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Comment by thr0w4w4ymsft | Hacker News Reader

MSFT manager of 25+ person team here with no actual heads up on this. The writing has been on the wall for months though from internal comms so this should come as a surprise to no one.

No one on my team has any information about this beyond the Satya email, so this is either a "no news is good news" situation (assuming you don't actually want to be laid off), or a poorly executed process. I'm hoping for the former for the sake of my team.

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It is a poorly executed process: "... the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3". So employees will have to live with uncertainty for the next three months!

Maybe they /want/ to see some increase in attrition due to the uncertainty. It's a very rough way of going about that, though.

That seems like a bad strategy since employees that are most in demand will be the first to find another job and leave.

Why would you quit when you'd get severance if you're laid off?

Maybe some employees are told the project or division they work on will shut down months from now, so start looking internally for transfers?

All employees get 60 days notice, so it seems like there will be 30 days of uncertainty. Maybe I'm optimistic.

That's not how it works. You won't be told 60 days before you are let go. You will be let go and then given pay for 60 days.

You are not disagreeing with gp: they are saying Microsoft will inform the people in 30 days, that's when they'll get a 60-day paid notice and the uncertainty ends. Hence the "30 days of uncertainty"

> 60 days’ notice prior to termination

If he gave managers a heads up, it would have been immediately leaked to the press.

Becoming a manager in large enterprise companies is basically an entry-level position all over again..

Except people care even less about your job experience since you're "leadership" now and are expected to toe the line no matter what.

At faangs not even directors get a head up before the night before on plans. The only ones that can set strategy are VPs and above.

Truer words have not been spoken. Can confirm from my experience.

Good thing it didn't leak then, huh

Lol. This was floating on Blind for at least 2-3 days.

Blind has predicted 5 of the last 3 layoffs.

That's why as a journalist you cannot use it a legit source. But usually you get an advanced warning.

This comes with the cost of the paranoia induced by seeing the corporate underbelly

So the weekly layoffs thread is right sometimes!

I know some teams who had a sudden team meeting scheduled by their skip manager for 9 am today. I suspect this is how organization changes will be communicated to affected teams.

At least you got an email from Satya. Amazon folks need to stumble across major news outlets.

Major news came yesterday. Satya email this morning.

I always assumed that the disclosure rules for publicly traded companies would require them not to give anyone notice in advance of the public.

Not true. Companies share material non public information internally. What they do is they have blackout periods where you cant trade the stock, and constant reminders not to trade based upon material non public information (insider trading)

Tl;DR = possessing insider info != insider trading

Generally speaking, with a layoff, they want all employees to hear it from official sources and not internal rumors.

> The writing has been on the wall for months though from internal comms

What did the hints look like?

Stock went from 350 to 250.

> Stock went from 350 to 250

It went to 350 from 30

Not sure here, but in my experience no backfill hires for voluntary leavers is a pretty good warning.

Other companies stopped backfilling a while ago but doesn't mean they plan on laying people off (and you can look at 2008-2010 for reference to see that some companies didn't backfill but didn't have layoffs). Not over-growing and then shrinking through attrition is one way to rightsize a company in tougher times.

Absolutely - but absent corporate communications saying "Everything is great" or "OMG we're doomed.", it's a very relevant data point.

People asking VPs about layoffs in public AMAs and getting answers to the effect of "it's our responsibility to make sure that we're right-sized for the upcoming year."

Cost cutting. Move to floating desk and reduction in building space. There were few more things. But the shift to floating seats was a big indicator that serious cost cutting is happening. And everyone guessed that layoffs are next.

I am based in India. US folks would have seen different signs

> ...with some notifications happening today.

I guess there are complexities with huge multinational companies, but that seems kind of designed to make people like your team worry.

It's designed so that no one can be blamed because you never know who took the decision and that no one has a chance to speak up against it.

My understanding is also that during mass layoffs big companiess can't just cut all low performers / juniors so this might be completely random but we just don't get to know that.

How can you actually signal you want to be laid off? Is that something you say when the news goes out? Loads of "NoFuture" cooperate punk in the FAMG. Monopoly does not make the work interesting.

In places where a "consultation process" is legally mandated, that's one of the things you get to discuss. In UK redundancies I have been asked "do you want to take voluntary redundancy?"

> "do you want to take voluntary redundancy?"

That seems like a trick question to me.

Can you give an example of what a broadly speaking internal comm(not anything specific to MSFT) would look like that might be a red flag for future layoffs?

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