back to article Ballmer email kicks off second round of Microsoft layoffs

Steve Ballmer has emailed all Microsoft staff as the second wave of planned redundancies at the software giant begins to bite today. Earlier in the year, Ballmer announced 5,000 job losses as Microsoft works to cut costs in the face of a shrinking world economy. He said the firm would cut jobs by the middle of 2010. Ballmer's …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    No on is immune

    I just with they had started from scratch on Win7 instead of heaping it on that steaming pile known as Vista.

  2. Hedley Phillips

    Vista dev team first to go

    Or they should be.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Yeah, and they're moving fast

    Within 2 hours of the email it was all go on the layoffs - the first bunch will have been informed already.

  4. Rob Welsh
    Coat

    Thanks for all your hard work......

    .......now fuck off. Of course I'll still be paid my astronomically obscene wages for consistently making a twat out of myself on stage and for being at the helm during the period when Microsoft sold arguably their shittest OS to date, but hey ho that's how it goes....

    ..... mines the one with the Vista MCP badge.

  5. Colin Wilson
    Linux

    "continue to "provide support" to people laid off"

    For a moment there, I read that as provide support for people who are pi$$ed off (aka pretty much anyone who uses Windows) - yeah, like that support train ever rolled into town :-p

  6. Eduard Coli
    Gates Horns

    Stupid

    Monkeyman Ballmer is Bill Gates' lab experiment gone wrong.

    After the layoffs he will then take a fat bonus on top of his already bloated and undeserved salary.

    To be sure he is an evil fuck and will not leave M$ until the building falls down or at least until he's had a chance to squeeze every last penny out of it.

  7. N

    I think

    The chimp shouting 'developers developer developers' should go

    no insults to primates intended

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Failing profits...

    Bill Gates - Richest man in world (I know he left)

    Making billions from selling licenses with computers that cannot handle vista.

    Still pumping out Windows XP..

    What are they losing. LIke 10p a day?>

  9. jon
    Alert

    morale

    "Thank you for your continued hard work, commitment, and focus"

    ROFLMAO - productivity will be down 50% unless it's intel sweatshop-esk in there, in which case they'll only working to their metrics.

    With a cash pile as big as microsoft, you'd think they'd keep people on and write a decent version of windows or office or something :]

  10. Gabriel Vistica
    Thumb Down

    Don't blame the dev team

    Yes, their code was pathetic, and full of bugs, and it barely ran at all.

    But the people who are really to blame are the "concept people" who tried to make the developers put in certain features, even though the developers knew they wouldn't work very well.

    Also to blame is the entire marketing team, who decided to bill Vista as the best thing ever (including sliced bread). They should've been a little more realistic, and then, IF it took off, they could up the hype a bit.

  11. Andrew Fraser
    Joke

    Naaww.. Hedley

    @Hedley

    The first people in the chair catapult should be the marketing team for Vista, the dev team was doing what they were told.

    We could have marketing Skeet shooting ! It would lower the head count (Literally) AND improve morale !

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vista Dev Team...

    ...is Hollywood. Or its lawyers.

  13. Noodle Noggin

    @Hedley

    Much as I'm inclined to point out the churlishness of wishing people would lose their *jobs*, I have to admit there are very few developers who don't seem to need a couple of 7.62 NATOs in the back of the head for one reason or another. Amazingly, a lot of them (or at least people claiming to be developers,) on the comments pages here. The old-style lobotomies just don't seem likely to be drastic enough to fix their problems.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    You know I wonder

    How much Ballmer and all his ass kissing cronies are getting paid in bonuses, options, etc. All the while laying off people who's only crime was going to work for the likes of MS in the first place.

  15. Shane Kent

    Get rid of...

    Get rid of monkeyman and the people/person whom decided to ship Vista with Windows Search and Defender services enabled. Several times I have seen either "I hate Vista" or "what is wrong with my PC", and after I turn those off people seem happy/happier. And whomever decided to hype thumb drives as a memory aid when it aids very few computers. Not saying don't put these features in, just disable the crappy ones and don't hype crappy or borderline useless features. And the entire Ultimate morons or give me VM with DOS6 and Win3x and Extras like that. Oh man how I could go on with whom should be laid off from MS!

    Lol, monkeyman probably already laid off the guy that could have turned around the company.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    Hold on, mate

    I have to fling this chair at your head whilst you're headed out the door.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Keep digging Steve

    Someday, after digging through all that gold you pissed away, by cranking out only marginal operating systems and average applications, you'll hit that layer of shit Microsoft so richly deserves.

    Here's some free advice, don't let the marketing wankers drive the oil barge... The barge doesn't move or maneuver that fast. Oh, and while I'm feeling generous, here's another freebie: For the most part, people want stuff that works at least 80% of the time (I know I'm aiming a little too high) without GB after GB of service packs, patches, hot fixes and updates, reformatting the hard drive and starting over from scratch, or dare I suggest, upgrading a machine weeks after purchasing it new.

    While I will openly admit I despise Microsoft and their pompous, self-righteous, our excrement doesn't stink attitude; I still have to give props to them for the os a commodity product. However, if it weren't for their greed, we wouldn't have things like the iMac or Linux, now would we?

  18. Nameless Faceless Computer User
    Joke

    They have how many developers?

    I thought Microsoft developers have all been replaced by lawyers years ago.

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