Nearly 18,000 Job Layoffs Anticipated at Microsoft

[VinWarrior]

Microsoft recently announced that unfortunately after the recent acquisition of Nokia, 18,000 employees will be fired and forced into unemployment within the next year, the majority in the Nokia department but some in the Xbox department as well.

 

If you hadn't heard, Microsoft recently bought out and adopted the Nokia brand of phones and electronics for 72 Billion USD, and they will be laying off a large amount of employees, though the number wasn't expected to be this large. GameSpot.com reports that Microsoft has revealed that the number is right at 18,000 jobs being affected. About 13,000 of these are in Nokia, but the Xbox Marketing Team will also be affected heavily. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did say that new jobs would be opened up, not stating how many, and that employees will be offered some basic assistance in finding new employment opportunities. This is the largest layoff event in the history of Microsoft, making about a 14% cut into the total amount of 100,000 or so employees. Investors surprisingly had a positive response in the first hours, however the stock quickly dropped soon after. More details will be made available soon, and I will update the article when we receive news.

 

 

Leave your response to the layoffs below, and what you think Microsoft should do specifically to help it's laid off employees. Thanks for reading guys, see you next time.

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[Unease Peanut]

Damn... That's a lot of people.

 

I hope they find new jobs A.S.A.P. Glad MS is at least going to help them through this.

[Sikslik7]

Large layoffs after a merger are quite common, typically due to companies having overlapping departments. Typically the companies will rehire most of the people, and reshuffle them where needed. This happened with the Compaq/HP merger a few years back. it's easier to fire a majority of a department, break it up into the main company, and then rehire those who lost their jobs. Just less shuffling of paperwork.

Edited July 17, 2014 by Sikslik7

[arthurjr98]

This news is good and bad.

 

The aquisition of Nokia was decided by former CEO Steve Ballmer. Who everyone universally agreed was driving Microsoft into the ground. Apparently Ballmer had to fight extremely hard in order to get permission to buy Nokia. After the buyout, it was pretty much expected by Microsoft higher ups that massive layoffs of these former Nokia employees would be necessary. I think it just happened to be coincidence that these Nokia layoffs and the Xbox Entertainment Studios closing are happening simultaneously. 

 

But this does not bode well for Xbox. They are already scrapping an enormous project before its even begun. I'm sure they have already dumped huge amounts of capital into getting this thing started too. I'm sure poor xbox console sales and future forcasts are what motivated Microsoft to close the XES. They probably figured that current and projected sales won't justify covering the costs of getting XES up and running. Which also means that the Xbox team likely won't have the freedom to experiment or open up new and future projects until what they have right now with the Xbox One starts making a significant turnaround.

 

In other words, this coming Christmas season needs to be killer for Xbox. If Xbox cannot get back into a healthy competitive position against Sony, it will likely get even harder for Xbox to maintain itself as a viable and profitable branch of the Microsoft Empire.

[Surveillance]

How is that okay? Doesn't America want to make jobs? Not get rid of them?

 

So much for increasing the workforce.

[AnimeAddict]

wow just wow is all i can say 

[Screech]

And Xbox Entertainment Studios got shut down before it even started... damn.