The name that shall not be spoken!
I actually kinda like Clippy. Now. From a distance.
The op just asks the question. There was a thread recently where someone sincerely proposed that one way to solve the current unemployment situation would be to require all businesses to operate 24/7. That the extra shifts would take up the slack in I employment. Many people thought that was a great idea. So if requiring companies to hire more people is a good idea, then stopping profitable companies from laying off its current employees would sound just as good.
Not evil.
You mean this thread? Not one post in the thread agreed with the OP except one person making a joke about blow.
This. Very much this.
It would also shut down most new hiring and innovation. Sometimes unproductive workers need to be kicked out the door both for their own sake and that of the common good. I say that as someone who has been laid off.
When I started 35 years ago a worker who was laid off was sometimes if not often thought of as being deficient in some way. No longer. Many people who hire have been laid off at one time or another, and notice of layoffs at a company brings the recruiters swooping down. Plus, whole groups get laid off, the good and the bad. So I haven’t seen many people consider someone who has been laid off as unproductive. Laid off four times in 6 years on the other hand…
You’re making some fairly large assumptions there.
I can’t necessarily agree with this either. I’m unsure exactly what types of employees they’ve laid off, but it’s not unreasonable, and in fact I’d think quite likely, that they laid off employees with a set of skills that are less desireable in today’s market, but are short on employees with a set of skills that are highly desireable.
I’m a computer scientist myself, as was my ex-fiancee who was working on an H1B visa. Being aware that Microsoft’s former stranglehold on the computer market has significantly eroded, particularly with the recent vast increase in the mobile computing area, the set of skills required for writing an old school OS and working on a modern mobile platform aren’t the same. I could very easily see Microsoft trading programmers that just don’t have those skills for ones that do. Similarly, vicariously through the experiences of my ex, though it was several years ago, the company she was working for was jumping through all kinds of hoops to hire her and keep her employed there precisely because her set of skills are uncommon. After hearing the expenses, red tape, and fees that went along with being allowed to hire her, I have little doubt that if they thought they could easily find an American with comparable skills, they would have done so.
So, sure, it looks bad to the uninformed, that a technical company fires a bunch of people, then wants to hire other people with relavant technical skills. There’s just nothing that says the first set that got fired actually had those technical skills they need.
And specifically to the OP, as most others have said, I don’t see Microsoft’s actions as remotely evil. A company’s obligation is to be efficient, so if employees aren’t needed anymore, they should get rid of them. The fact that they got severence packages, I think, shows a degree of humanity in realizing the difficulty that goes along with losing one’s job. And, ultimately, I think it’s better for everyone. If someone doesn’t have the appropriate technical skills, maybe they can go elsewhere where their set of skills will be of greater use, or maybe it will charge them to obtain a new set of skills that are necessary to be competitive in the modern technical fields. Meanwhile, Microsoft can refocus their business model on whatever direction they think is best for them.
For 1 employee, this might be true. For 100 employees, this might still be true.
When it gets to the thousands, though? It doesn’t hold up quite as well.
When Microsoft trims 18000 jobs, or almost 15% of their worldwide total, it’s not about skills mismatches for those folks. But that’s besides the point. Satya Nadella, the new MS CEO, already claimed this wasn’t about skills but about streamlining and efficiency.
So, yeah, there’s still cognitive dissonance there when their lobbying and PR efforts claim lack of skilled employees while their production “factory floor” guys are axing those kinds of employees to reduce costs.
Still not evil, but it’s the kind of headscratching “left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” move you sometimes get with large corporations. And, yes, it’s the sort of thing that they’re are currently getting blasted for in the press and even by some members of Congress.
That last would be “the skill of working cheap”, which is the primary skill sought by lobbyists for increased H1B quotas.
Most H1B visas in this country are not used by big companies looking for rare skills (though some are.) Most are used by American branches of Indian companies importing dime a dozen programmers. If we got rid of them, there would be plenty of visas available.
I’m not having a lot of trouble hiring highly trained people, but then our starting salaries are quite competitive. It does not surprise me that skills are not the issue - in fact I’ve never seen a case where they are. As Krugman notes, if there was a real shortage of skilled workers the salaries should increase, which is not happening. A lot of the complaints come from a company not paying enough to get top talent, or due to them wanting very specific skills in high demand and not being willing to train existing employees.
For the most part the skills we need are not taught in schools, except for the basics. We realize this and train and mentor new people. If we demanded that a new person be able to hit the ground running, we’d have a skills shortage also.
Is MS doing that?
Microsoft is not a sentient being. It is not alive. The picture on your wall cannot be evil, your dishwasher, car, pillow, or any other non-living thing can be evil. And Microsoft cannot be evil.
You really need to start reading US Supreme Court decisions, and Mitt Romney’s speeches.
Agreed.
A local plumbing contractor may not have the management depth to fruitfully shift employees to other parts of the company, or go into related businesses. Still, when there is an economic downturn, some plumbing contractors try a lot harder than others to avoid laying off staff. So do some technology companies. And those companies are to be praised.
See: No Layoff Policies and Corporate Financial Performance
I don’t know how hard Microsoft executives tried to find productive uses for these employees. I do believe they should have put great effort into finding a place for them, and should be upset with themselves over their failure to do so.
Evil? I don’t know enough of the situation to say. But if the executives who could not find productive uses for the redundant staff get bonuses for their cost-cutting, now, that would be evil.
Looking at this thread, one sees how it is today regarded as perfectly normal for still-profitable companies to lay people off. But this is something that creates enormous stress, tearing apart communities and families. It should be a last resort.
I’m not really sure if this is a serious or sarcastic comment; but I’ll just take it at face value. Microsoft is nothing like your dishwasher, car or pillow, it is not even close. Microsoft, as a corporation, undertakes many actions to sway public opinion and legal judgement. This I do not consider evil, but you are either misinformed or believe that this, this here, all of this, and this are just some sort of made up stuff put out there by people who hate Microsoft for no apparent reason.
Also, keep in mind that Microsoft basically bought another company and then trimmed some fat, but it is not as if they just needed to reduce their own original staff. The point is that to me this is completely different than some widget maker needing to let some people go because not as many widgets are being bought or some such thing.
I do not see how one can have a serious discussion of these issues without this background. Of course, without this context, those who believe differently than me (in other words those who think Microsoft is evil) would come off sounding kinda nutty.
Microsoft cannot be evil. The people running Microsoft can be evil. Although your examples are kinda lame. When I think evil I think Messersmidth using concentration camp slave labour, or Palmolive dropping shampoo into the eyes of cute bunnies - not “astroturfing” or laying off a small percentage of your workforce which are better off going to other companies where they can contribute and their work has meaning.
I take it you theorize that Microsoft is faking a shortage of qualified Americans b/c they…ummmm…because…
Because why, again?