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"Microsoft is laying off 10,000 people today, including in its gaming divisions such as Xbox and Bethesda."
- Thread starter The Cockatrice
- Start date
Topher
Gold Member
What are you referring to?
Spukc
always chasing the next thrill
not sure honey have you tried coding?
When I responded I thought you were focused on game output. I do agree it might look bad to regulators, and would also agree it might thwart their business goals.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I was laid off 15 years ago when a few product departments merged and they gutted people (sales people now cover two departments of products to sell, finance covers two sets of products to analyze etc...). Got a job about 5 weeks later. Wasnt even a tech job. And at the time I was living pay cheque to pay cheque breaking even every month as my salary was low supporting my tiny condo and shitty Honda Civic EX.
Even when that happened to me, I never whined about it.
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It's a write-down so not a salary saved amount. This is severance costs, the cost of lease consolidation on their buildings and hardware portfolio changes meaning something has likely become obsolete or unsold. The verge has taken a few guesses as to what it could be.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
back then Social Media wasn't really a think. people are getting softer nowadays.
cash_longfellow
Member
What do you mean no one does that kind of calculation…that’s exactly what companies do. Compare spending to labor force. They spent a shit ton of money and had to cut labor because of it. There is no arguing that.
cash_longfellow
Member
It’s definitely possible they could have laid people off anyway. But 10,000 total, and some from the gaming division absolutely had some to do with that deal. In theory they should start seeing the money back and will refill positions, but there is no doubt that deal has some to do with the layoffs.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Companies do a revenue per employee or SG&A cost ratio % to sales. Nobody does a ratio of market cap/buy out price vs employees.
As I said before, using your math it's actually better to buy Activision as their acquisition cost per employee is cheaper than MS. So it's not an overvalued buy out. It'll lower the average.
Companies will fire people due to redundancies of job roles, but not purely on acquisition cost. For example, at my company sometimes we buy out companies. The employee count actually goes up because we realized they are short staffed and will never reach their potential without more people.
Magic Carpet
Member
Did somebody say bad math? Napkin math time!
56 Billion/10000 human resource =5.6 million
if you stayed at microsoft for 40 years thats a salary of 140 thousand a year. Pesky Social Security tax of 30 percent. That gets it down to 100,000 per year
Thats got to be about average for a microsoft employee I think.
By laying off that 10,000 they can buy another Activision in 40 years!
thats the best bad maths i have seen for a while
recursive
Member
While layoffs are normal shedding 5% (10k people) of your staff in one go by a company this large is not. That is driven by something big.
FF:Enhanced_Reality
Member
I want it to fail for multiple reasons.
cash_longfellow
Member
I hear you, and great post btw..and I’m not saying by any means that all 10,000 are getting laid off due to the Acti deal, but I have no doubt due to excessive cost (at least from a video game sector standpoint), some of those let go are directly due to the fact.
Stooky
Member
This positions are not redundant 343 is basically dead
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
That is true I'd assume. Most of the time there are people laid off. And unless it's an unusual situation (like mine), there will be a net loss of jobs as some jobs will be hired back at cheaper costs.
TheUndeadGamer
Member
Can we expect more layoffs from Microsoft this year beyond the 10,000?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
TheUndeadGamer
Member
Hmmm that’s not good.
SlimySnake
Flashless at the Golden Globes
Hot Take:
A company that cant afford to keep 10,000 of its employees shouldnt be allowed to acquire 10,000 more employees from another studio.
Fuck anti-competitive concerns. This kind of shit should be what the govt is cracking down on. Pays $8 billion for Bethesda and now cant afford to pay them? despite making $72 billion in profits last year? WTF?
A company that cant afford to keep 10,000 of its employees shouldnt be allowed to acquire 10,000 more employees from another studio.
Fuck anti-competitive concerns. This kind of shit should be what the govt is cracking down on. Pays $8 billion for Bethesda and now cant afford to pay them? despite making $72 billion in profits last year? WTF?
cash_longfellow
Member
Oh for sure, 100%. I worked in manufacturing in Michigan USA for a long time when I was younger, and saw it happen plenty. It’s kind of funny in a way, because it’s come full circle here now. People are refusing to work those jobs for the terrible wages, probably 95% of the manufacturing jobs in my area are now owned by staffing agencies because factories lowered wages so much, and are mandating so much overtime on their current employees, that they can’t retain and/or find people to fill the positions. The promise of “higher wages with overtime” doesn’t fool anyone here. No one wants to work 7, 10-12 hour shifts a week for the “higher wages”.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
I hear ya.
I did an evening shift as a summer student working at a plant making shit off an assembly line. I knew I'd get bad wages. I was making minimum wage at something like $6 or $7/hr in the mid-90s in Ontario. Any students working the evening shift like me got an extra 25 cents per hour. No joke. I did it because it was the only job I could get. So that summer I wasted my evenings for an extra $2 per day!
azertydu91
Hard to Kill
Oh someone here is not aware of the 1 x 1 = 2 theory by Terence Howard?
ChorizoPicozo
Member
anothertech
Member
DarkMage619
$MSFT
You realize this was last week before the layoffs were announced and when they officially announced the developer direct showcase? Greenberg has nothing to do with layoff announcements and his excitement commentary had nothing to do with it.
cash_longfellow
Member
Oh I get it..trust me. The US has some BS “by piece” type laws here. I worked at an “inspection” facility at one point, where all the people on the line would get paid per piece depending on how many items they looked at on a conveyor belt. Needless to say, I developed a bad nicotine habit and made about $5 an hour at that job.
Topher
Gold Member
is dis tru???
Yes, but googling, I'm not seeing mass Sony layoffs during that time period. More than likely this is due to downsizing through attrition.
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DarkMage619
$MSFT
This really puts things into perspective. Perhaps just perhaps MS has employed far more people than they've laid off.
is dis tru???
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Exactly.
And not just the employee count but profits too. MS makes tons of profit but at least the head count trends up over time. Sony has been on fire making good profit for years yet the employee count is actually going down. If one company is going to be labeled Scrooge it's Sony.
But what happens looking at their recent trend of dropping a few thousand here or there is that none of it is splashy 10,000 chops. Companies doing gradual decreases is likely due to attrition which isn't something that gets PR attention.
100% true. In fact if you go back even farther, Sony had 189,700 employees in 2000 as per their Annual Report from 2000 (I picked a random year).
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Topher
Gold Member
Exactly.
And not just the employee count but profits too. MS makes tons of profit but at least the head count trends up over time. Sony has been on fire making goof profit for years yet the employee count is actually going down. If one company is going to be labeled Scrooge it's Sony.
100% true. In fact if you go back even farther, Sony had 189,700 employees in 2000 as per their Annual Report from 2000 (I picked a random year).
How many employees were laid off? I know there was a big purge prior to 2012 due to Sony being in horrible financial shape.
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StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Unknown. But going by the 12 year blue chart, there's times where there's big drops and times it goes down a couple thousand.
The big chops are going to be mass firings. The -1000 to 2000 will be either small firings that dont get attention or reduction of employee count due to attrition where they dont rehire people who leave or retire.
BennyBlanco
aka IMurRIVAL69
love how upon hearing 10,000 people lost their jobs, people here's first thoughts are with console wars. this place is getting even dumber than before the split.
Zok310
Banned
During the reshuffle at sony 10 years ago they closed a lot of their business that was going backwards, vaio, some sie studios, batteries, various electronics departments. They had to become a leaneer company and focus on services and products that they were good at providing vs being this "everything electronics" company. At one point sony was making toasters ffs.
MS is not in the same situation, they about to drop 70 billion to bring onboard 9500 people but at the same time letting go off 10k people, that looks worse than sony doing it 10 years ago.
"Scrooge"Exactly.
And not just the employee count but profits too. MS makes tons of profit but at least the head count trends up over time. Sony has been on fire making good profit for years yet the employee count is actually going down. If one company is going to be labeled Scrooge it's Sony.
But what happens looking at their recent trend of dropping a few thousand here or there is that none of it is splashy 10,000 chops. Companies doing gradual decreases is likely due to attrition which isn't something that gets PR attention.
100% true. In fact if you go back even farther, Sony had 189,700 employees in 2000 as per their Annual Report from 2000 (I picked a random year).
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MS have never made more profit before and they are still doing the mass layoffs.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Sony is still reducing it's employee count according to the chart. When Sony's divisions got more efficient and digital game sales and MTX took off for the PS division around 2016-2017, profits have rocketed back up like the old days. Yet the employee is still trending down.
StreetsofBeige
Gold Member
Great chart. It supports what I said to Zok as I just saw it now. As I said profit at Sony zoomed up the charts in 2017. Yet their employee count in 2017 was 128k and now 109k."Scrooge"
MS have never made more profit before and they are still doing the mass layoffs.
Thats an employee reduction of 15% alone since 2017 despite skyscraper profit bars.
The problem is that you are equating that all to mass layoffs. Profits aren't even soaring every year like they have for MS. There has been reduced empolyees at Sony sure. One example is Evolution Studios but again they kept those people in a job and Codemasters bought the studio. Reduced employee count, no mass layoffs. I just find it strange but I guess inevitable to even bring Sony up here. Especially when they recently paid $1.2B for retention incentives and are trying to hire some of the people affected by this. They obviously can still lose employees but that doesn't mean they are "scrooge" just because their employee numbers have declined over the years.
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Topher
Gold Member
But as you said, more than likely downsizing through attrition.
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octiny
Banned
TheThreadsThatBindUs
Member
Nah, goon.
I speak the truth as I see it. Only insecure fanboys on the forum get triggered by it.
Your replies really just rest my case.
DenchDeckard
Moderated wildly
Also, let me make this easier to understand for you.
$68.7 billion / 10,000 employees = $6,870,000 per each employee they are now letting go.
Sounds like you have a firm grip on reality.
Hendrick's
If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
Just because you can afford to pay people doesn't mean you should. If they overhired, which it looks like they did, that's something you can criticize. Laying off redundant or ineffective employees is something all businesses have to deal with to stay profitable.