MSFT manager of 25+ person team here with no actual heads up on this. The writing has been on the wall for months though from internal comms so this should come as a surprise to no one.
No one on my team has any information about this beyond the Satya email, so this is either a "no news is good news" situation (assuming you don't actually want to be laid off), or a poorly executed process. I'm hoping for the former for the sake of my team.
It is a poorly executed process: "... the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3". So employees will have to live with uncertainty for the next three months!
You are not disagreeing with gp: they are saying Microsoft will inform the people in 30 days, that's when they'll get a 60-day paid notice and the uncertainty ends. Hence the "30 days of uncertainty"
I know some teams who had a sudden team meeting scheduled by their skip manager for 9 am today. I suspect this is how organization changes will be communicated to affected teams.
Not true. Companies share material non public information internally. What they do is they have blackout periods where you cant trade the stock, and constant reminders not to trade based upon material non public information (insider trading)
Tl;DR = possessing insider info != insider trading
Generally speaking, with a layoff, they want all employees to hear it from official sources and not internal rumors.
Other companies stopped backfilling a while ago but doesn't mean they plan on laying people off (and you can look at 2008-2010 for reference to see that some companies didn't backfill but didn't have layoffs). Not over-growing and then shrinking through attrition is one way to rightsize a company in tougher times.
People asking VPs about layoffs in public AMAs and getting answers to the effect of "it's our responsibility to make sure that we're right-sized for the upcoming year."
Cost cutting. Move to floating desk and reduction in building space. There were few more things. But the shift to floating seats was a big indicator that serious cost cutting is happening. And everyone guessed that layoffs are next.
I am based in India. US folks would have seen different signs
It's designed so that no one can be blamed because you never know who took the decision and that no one has a chance to speak up against it.
My understanding is also that during mass layoffs big companiess can't just cut all low performers / juniors so this might be completely random but we just don't get to know that.
How can you actually signal you want to be laid off? Is that something you say when the news goes out? Loads of "NoFuture" cooperate punk in the FAMG. Monopoly does not make the work interesting.
In places where a "consultation process" is legally mandated, that's one of the things you get to discuss. In UK redundancies I have been asked "do you want to take voluntary redundancy?"
Can you give an example of what a broadly speaking internal comm(not anything specific to MSFT) would look like that might be a red flag for future layoffs?
While there is no good way to do a mass-layoff, I don't particularly like the way this was communicated. There's a lot of flowery language and the fact that there will be massive layoffs is only said in passing in the third paragraph.
This will never be good news, obviously, but please communicate the important facts clearly.
The only honest thing he could have said would be: "Look, in the end this about shareholder value and we need to sacrifice some people in order to create shareholder value. I know, it sucks, but let's not kid ourselves, we all knew that's the game we are playing here at Microsoft (or any publicly traded company). We got some nice perks while it lasted but unfortunately the party is over now. We will do our best to ensure everyone affected gets a fair severance package.".
"Look, investors have low confidence in the market right now and all our competitors are doing it. I need to send a signal or the stock is going to keep going down and I wont get my full yearly bonus. In the end it's all about the quaterly share price. I know, it sucks, but let's not kid ourselves, we all knew that's the game we are playing here: go work for a small company if you want long term strategy. We might buy you when you are done innovating. You can always come back next year if it's a hiring market anyway."
"Also, we're Microsoft so just like any FAANGM the hires will just keep coming anyway, so not like we have to worry that no one will work for us. We will just trim the bottom X% performing people and anyone determined to be too difficult to work with."
I mean I don't understand the big announcement in the first place; with a company that large, reducing staff count by 10K can be done organically, simply by not hiring replacements.
Which makes me think of two things; one, they want to get rid of very specific people, people who wouldn't quit on their own. And two, that they can't just reduce staff count without an announcement, because staff count is one of those metrics that shareholders use to determine whether they're staying, buying or selling stocks.
A quiet reduction of staff? They can't hire people anymore, this is bad, I should sell my stocks!
A round of layoffs? They're cutting costs, which will be good for profits, I should buy more! Or sell because I've lost confidence.
Honestly, the stock market and shareholders are not rational.
The announcement itself has an "if-by-whiskey" feel to it. On the one hand, they claim to be "aligning cost structure with revenue". On the other hand, they also claim to be investing in "strategic areas for our future". It tries to spin it in a way that appeals to both value and growth investors respectively.
Some low performing employees just wont leave on their own. Sometimes its the higher performers who feel they deserve more compensation and leave. With your proposal the company could end up with only the low performers which is the opposite intent of a layoff
How does that analogy work? Traditionally salt is very valuable. It was even used as payment/money at times (worth your salt). You can preserve food with it. It gives food flavor (if you've ever accidentally omitted salt from baked goods, like bread and cookies, you know how terrible things taste without salt).
Maybe some of them can add some expertise to help ReactOS[0]. :-)
(Yes, I know about copyright law and taint, but there is an awful lot to be done which isn't specifically commiting code to the main project. Unit tests, debugging, porting other software, create a startup for embedded "Windows" deployed with ReactOS with free licensing etc.)
Whereas with firing everyone's success is now tied to how well they can lie to higher management.
THE Recipe for success, that is.
It doesn't even make sense. They're going to fire 10k people. The result? A 1.2 BILLION charge. Firing these people costs them 120000$ per person. And with that, their personnel cost won't drop until end of Q3 + let's say 2 months, so let's call it 2024. They could have let each of these employees do nothing until 2025 for the same amount of money!
They will definitely hire 20k people by 2025 too. It just seems to awkward and stupid.
Layoffs over a certain size in a location have to be announced legally, WARN act I think is the name.
Usually reductions in staff are well received by Wall Street because operating expenses should be reduced. I think there's a joke about a CEO saying "oh stocks down, time for layoffs!"
I hate it when head honchoes try and get cozy with you by signing off with their First Name only --way to take the name away from anyone else in the company with the same name. 99% of the people in a large company like that never met you and don't know you on a first-name basis.
It's an attempted mind fuck to disguise the true power dynamic. If they say "we're making cuts, you're done. Leave your laptop on your desk and clear off", it's clear what the power dynamic is.
Instead they present themselves as your friend. Even if you don't believe it, social norms dictate that in general you act like you do. Like Zizek says, "fuck you, you're a boss, act like it!". Then you're unsure of what's happening. Do they really feel bad? Maybe they're trying their best, maybe they really care about me personally.
It's same with all this corporate-speech that's been emerging recently. They're not your family, they're not your friends, and if it comes to it they will fist you so hard you'll be tasting their perfectly-manicured nails.
I think it's very important to always have this in mind and not to tie up your identity with your work. You are a line item on a spreadsheet somewhere to them, nothing more. If you start believing otherwise you are setting yourself up for mental health problems when your use runs out and they kick you to the kerb.
Satya is appointed by shareholders, not by employees. Employees can't fire Satya.
And while employees might give him a hard time for this, shareholders can definitely give him a harder time if they see a (potential) decline in dividend. So cutting cost to keep dividends steady with a decline in profitability and revenue is the easiest fight for him.
While it sucks, when working for a large tech company which is publicly traded like Microsoft antics like this should be no surprise to anyone.
> shareholders can definitely give him a harder time
What's the worst they can do? Fire him? He's worth somewhere between $300m-$800m according to Google. Even if he's "only" worth $100m. He'll never have to worry about providing/monthly expenses to cover rent/food. Can't say the same for employees. Obviously that's not his responsibility/concern. Just an interesting take.
What's harder? Getting squeezed by shareholders or being unable to afford your rent?
Most employees at tech firms, Microsoft included, are awash in their employer's stock. It's not in their best interest to intentionally tank the stock.
Tech workers as a population are rather anti-union. Things need to get a lot worse before most will get on board with one, unfortunately. Everybody thinks they're a special snowflake getting one over on the company.
Those 10k in this case appear to be the low performing or team shutdowns where transferring doesn't make sense.
5% headcount reduction is attainable just by freezing hiring and letting churn happen and performance management.
With nearly any company I've seen employees who can dodge performance but are a low performing employee. It drags down their team, and makes your high performers quit.
Layoffs like this might not even have front line managers input aside from, "who is critical to keeping the lights on in the company". All those things that have helped an employee avoid being PIP'ed out are gone.
The managers who I've talked to in these situations will almost always pick their high performing individuals regardless, because they know if they don't they'll be cut next due to poor performing team.
Is Microsoft laying off executives too? Or will this only affect the rank and file?
IME, if the company does not let go of executives, they are just tagging along with their peer companies on the layoff train. If they do make cuts at the VP/SVP level then the company really does have margin/profitability issues.
You must be new here. I work for a blue chip Fortune 200 widely known for their binge-and-purge cycles. Management is never affected. They just reshuffle the cards.
I've been predicting another "purge" in 2Q, but I suspect we will lag the tech sector, so maybe it will be EOY.
If the evidence suggested that periodic layoffs are good for company longevity and profit margins, you can bet that none of these academics would shout it from the rooftops.
Moreover, none of the evidence was collected under the current economic environment, where a decade of cheap money and growth fantasies have fueled an unsustainable hiring frenzy.
> If the evidence suggested that periodic layoffs are good for company longevity and profit margins, you can bet that none of these academics would shout it from the rooftops.
Have you ever taken an economics class? Plenty of economists take a perverse glee in claiming that things like the minimum wage and child labor laws are detrimental, I don’t think that “sometimes layoffs are good” is a taboo point.
And that’s before we get into discussing business school professors…
I'm not saying it's taboo to the point of not being discussed at all, but when have you last seen anyone come out strongly against child labor laws in some news outlet? It may well be true that child labor laws can effectively worsen the situation of children in third world countries, regardless of how good the intentions of the lawmakers are. Minimum wage laws do price out the lowest-value workers from the job market - whether that's a net detriment to society or any individual is debatable, of course. As for the "perverse glee" that you see, it's probably the satisfaction you may get from disabusing others of their foolish idealism.
It's a social exercise at companies like Microsoft. You lay people off because you are expected to lay people off, hell you'll look irresponsible for not laying people off.
We're gonna sit here and pretend that Microsoft, a company that printed $72B in net income last fiscal year somehow needs to lay off 10k workers to survive?
Microsoft is not a welfare agency. Of course they don't need to lay off people, but they are obligated to improve the bottom line. If they have excess workers, they shouldn't have hired them in the first place. The question now is merely whether laying them off is worth it. From a societal standpoint, the layoffs may well be advantageous, because that labor is now free to join leaner companies that struggle to find workers.
There was a sentiment in an earlier discussion [0] that this is "a war on tech wages" but for years the argument was that tech will make many other jobs obsolete (which would justify wage growth for tech employees).
Remember, e.g., the Jack Ma era and his proclamations that we should all get into arts because tech will take care of the rest?
Is the current round of layoffs an admission that the "software will eat the world" scenario will not happen or an indication that it can be done with even fewer tech employees?
During growth, you make big plans and you invest in growth. You hire people to build new things.
Oh snap. Growth is gone.
You cancel your lofty plans and you stick with things that are working. Anyone who was hired for grand plan things is a burden and let go. Sure. Some under performers too, but I don’t think this current wave in the cycle is the end of software eating the world.
But money is still cheap, at least in the US. The US inflation rate was 6.5% at the end of 2022, and the interest rate was 4.5%. It's just not as cheap.
Yeah Stable Diffusion, Midjourney and the ilk are going to automate away some of the art jobs, or at least some of the workflow involved in art (concept art etc)
related: book tour by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctrow to discuss their new book, Chokepoint Capitalism! -- This conversation will explore a call to action for the creative class and labor movement to rally against the power of Big Tech and Big Media.
I think it's just going to turn people back into farmers and just doing things that are necessary for their survival rather than participating in an economy that no longer gives them a way to provide for themselves, people will just do what is required to get by.
Neither. The assumption is that, due to various reasons, the world in need of eating will shrink next year (if not later this year). As software requires a not insignificant amount of time to develop, work intended to eat next year is in development now, which means less work to go around compared to last year.
It is quite possible that these businesses are wrong about the future. They have been before. But as predicting the future is impossible, one has to make an educated guess and live with it.
> Is the current round of layoffs an admission that the "software will eat the world" scenario will not happen or an indication that it can be done with even fewer tech employees?
Either statement is reading too much into it. It's a reaction to economic conditions and the state of the labor market.
The Ontario government did something like this during the recession in the 80s. There were "Rae Days" a dozen forced unpaid days off for the public service to both save money and jobs, named after the premier of the time, Bob Rae.
Rae Days were reviled and helped end the viability of Rae's party the Ontario NDP.
The thing is... I don't get it? Would people have rather had mass layoffs? Rae 100% did the right thing here IMO.
The Federal Reserve wants to tame inflation by cooling the economy. I don't believe that historically that has ever been achieved without causing unemployment to rise.
These large companies are ultimately doing what the Fed wants them to do, no point blaming the c-suite for that?
It's politically incorrect to say the Fed is trying to make x% people lose their jobs but that's basically what they're scheming for the past year or so...
Its politically incorrect because you're not supposed to say the quiet part out loud.
Our system relies on the fear of the bottom. Capital is in charge, they require the threat of destitution in order to continue to get away with their continued extraction. When wages go up, more power is vested in the worker which isn't okay by the folks at the top.
They could all take massive pay cuts to preserve jobs. They have agency and they have chosen to enrich their stock price at the expense of people’s lives and well being.
Contrary to popular belief, at a company the size of MSFT - the execs could drop all their wages to $0 - and it would not be able to save 5% of the workforce from getting fired.
The execs get paid a lot - but there's not that many of them, and there's 200k people at MSFT making an average salary (with benefits) >$200k. That's >$40B per year. The execs don't take home >$2B per year.
Satya made <$60M last year. There's not 35 execs at MSFT making the same amount of money or higher. There's 18 others, and they make a lot less money on average.
MS c-suite makes a total of roughly ~$135,244,086, the board of directors make a total of about $4m (gates takes no salary at all, btw).
This 10k layoff, at an average salary of 190,302, is about $2b a year. So yeah not quite - but for them to suffer no consequences is still pretty gross.
Worse thing is that MSFT minted $72B in net income last year, so these layoffs are really about them saving...2.7% of net income in exchange for messing with the lives of 10k employees.
I just saw a headline yesterday based on a new study which said the average U.S. CEO's compensation is 399 times the average employee. So there's your number. A CEO taking zero would cover less than 400 employees. Also, keep in mind the vast majority of Satya's compensation is in long-term vesting stock options which can become worthless if the stock is lower in four years than it is this year. Also, due to how capital gains taxes work, Satya is going to hold his vested options for at least another year after they vest.
Plus, every sale of the company's stock by a key executive is immediately reported to the SEC and publicly available on the SEC and company's websites. Wall street watches this like a hawk. If any key exec unloads more than a few percent of their entire holdings at any one time, it will hurt the stock price pretty substantially. Effectively, it makes it so the CEO can't sell a lot their stock at once while they are CEO.
The big numbers you see for CEO compensation for this year are largely stock options that were granted years prior which vested this year. Almost all of Satya's compensation is performance-based instead of guaranteed. The company he leads must deliver sustained profitable growth over the long-term for his comp to be worth a lot. The fact it's worth a lot this year is almost entirely due to him already delivering on his commitments to shareholders in the past. Keep in mind that the average public company CEO is in the CEO job less than five years. Satya is in the minority that is succeeding. Due to the high visibility of the CEO role, the majority who don't succeed have a high likelihood of never earning significant compensation again.
Why make a profit when you can pay your employees >100% of your revenue and just go into debt instead?
It's not how business works.
You hire people if you need people, and you pay them the least you can get away with, so you maximize profits - because long ago, you raised money with the promise to the people you raised the money from that you would do this, and you have a Fiduciary obligation to do so...
That is what a lot of employees do. That is why these layoffs are probably happening, cutting 5% could have been done by freezing hiring and performance evals.
They're particular individuals who will take a stance like what you're outlining and sit in a limbo state outside of performance firing them. They bring down team moral, high performing employees feel cheated, etc.
I think it would be more accurate to say it exposes to the high performers that they are being cheated. Those employees are donating their time & effort to the company so that their bosses can drive fancy cars, fund yacht racing teams, take tourist trips to LEO, buy social media companies to use as toys, and pay off politicians to keep those same employees desperate. The owners want employees fighting amongst themselves for scraps because it keeps them distracted from their real enemy.
How many tech companies have never turned a profit? Uber didn’t until 2021. Investors sure didn’t care about fiduciary obligations built on profit when interest rates were low.
Have people gotten in trouble for breaking the fiduciary obligation by being nicer to workers? Has any one been in a serious chance for getting in trouble for being nicer to workers? I have always assumed this stuff is basically made up. It might be written somewhere, but no one is enforcing it. It appears to be greed and keeping the status quo.
> Have people gotten in trouble for breaking the fiduciary obligation by being nicer to workers? Has any one been in a serious chance for getting in trouble for being nicer to workers?
Being nice to workers, and never returning money to shareholders because you're overpaying your workers are two entirely different things.
FAANG has treated their workers quite well for a 10+ years, and shareholders have not cared, because profits and growth have been enormous.
They could've treated their workers much better and paid them 2-3x as much money, though. But they didn't. Because they would've gotten sued by shareholders.
> They could've treated their workers much better and paid them 2-3x as much money, though. But they didn't. Because they would've gotten sued by shareholders.
Probably not. Google makes $1.6 million in revenue per employee, and $400k in profit per employee. Wages in tech for these money printing companies are more set by arbitrary norms than any real financial basis.
The wages workers get aren’t because of lawsuit threats. I don’t follow that logic?
Compared to unions and socialist ideals, FAANG has treated workers okay because of the arbitrarily high income compared to when the working class gets even more exploited in other industries. Being better than bad situations doesn’t mean a good situation.
Some big tech companies were colluding to keep wages stagnant by not hiring workers at other companies. Wages were lower until the collision was uncovered and companies like Facebook came around and started paying more. Colluding against workers is not treating them well.
Pay and some stock options aren’t the only ways to treat workers better. Capitalism doesn’t have to control every part of why we are nice to other people.
Long ago capitalism and then neoliberalism infected our brains. There’s no rational reason why any of these promises were made in the first place while still having people without health care or a home.
> For example, when interest rates go down, it becomes cheaper to borrow, so households are more willing to buy goods and services, and businesses are in a better position to purchase items to expand their businesses, such as property and equipment. Businesses can also hire more workers, influencing employment. And the stronger demand for goods and services may push wages and other costs higher, influencing inflation.
My layman’s understanding is that near zero interest rates make borrowing nearly free and so investments like lots of headcount are rational. The companies don’t have to be doing the borrowing directly (though some do), they can simply benefit from investors willing to tolerate more risk since they have fewer “safe returns” as options, or more income from consumers who are willing to spend at low interest rates.
By lowering interest rates to the point people chased ever more expansive and risky investments. If all your competition is getting free money you as a business must generally take it too or extinguish to your over-capitalized competition. People also have more loose money which means if you can't up your production your customers will find alternatives and your business will dry up.
People with health issues should still be able to purchase their existing insurance through COBRA, and, once that expires, through the public exchanges that are guaranteed to cover their existing condition. Thanks ACA.
When I left Microsoft I believe the cost I was quoted for COBRA was thousands a month - not quite as much as my salary when I was working there but enough that it would have rapidly depleted my savings if I didn't find another job immediately.
When you enroll in COBRA, you are responsible for paying both the employer's contribution and your own contribution. This can amount to thousands of dollars per month. It may be more cost-effective to consider state insurance options or those available on healthcare.gov. I took COBRA in the past and I know about this.
Entirely serious question: is COBRA actually of any use to anyone? From where I sit it's always been pretty aspirational since it requires you to also pay the employer side of the insurance which is colossally more expensive than the employee side, and you are expected to do this while being out of work?
It's useful for 60 days, since for 60 days (or maybe it's 90 or 30, I forget -- look it up yourself if you need it, don't listen to me) you can elect it retroactively. So you can go without insurance, and as long as you haven't hit the 60 days, you can retroactively pay for it if a devastating emergency happens. Actually dealing with this would be a huge logistical hassle, and god help you if you're hospitalized, unconscious, and can't file the paperwork or get someone else to, but at least you probably wouldn't go bankrupt.
Hopefully that buys you some more time to find a new job or line up an ACA plan if you're in a state with decent ACA plans, because actually paying for COBRA out of pocket for months at a time is indeed very expensive.
(It also would be totally worth it if you had existing expensive health care needs in your family)
Just to be clear. Employees ARE paying that full amount while employed. It is part of their benefits. They don't feel the cost, but it is there all the same.
No, that’s not it. The cost is sky high because its the price that your employer, plus you normally pay. At tech companies in particular where the employer usually picks up 90-100% of the cost, it makes COBRA look crazy expensive when you suddenly have to pay 100% instead of 10%.
I believe it; but is interesting in the context that I have purchased ACA plans on the open market comparable to my company insurance, and they were far far below the cobra price. For reference a basically identical ACA healthcare.gov plan I bought for ~1k when COBRA charged something around $3k.
There’s a hack for COBRA if you’re immediately switching jobs: Sign up for COBRA but don’t make the payments. If something really bad happens before coverage at your new employer kicks in, make the payments and the claims.
You can opt out of it (or not opt in) up until, I believe (and correct me if I'm wrong) for up to a year after leaving the job meaning that you can deny coverage UNLESS something major comes up then you pay from that point on. So it's useful for that event, some emergency coming up.
I've never paid for it, the one time I had it come up it was something like $800/mo for me as a single 20s laid off person. Not top priority.
> once that expires, through the public exchanges that are guaranteed to cover their existing condition. Thanks ACA.
The ACA just states that insurers can't refuse a customer who wants to purchase a plan just because they have a preexisting condition. It doesn't actually require that the plan cover treatment for said condition.
In many states - including wealthier deep blue states - the marketplace plan options are actually quite terrible.
> Health insurers can no longer charge more or deny coverage to you or your child because of a pre-existing health condition like asthma, diabetes, or cancer, as well as pregnancy. They cannot limit benefits for that condition either. Once you have insurance, they can't refuse to cover treatment for your pre-existing condition.
No, you are misreading it. They cannot limit benefits due to your condition, but that doesn't mean that they have to cover treatment for your condition.
If you have a disease or syndrome, the treatments for that condition (whether pharmaceutical, outpatient, or inpatient) may simply not be on the list of benefits provided by the insurance plans offered.
It's legally distinct from, but analogous to, a nodiscrimination clause. They can't refuse to cover your mammogram (which they cover for everyone else) just because your initial diagnosis for Vamipiric Brain Syndrome occurred before your plan went into effect. But they can choose to say they they don't cover Nosferatudone for anyone (when Nosferatudone happens to be the only effective treatment for Vamipiric Brain Syndrome).
(There are, separately, certain treatments that all insurance plans must cover by law, although that's separate from the ACA, and it's a very limited set).
The ACA has "minimum value" requirements and defines what constitute "essential health benefits" that plans must include to satisfy the ACA's coverage requirements and be eligible for sale on healthcare.gov or state-level marketplaces: https://www.healthinsurance.org/obamacare/essential-health-b...
> The ACA has "minimum value" requirements and defines what constitute "essential health benefits" that plans must include to satisfy the ACA's coverage requirements and be eligible for sale on healthcare.gov or state-level marketplaces
Yes, I'm well aware of that, and those requirements are incredibly bare-bones. Nearly any insurance provided by employers far exceeds those requirements, whereas the same cannot be said for insurance provided on the marketplace.
This post is about people who are losing employer-provided insurance, and there's almost no universe in which the non-COBRA options available to most of those people aren't markedly worse than what they're losing, even if we ignore the increased cost of self-purchased insurance.
Yes, you're always able to buy a bad health insurance plan. But you're also able to buy a good health insurance plan, and your pre-existing condition won't impact the price of the good insurance plan.
> Yes, you're always able to buy a bad health insurance plan. But you're also able to buy a good health insurance plan,
If one exists, and as I stated in the original post, in many states, even the best plans available on the marketplace are quite terrible. And that's a problem that's actually gotten worse in recent years, not better, as plans have left the exchange (and providers have dropped marketplace plans from their networks).
> and your pre-existing condition won't impact the price of the good insurance plan.
Your "pre-existing condition" won't impact the price of the insurance plan relative to others who are purchasing that same plan, but you quite likely will be in a situation where the "good" (eg, gold) plans are the only ones which will provide the coverage that you need, and those are the most expensive ones. This satisfies the letter of the law, but in practice it still means that often people with chronic health condition either are are forced to pay more for coverage or are literally unable to get coverage for their conditions at all (because none of the marketplace plans will cover it).
The protections provided by the ACA are much more narrow than you're portraying them as, which is understandable because it's a common misconception about how the ACA operates, but it's unfortunately a very important distinction.
Do you have any evidence that the plans aren't sufficient? Others in the thread have mentioned they have gotten nearly identical plans to their old employer plans. People I know who buy their own health insurance have totally adequate coverage, and this is in a "blue northeast state" that, according to you, has inadequate options.
> Others in the thread have mentioned they have gotten nearly identical plans to their old employer plans.
One person said this, without mentioning either their state or any details of their previous plan.
> a "blue northeast state" that, according to you, has inadequate options.
I did not say that every "blue, northeast state" has "inadequate options". I said that many states have terrible options, and that, contrary to the stereotype of ACA issues being limited to poorer red states that refused to expand Medicare, this set includes wealthier blue states.
> Do you have any evidence that the plans aren't sufficient?
You stated that "public exchanges are guaranteed to cover their existing condition", an assertion of universality. This is completely false, for reasons that I have explained. The federal statues guaranteeing coverage for individual conditions are incredibly narrow and exclude both the most expensive conditions for patients, as well as almost all expenses for chronic conditions.
Furthermore, it's very easy to disprove this assertion of universality, because it's incredibly easy to find counterexamples - the ACA has been around for a decade, and there are tons of forum posts all over the past ten years from people struggling to find non-COBRA coverage that continues to match their needs after losing a job. A marketplace plan cannot deny you an insurance plan for a preexisting condition, but that doesn't mean that there exists a marketplace plan that will cover it.
The fact that you happen to know people who are satisfied with their coverage for themselves is neither here nor there, because it does not contradict the main point: the ACA is no guarantee that people losing their jobs will actually have any non-COBRA options to address their health needs (and given that Microsoft has pretty comprehensive insurance and employs people in nearly every state, it's all but certain that the marketplace options will be appreciably worse for many of those people than the status quo).
Wow, a lot of words and not a shred of evidence that some blue northeast states have inadequate coverage. Yes, some blue states having adequate coverage does not mean all such states have adequate coverage. However, you have provided absolutely no evidence of inadequate coverage in a blue northeast state. So what do we know? At least some blue northeast states, and maybe all blue northeast states, definitely have adequate coverage.
Let's be clear: you made a bold claim without evidence. I responded with an explanation of why your claim is incorrect, based on the actual text of the law which defines the terms. I also provided specific examples of the differences, which are in the post you just responded to.
At no point have you provided any actual evidence, other than an unsourced offhand anecdote (which I addressed), to support your bold initial claim.
I've taken the time to provide much more in the way of both evidence and explication than you have presented. If you'd like more, then perhaps first you can provide some concrete evidence to support the scope of your original, claim, and also address the specific examples that I revealed which refute the premise of your claim.
The only who has made a claim here is you: your claim is that the ACA's guarantee of pre-existing condition coverage doesn't matter because there exists places that only have inadequate healthcare options available for purchase. You have provided no evidence for this claim.
Others here have provided first-hand accounts of acquiring adequate coverage on exchanges.
> Does private employer insurance not have the same limitations?
Yes, but insurance sold to private employers is a completely different market, and it is almost universally better than the insurance plans available on the exchanges.
Doesn't this create a huge incentive for people to buy rolling "temporary" insurance plans which can consider pre-existing conditions, and then switch to subsidizing off the healthy once they actually get a condition and buy the regular ACA plans?
Yes, and that's one reason why costs have ballooned so much, the need to subsidize people who didn't pay while they didn't have a condition and now do. The temporary plans aren't even necessary, if you can wait until the next regular enrollment period.
The ACA originally tried to hide that vulnerability by making insurance mandatory, then it appeared when that forcible mandate was repealed.
Edit to reply to the reply: Right, it's not insurance. Insurance is pooling risk. If you wait until the risk event has already happened, it's not insurance, it's just paying your own costs with extra steps.
... so we have the worst of both worlds. Insurers are forced to take pre-existing conditions, but you can wait until you have a condition before buying it.
I don't think that's even "insurance" at that point....
America may quite possible have the absolute dumbest system humanly possible.
The best part? The US spends more per captia than any other OECD nation on socialized medicine. The United Kingdom's NHS costs around half, per capita and delivers universal coverage.
Yeah. As a a pretty hardcore ancap who hates socialized anything, I'll still take NHS over our current system. Anything is better than our current bastardized system.
"Temporary" plans are 1-12 months so you can buy ones that last until the next open enrollment, and if you're healthy you buy another (12 month) temporary plan. If you develop a condition you buy the regular plan.
American companies/privilege benefit from the US being the hegemonic imperialist power of the world while screwing over the Global South. Domestic America has arguably never created a company like MS either.
Plenty of profitable companies in Europe. It might be easier to become profitable in the US since you have less of a safety net, but that's a price US voters are willing to pay. Pointing to corrupt developing countries whenever socialized healthcare is brought up is disingenuous.
IIRC, Salesforce also did the same thing. Announced layoffs that would happen over the course of a year, with some effective immediately.
It feels like it would demoralize workers; everyone was already on eggshells leading up to such an announcement and it would suck to continue working while stepping on eggshells for a full year, wondering if tomorrow is your day.
I've seen both. Imo announcing layoffs ahead of time is better because while demoralising it at least gives people time to prepare and a sense that the company cares enough about you to be honest with you and aid with a smooth transition to your next role.
I worked for place which did several mass layoffs. The way they did it was by emailing everyone at end of day Thursday explain that everyone needed to be in the office at 9am tomorrow. Then the next day they'd call people into rooms one by one and tell them they no longer have a job.
It sucks for two reasons, one because in the span of 24 hours you go from feeling secure to panicking about finding a job. And two because everyone who is still there knows that at any point the same thing could happen to them.
The places I've been where they've been up front have been much more pleasant in comparison. While people can feel stressed and demoralised they at least know where they stand and can keep their options open. Managers come across as honest and sympathetic to the situation instead of secretive which helps avoid rumours of impending mass layoffs every couple of months. Plus it also gives everyone a chance to say goodbye.
The entire situation is silly. People shouldn’t be panicking about losing health care etc because of layoffs. Corporations shouldn’t have this much power.
Part of the severance is 60 days notice of any layoff, so nobody would be blindsided in that sense.
I also don’t see how it gives people time to say goodbye considering you still won’t know who is leaving until they’re laid off, which can happen anytime anyways.
Spreading it out does nothing but create more stress and pressure for both the people going and the people staying.
Big brain: I'm telegraphing that we'll be letting lots of people go so they will self-select and we won't have to fire as many. I imagine that someone could have this idea, but I doubt it benefits the company in practice.
Micro brain: 'If you have not received notice that are are affected, your are safe! Resume being 100% productive until you receive notice that you are fired at a later time. That is all.'
Having lived through 2001 dot-com bust, I can say that being the retained employee can be worse than being laid off.
It depends on your circumstances. I had months of sleepless nights when I survived the sequential layoffs at the company where I was working, trying to work out what I could do to secure my wife and I, but had I actually been laid off the theoretical would have been real. I knew good people who were out of work for a year. Not bad people, people generally considered very solid.
If I was laid off tomorrow, though, it would be a relief and I could call it a day.
1 They have to. It’s a “material event” that could impact the stock price, so they have to communicate to investors, once a decision has been taken.
2 They probably want to. It creates clarity for employees after what other commenters here described as months-long rumours. The damage to morale would be greater if they do it in pieces.
I’ve heard this is due to differences in local laws. In the US rumors say it will all happen today. In other countries it may differ. I’ve heard this but can’t confirm if it’s true.
The best explanation I've read so far, layoffs are more a sign of "social contagion" and "copycat " behavior rather than based on sound economic reasons.
Interview with Microsoft’s CEO was posted by WSJ within past 24-hours that includes questions about if workers should be concerned about AI taking their jobs. My understanding was he expected companies to retrain their workforce to leverage AI. I would be super curious to hear his reasoning for why Microsoft did not take his own advice.
Satya Nadella: Microsoft's Products Will Soon Access Open AI Tools Like ChatGPT | WSJ - YouTube
This assumes AI taking people's jobs has anything to do with these layoffs. The press release mentions AI, but not in that context. I don't think these people are being laid off because MS is getting ChatGPT to write their code instead.
Understand your response, though my understanding is he meant AI would enable employees to be retrained using AI to create more value — not that the employees would be replaced by AI; meaning even a non-tech employee would become a tech employee using AI and as a result would become valuable enough not to fire After being retrained.
>U.S.-benefit-eligible employees will receive a variety of benefits, including above-market severance pay, continuing healthcare coverage for six months, continued vesting of stock awards for six months, career transition services, and 60 days’ notice prior to termination, regardless of whether such notice is legally required.
Wow, that way way, better than what we get by law in my EU country when you're laid off (just unemployment benefits). Looks like big tech in the US has loads of perks.
It depends on what you understand with very generous unemployment benefits. Te me just the fact that there is universal healthcare makes the unemployment benefits way better.
I am a EU citizen having lived in the US for almost a decade and I still can't overcome the stress of losing my job because of this.
With the higher salary in the US, especially as a software engineer, you could easily put a little bit aside to pay for a healthcare exchange plan for a while if you do ever lose your job.
I wonder where EU tech workers (big or not) fit in this. Certainly pay is less than US, but when I worked in Europe, everyone took all of their vacation time and generally did not work beyond regular business hours. Where I work today in the US, even junior devs (i.e. no on-call or general need to fight fires outside of regular hours) are grinding away on nights and weekends. The only way I can basically take a half-day here and there during the week to ski is because my team would be screwed without me, but it's still a pressure cooker compared to my last job in Europe; "I'm going to be bikepacking in Sweden all of August and won't be reachable" -> guess which OOO notice that job came from? xD
> Where I work today in the US, even junior devs (i.e. no on-call or general need to fight fires outside of regular hours) are grinding away on nights and weekends.
Wow. Most places are not like that. Get out of there.
It's amazing how prevalent this type of attitude is and not only in tech but in like menial jobs I've had when I was young as well. People actually think they are Atlas, supporting the entire operation and without them it would collapse. It's just not true, ever. It doesn't mean people aren't valued and that the organization is better off with them, but just because an individual can't see an organization working without them doesn't mean they can't.
We don't say it out loud because it's not polite but everyone is replaceable. In fact, there's many things we don't say because we are polite but I sort of feel like people tend to mistake politeness for support. But that's another thing all together and I digress.
Depends on the EU country. Where I live you get 60% of your pay for something like 6 months, plus the public healthcare coverage.
Though, it's not exactly a vacation, as you're expected to prove to the unemployment office you are actively looking for a job and interviewing and you're not allowed to leave the country during that period. I mean you can leave the country, nobody will stop you, but you'll not receive unemployment or healthcare coverage for the period you're out of the country.
You can make it a vacation if you're system savvy enough and know how to game the system and aren't risk averse.
You can leave easily and officially Germany during unemployment. Just bring the proof, that you sent your weekly applications and tell the Arbeitsamt officer that you’re leaving. They don’t really care about white collar workers making much more money than they do anyway. Their focus were blue collar workers and special cases like illiterate foreigner anyway. At least 5 years ago in Baden-Württemberg.
A lot of that will be to avoid costly lawsuits with employment tribunals etc.; cheaper for companies like microsoft, trying to reduce headcount, when a large number of their employess have the resources to fight (and after the layoffs will also have the time too)
Fundamentally, they chose this approach because those who receive the benefits will have to sign NDAs and because they don't want their reputation as an employer to be poisoned.
Seems predictable that this announcement would come right after switching to unlimited PTO. I would imagine this reduces the money that the company plans to pay out by quite a bit if they used to pay outgoing employees for unused PTO. Maybe I'm being unnecessarily cynical, though.
I think it is more about the employees who stay. Giving unlimited PTO is a way to make the remaining employees more happy. So it is like a way to try to balance out the negative effects of the layoff on team moral...
There is nothing unlimited about unlimited PTO. Its a removal of a paid benefit. When they let you go they don't have to pay for accrued PTO.
There is no contract stating how much PTO you can take, its up to your manager, could be zero, could be four weeks, who knows. Could change when your manager changes.
Its an accounting trick to remove PTO from the accounting books and remove a paid benefit to employees.
It's mixed. From my personal observations the more junior folks and the people less up to date on the discourse around unlimited PTO are happier, but people who are aware of the knock-on effects on company culture, pressure to deliver, etc. are unhappy.
I wish I could get unlimited UNpaid time off. 90% of the value I create at work happens during initial factory line bringup and the last few weeks before shipping something. I'd go hang out somewhere cheap and live like a king most of the year
It was only in May last year that Mr Nadella announced a pay rise for MS staff in order to stay competitive i.e. keep them from being poached by Meta etc.
All the news is saying that its a mild recession but layoffs is a longer term solution in cost reduction. Basically Big Tech isn't optimistic about the industry for at least 2023. Is the recession going to be worse than we expect?
It seems like tech companies are being more severe with their layoffs because they were over aggressive with hiring during the pandemic. Many went through a massive surge in demand which they either thought was going to be permanent or had to hire to keep the machine moving.
The inflation rate has decreased 7 months in a row now. The yield curve is still inverted but... less inverted? S&P 500 is not falling through the floor and even making slow and steady gains. GDP is still growing. I get we're uncharted territories with the negative interest rates we're seeing in other countries, but who exactly is bold enough to predict a recession? If anything it just seems like uncertainty in general
> Could there be a tech recession? Yes. Was there a bubble in valuations? Absolutely. Did Meta overhire? Probably.
I'm glad we agree
> But is that why they are laying people off? Of course not. Meta has plenty of money. These companies are all making money.
How does this follow any logic at all. He does not even dispute that overhiring took place.
Should companies continue with a stupid hiring frenzy until they run out of money? This is the logical implication.
> They are doing it because other companies are doing it.
How is this explanation better than any other? This is such a strong claim and he offers ZERO evidence for it. And gross overgeneralizations like "oh, there are cases in which..." are argumental rubbish.
This infuriates me because this is bad science and plainly opinionated.
1) I really have no issues with layoff in Big Tech. They pay very very well and no parent who was let go can't feed his family all of a sudden. If you were even a semi-decent employee, you can find a job at another place quickly. So many places still look for people in spades.
There are as many good business reasons to contract your workforce, as there are bad ones. And it's likely you hired a lot of low-performers and quacks during peak hiring. Now is the time to do so without creating public outrage.
2) This implies that the reason for layoffs are exclusively linked to payrolls. And the guy in the interview suggest as much as well. I dispute this notion.
Nope. In the "good old days" corpos got thay a move like this would kill morale. Nowadays in the "you should be grateful you have a job" days corpos no longer care. It's great because they can squeeze more work from the people left behind and they also have flexibility when it comes to opportunistically shedding workers around key date (ie earnings)
No one on my team has any information about this beyond the Satya email, so this is either a "no news is good news" situation (assuming you don't actually want to be laid off), or a poorly executed process. I'm hoping for the former for the sake of my team.