Hacker News Reader

Comment by hardware2win | Hacker News Reader

How to interpret this? MSFT felt like stablest FAANG

It seems like they are just taking advantage of the climate. All of these companies are going to be "trimming the fat" while the news cycle is used to this category of headline.

They make a lot of money selling services to companies that are on shakey ground or pulling back their finances and spending. This means that instability eventually bubbles up to Microsoft and other companies depending on their customers to keep spending and buying services.

As an investor in MSFT, I would have a positive interpretation of this move.

If MSFT cuts big again next quarter, I will then begin to reconsider my position.

FAANG isn't a very good acronym if Microsoft is in it. GAMMAN would would better.

5% layoffs? Gammannnn....

Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Netflix: the MMAAAN.

Coincidentally, the acronym you came up with can be pronounced in the same way as 我慢 [1], which, in modern parlance, is the Japanese equivalent of "grin and bear it".

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaman_(term)

Microsoft had layoffs in 2008, so it isn't unprecedented.

FAANG is missing the M

Yahoo, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple

Glad to see people put those others in the list.

Too many people assumed that Microsoft, Oracle, Yahoo, and related companies weren't matching offers and were somehow "worse" to work for.

It was exactly the opposite. They were matching offers, and even poaching engineers from the other FAANGs. Yet they never got any respect.

You're missing out the fact that OP listed those because he wanted it to spell YOMAMA and not because he thinks those companies are FAANG worthy.

> They were matching offers, and even poaching engineers from the other FAANGs. Yet they never got any respect.

Matching offers is not the only thing that gets you respect.

Microsoft = asshole company

Oracle = asshole company

Yahoo = cringe company

Many people don't want to work for them, no matter what they are offering.

Apple seems far more stable.

MSFT is more diversified and has a lot of sticky B2B customers while AAPL is mostly B2C. Sure, they are selling to businesses too, but MacBooks can be easily replaced, unlike MS Office and its like.

> has a lot of sticky B2B customers

Indeed. We are all-in on using .NET6+ for building software for our customers. This locks us into VS/Azure/Windows subscriptions as a side-effect. Our clients sign 5+ year contracts, so we aren't leaving this area any time soon.

There are certainly less expensive ways we could run our business and deliver our product, but the amount of risk associated with those options is far beyond what our investors, leadership and customers would tolerate.

FWIW, we run .NET6+ on linux / docker on AWS

Biggest reason we are stuck on windows is because we use some windows-specific dependencies. If we dedicated ~6 months we could consider cross platform, but that would just be the beginning of the conversation. The 3rd party hosting/licensing costs on a per-customer basis don't even approach 1% of the total cost of the solution.

I feel similarly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com