"

If you work in a group or department named in such a way that that group's or department's function is not obvious, that group or department -- and you -- will be fired first.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: "Gaming Ecosystem Group"

Well, I think the function of the HoloLens group was pretty obvious from the name. The usefulness not so much.

[PhilipN]

Surface?

Given the level of buyer interest at the Surface counter in my local electronics shop MS may as well sack everybody in that department.

[Michael Wojcik]

Re: Surface?

You know, now that you mention it, I don't think I've ever seen one of those things in real life. I've seen plenty of iPads and Android tablets – I even have one of the latter (which I used to use for playing audiobooks in the car; these days my phone does a better job of it). I've seen various netbooks over the years and a few Chromebooks more recently. I've seen one OLPC XO, some years back. But a Surface? I guess there are some out there, but I don't know where they're hiding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Surface?

In the US, at NFL games, apparently. And the Super Bowl, though not so much "hiding" as "presumably paid exorbitant amounts of money to be shown on TV".

There's likely some lesson to be learnt there, but I wouldn't want to speculate.