Got laid off from Microsoft yesterday with 10.000 people | Hacker News Reader

Got laid off from Microsoft yesterday with 10.000 people

61 pointselnova34 comments

this is the post.

we were just cut off with 10000 people.

I am a senior frontend engineer with master degree in UI/UX.

Let me know if you or someone you know look for my skills. I was recently working on Skype Messaging Team using React Native and TypeScript.

This is the LinkedIn profile.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisabettanova/

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Sorry to hear about the layoffs there, and everywhere off.

> we were just cut off with 10000 people by random selection algorithm.

Can you (or anyone) elaborate on how that works? Someone wrote something that does "select empolyee_id from employees limit 10000 order by random" and that's who got laid off? It's a layoff lottery and the winners got laid off?

I don't know how layoffs at huge companies work, maybe that's how it works everywhere?

Probably a mix of getting the “lowest performing” people based upon yearly performance reviews, and then just randomly cutting people based on employee id. Maybe cut a specific amount of people from each department/organization.

This was the speculation, I am sure they would have constraints like, fire recently joined people, or those ones who were not promoted last X years, etc. etc. I was hired last year, so it makes a bit sense for me.

Doesn't make sense at all. Maybe they identified a larger pool of employees and then applied random selection algorithm to that pool. No way they are laying off superstars.

> No way they are laying off superstars.

Shrug. Superstars cost more. Besides, companies don't love superstars do they? They want replaceable commodities.

They'll settle for commodities, but they want results. "Superstars" are great, because they'll get you results. You don't want to rely on having someone do the work of a whole team, but you certainly won't fire them, even if they cost three times as much as one of the ten people they replace.

Of course that is not how it works. The actual process depends on the company and how many levels of management are notified in advance. Usually it is some combination of bottom-up stack ranking and rolling down the quota to the individual teams. The process is - by design - very opaque, and there are so many variables to it that at the end it may seem like a random process to someone who is not privy to the decision process of the decision makers (and there may be anywhere from ten to few thousand decision makers in this process).

That has a chance of returning employees with very low IDs. So that'd be fun.

It's not how it works everywhere. In fact it's likely not how it works anywhere at all.

No competent business operator works this way. It's very much about improving a financial metric (say, sales efficiency) and understanding either where low performers are or which teams are supporting initiatives that may suddenly be deprioritized.

But more importantly than any of this, I'm sorry to hear people have lost their jobs. Better days are ahead.

From my experience (as a team lead who had to do that a few times unfortunately):

First, each department is usually allocated a number of employees they should layoff (based on high management priority).

Then, each department has to decide how to allocate it internally (cut-off teams entirely, or layoff a number of employees per team).

Then it goes to mid level management and lower management which has to choose specific employees (based on a number of criterias but usually based on performance).

My guess, a little bit of everything. Recent performance, cost, location, team/project...

In my huge company, we've seen all sort of cases. Very recent employees (which weren't even evaluated yet), "low performers" (but I think it's a misnomer, some "low performers" are productive employees who recently didn't meet some arbitrary expectations). Some entire teams were fired, in some instances they tried to reassign some high performers within these teams.

Also managers weren't consulted, and everything was kept secret.

Edit: some countries have additional legal constraints too and the process may be more transparent than in the US.

there's no way they chose ppl to get laid off by a random selection lmao

Please try to be a little more sensitive, bear in mind who you're replying to and what they're going through.

While I sympathize with those who were laid off, being laid off doesn't give you license to pass off wild speculation as fact in a post like this.

Perhaps, but questioning can be done in better ways, as others have done on this post.

No. Let's not turn everything into a sugarcoated fantasy world because reality could hurt someone's feeling.

What's to be gained from hurting this person's feelings?

There are harsh enough realities in the world without us adding being assholes to the mix.

"I failed that exam because the professor thought 1 + 1 equals 2. What an idiot, 1 + 1 obviously equals 7.5"

What do you think that person will benefit more from? "You're wrong and the professor is right, you should work on your math skills", or "Wow, what an arrogant professor. You're totally right."?

Or, "I understand the frustration, failing exams sucks whatever the reason. In this case though, 1+1=2".

The delivery matters, even more so when the person is in a difficult position. Also in this case we don't _know_ that they are wrong, we only think it likely based on assumptions. It's probably more likely that OP said "random" out of frustration, and they've since removed it from their post.

I see your point, but I still disagree. I believe that coddling isn't helpful. It's like taking pain killers instead of seeing a dentist: you'll need more of it next time because you're not learning. And over all, I think that's a giant problem.

"Oh, you were frustrated, it's fine then" is another thing I disagree with. It's not, and that may explain the "why", but it shouldn't be a reason to tolerate it, or you're normalizing the behavior and next time when that person is in a "difficult situation", they'll slash some tires because they're not learning to control their emotions. I'm sure it comes from a good place (learning by mistake is painful, and you don't want people to experience pain), but you'll keep people from learning if you try to take away the pain.

And let's be frank: nobody, you included, thought that "Microsoft fires their employees by RNG" was a possibility.

please - layoff with fat severance does not give them a license to spread misinformation

It's not confirmed that this is misinformation. I agree it sounds unlikely, but that comment can be delivered with much more compassion. Remember, this is someone who may be feeling upset, angry, frustrated, or many other things.

> by random selection algorithm

Is this true? Did they tell you this when you were laid off? If so, that's absolutely bonkers

Anyways best of luck

Lotsa luck and courage to you :)

I understand this is all economic cycles, but it does suck to be at the bottom end of it.

A "random selection algorithm" - wow, really?

Can someone shed some light how this works in the US? What are the conditions for termination there? Do you get X months severance?

Different states have varying legal requirements, though many tech companies anchor to California because it often sets the floor. So if you solve for California, you're likely solving for most of your workforce. In general, yes, at major tech companies there is severance, payout of any accrued paid time off, and sometimes there's additional payment to cover COBRA payments for 1+ month(s), as well as resources for finding a new job. Some companies will also extend termination dates to help an employee snag an additional month of health coverage. For folks on H1B there is almost always additional legal representation support as well.

I think large tech companies do an exceptional job supporting employees. But of course, for the person affected, still scary nevertheless. My heart goes out for those people.

Thanks for the nice explanation. What are COBRA and H1B?

COBRA is specific to the US? Related to extend some sort of private health care coverage they had under the employer?

And H1B are for non-Americans who were allowed to stay on the condition of having an employer?

Could you clarify what the conditions are for california? How many months of salary is covered? How immediate is the effect of termination in terms of "pack your bags". Etc

There are university master degrees for UI/UX in the states? Can you get a PhD in something UI/UX related as well?

They are slowly popping. The two major ones are probably CMU's MHCI and University of Washington's HCI+D. I don't know about Washington, but CMU also has a PhD program in HCI.

There are university master degrees for UI/UX in the states?

Don't they have that everywhere? The Human Computer Interaction deparment at the (European) university I went have both Master and PhD students and do all kinds of UI and UX related research.

Deleting this because it misses the point. I am sad and disappointed. I am not trying to speculate.

good luck - plenty of small to medium sized companies hiring. Hope you find a good one

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