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"Microsoft is laying off 10,000 people today, including in its gaming divisions such as Xbox and Bethesda."

Havoc2049

Member
This story has been around for a few days and I have seen it on business shows and read it multiple places. This is the first I heard they are laying people off in the gaming sector. Anyone have any sources or is it just a guess/tweet?
 
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R6Rider

Gold Member
*company lays off 10k people*

"But that's only like 5% of the total!"

derp-Lughead.jpg
 
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H-I-M

Member
That's so weird, I've been told that the gaming division is healthier and bigger than ever (let's not even talk about the massive success that is GP).
 

FBeeEye

Banned
This isn't unusual. During an acquisition, the acquired company typically makes some cuts. But during the fake pandemic boom when tech companies were hiring like crazy, they avoided making the cuts.

So it makes sense now that the "boom" is over to cut the fat.
 

Kacho

Member
This story has been around for a few days and I have seen it on business shows and read it multiple places. This is the first I heard they are laying people off in the gaming sector. Anyone have any sources or is it just a guess/tweet?
I don't doubt that the gaming sectors took a hit, especially Bethesda, but yeah, there's no real details out there that I've seen. Pretty sure Jason is using the headline as an opportunity to get easy engagement on Twitter. People see "10k employees laid off" and "gaming division" and run with it, as we're seeing in this thread. No actual data or critical thinking required.
 

Rykan

Member
Nearly done...on a Bethesda game...cute. Their games required patching over patching even before it was this plaguious as it is now...
Irrelevant to the point being made.
It is, though?
It is. The game is planned for a release within 6 months. That means that a lot of aspects of game development (Art, music, possible marketing planning etc) have been wrapped up. These might have been wrapped up for longer if the initial delay was purely technical/QA related.
 

LordOfChaos

Member
:messenger_tears_of_joy:Aren’t Microsoft absolutely creaming it in the post pandemic world? Even more so than usual. Those 10k salaries are not even a tiny brown speck of shit in egg’s bloomers.

Just googling ‘microsoft profit’ gave me this as the top result;

  • Microsoft gross profit for the quarter ending September 30, 2022 was $34.670B, a 9.47% increase year-over-year.
  • Microsoft gross profit for the twelve months ending September 30, 2022 was $138.619B, a 14.21% increase year-over-year.

They're looking forward and not backward to weakening demand, and the pathology of wallstreet is ever increasing profits
 

Fuz

Banned
Irrelevant to the point being made.

It is. The game is planned for a release within 6 months. That means that a lot of aspects of game development (Art, music, possible marketing planning etc) have been wrapped up. These might have been wrapped up for longer if the initial delay was purely technical/QA related.
Oh, that's why we've seen all those cool gameplay videos.
 

.Pennywise

Banned
Hey Instagram/TikTok! Come with me to show you a day working at Twitter/Microsoft/Facebook/Google offices!
*
Proceeds to show her taking breakfast at the offices, going to the building's playroom, using the gym, taking lunch, going for a walk to clear her mind, do some work, take some snacks, leave*

Yeah seems like this kind stuff and moving the mouse to not appear away while "working" from home isn't cutting it anymore.

Now let's see all the experts internet Company Chief Officers telling Microsoft how they should handle their stuff and how they shouldn't be laying off people.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
When companies fire people it’s rarely a total net loss. They will often hire back replacing them with cheaper or better people. It’s just a matter of how many.

When my current or old company weeded out the 25 year club of employees, they all got replaced by younger cheaper people.

Companies firing people gets headlines. But rarely will an article say “Hey, Google has been hiring 1000s of people every year for 15 years”. But if Google announced they cut 10,000 people itd be a big issue.

If people only went by job loss articles saying 1000 here or 10000 there got cut virtually every company would be down to zero employees by now.
 
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They're working on their OS to eventually be cloud-based. Bet.

That's probably what the integrated ads in W11 were about, adding features dependent on the cloud (via Azure). I doubt the entire OS goes that way but they will look for other ways to integrate cloud services in OS features that won't get as much blowback.

I think recession is starting to be a real threat

Get ready to witness 2008 again

Real talk, I need some cheap valuable gold to buy from some unsuspecting hoarder.

Or some crypto that's actually worth buying into.

Very large number of layoffs. For some reason I thought Microsoft would be bigger worldwide. The NHS has 1.3 million employees for example, I thought a tech giant worldwide with such huge profits would be larger.

Completely different industries and types of products, services etc. They aren't comparable.
 

pasterpl

Member
Now let’s pretend that this is not common in big tech (and not only), and pretend that after acquisition there are positions that overlap and people are being let go. Let’s just shit on MS. /s
 
Sickening. This should be criminal. The government lets them buy companies then they shudder them. Won't be long before Microsoft requires a monthly fee/subscription to use Windows.
It's already there. They increased dramatically the software assurance prices to push their windows subcription called ME3 (windows + office as a service)
Microsoft is a nightmare, the epitome of a world monopoly. They should be disbanded. Do not support this company.
 
I don't think you both understand how big this is, 10K is a lot of people to lay off at one time this isn't normal at all.

No way all those positions were redundant
Your first time witnessing the market in an economic downturn?

Twitter layed off over 3,000 in November and more coming in 2023

Amazon laying off over 18,000 in the coming weeks

Tech Companies have layed off over 60,000 in the past year

Layoffs are a VERY norming thing, especially in this industry.
 

Dick Jones

Gold Member
With the overhiring during the pandemic it's not surprising, sadly. Only shock was Bethesda with two games out in the next 5 months. I thought that would be later
 
What’s happening? Some recent US economy figures coming out?
Most major banks are forecasting a minor/moderate recession within the next 12 months so large corporations are preparing for a downturn in revenue and profits. This is exacerbated by the fact that many of these same corporations increased their hiring during COVID years because online sales/services industry skyrocketed.
 

Justin9mm

Member
Sometimes companies re-structure to trim the fat so to speak. Large companies do this all the time, during the pandemic when looking at costs, my company I work for did this to remove all the dead weight employees who either weren't contributing or the sales guys not making any profit. This is how large businesses work. To say it's unacceptable because of the size of MS or the fact they spent huge amounts on Bethesda deal so they can afford it etc. Is kind of ridiculous.
 
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anthony2690

Banned
I know people will go crazy with wild theories, but they employed an insane amount of people over the last 4 years during the pandemic etc.

& Obviously this will impact all divisions and not just Xbox related ones.

"2019: ~144,000 Microsoft employees
2020: ~163,000 Microsoft employees
2021: ~181,000 Microsoft employees
2022: ~221,000 Microsoft employees"
 
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Elios83

Member
I'm sorry for those affected, big tech companies are facing the consequences of the post covid recession. In these circumstances it's no surprise they use the axe with teams that have not delivered or where there are many redundancies that cost a lot but are not useful, that is the downside of buying monolithic publishers.
 
That's probably what the integrated ads in W11 were about, adding features dependent on the cloud (via Azure). I doubt the entire OS goes that way but they will look for other ways to integrate cloud services in OS features that won't get as much blowback.



Real talk, I need some cheap valuable gold to buy from some unsuspecting hoarder.

Or some crypto that's actually worth buying into.



Completely different industries and types of products, services etc. They aren't comparable.
Well duh. But I honestly thought they’d be much larger.
 
Seems pretty shitty when you're trying to acquire almost exactly that many in a purchase.
It’s never nice to have people let go, but companies are constantly making redundancies whilst taking in people in other areas. Acquiring ActiBliz is part of their growth strategy and the people they bring on as part of it aren’t necessarily ’like for like’ with those they’re letting go.
 

ByWatterson

Member
It’s never nice to have people let go, but companies are constantly making redundancies whilst taking in people in other areas. Acquiring ActiBliz is part of their growth strategy and the people they bring on as part of it aren’t necessarily ’like for like’ with those they’re letting go.

For sure. I get it. I just wish they had done more sustainable, organic growth. These kinds of layoffs (unlike Sony's recent ones totaling 90 employees in the diminished physical publishing space) are a meat cleaver designed to cut bloat they could have avoided.

I fear Activision Blizzard will be more of the same bloat.
 
Welcome to Sony and Nintendo, guys!
Sony sacked 90 Playstation marketing people last year citing global turmoil.
I can almost guarantee MS Isn't sacking coders, or devs from Bethesda. It would be some people in middle management, PR, marketing and the like.
Having worked for a massive US multinational company they will just make a edict that they need to reduce their workforce by 10% worldwide and every division has to work out what employees they identify as their 10%.
Our team was smashing budgets. My country was one of the only ones who were making more profit than budgeted for, we were understaffed and prior to this were looking to add employees, however we had to "share the pain" and they picked the oldest person to sack, who was our biggest salesman that year.

We were coming back from lunch and we saw him walking down the stairs with a box containing all his personal effects and sticking out the top was the photos he had on his desk of his wife and dog.
 
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SlimySnake

Flashless at the Golden Globes
I know people will go crazy with wild theories, but they employed an insane amount of people over the last 4 years during the pandemic etc.

& Obviously this will impact all divisions and not just Xbox related ones.

"2019: ~144,000 Microsoft employees
2020: ~163,000 Microsoft employees
2021: ~181,000 Microsoft employees
2022: ~221,000 Microsoft employees"
Their profits have gone up too. This is just a classic case of corporate greed. They make tens billions in profits EVERY quarter. They made $72 billion in profits last year alone which should pay off the Activision purchase by itself.

But hey lets layoff tens of thousands of people anyway.

IMG_5978.png
 

anthony2690

Banned
Their profits have gone up too. This is just a classic case of corporate greed. They make tens billions in profits EVERY quarter. They made $72 billion in profits last year alone which should pay off the Activision purchase by itself.

But hey lets layoff tens of thousands of people anyway.

IMG_5978.png
Oh wow, what has led to the insane growth from 2019-2022? That's quite the profits jump each year.
 

twilo99

Member

Spitfire098

Member
Now let’s pretend that this is not common in big tech (and not only), and pretend that after acquisition there are positions that overlap and people are being let go. Let’s just shit on MS. /s
Would anyone please think of poor little MS!!!! Thank you for standing up for the downtrodden, solider.
salute-crying.gif
 
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