>

I'm beginning to really like the words "corporate greed" because it implies companies are doing something they don't have to do, they just want to because money.
This is what the system is. This is exactly what it incentivizes. This is exactly what's required of companies by their shareholders, lest they take their money elsewhere.
Per TeamBlind they're doing so over 3 months.
Instead of a 5% staff reduction they get 100% of their staff panicking and interviewing elsewhere. Great thinking! >

If they quit and find a new job no severance! >

But then you get good workers, who weren’t going to get cut, leaving for elsewhere. >

But now they can hire cheaper less experienced people to do the same but lower quality work while making more profit! This is how large companies decline in quality. >

I wish we would hire some young developers, we have entire teams where everyone is over 40 because they don't want to spend time training anyone. >

I'm over 40.  Where I work, management tries to accomplish "training" by throwing the younger workers right into a complex task, and telling the more senior people to be on-call for questions and support.  Inevitably what happens is that the younger folks never ask questions, then when the SHTF, the senior folks have to scramble to figure stuff out in the remaining schedule.  It's pretty stressful. >

Do the older staff take questions well? I guess I'm getting closer to the old crowd now, but as a youngster coming into a job, I ALWAYS asked a LOT of questions because I'd rather learn to do it right the first time than do it wrong for months and get in trouble and have to correct now ingrained habits. Some people were very helpful, others were complete ass holes about it. I kept asking questions either way, but the environment where questions were discouraged, I got a reputation for being inept rather than curious and diligent... Jobs that answered my questions got a hell of a lot less questions pretty quickly along with good work product from me. When a team is constantly putting newbies down for asking questions, you get shitty work product from probably well meaning but poorly trained people. >

I am a senior and I absolutely love it when the juniors ask questions or want to discuss something. Working with young people is a joy and privilege, and I cannot understand why seniors would be put off by this. >

I had a manager that was a wealth of knowledge. She would not share that knowledge. She loathed questions. She saw it as lazy. She "had to learn it all on her own" so everyone else should get to, as well. Rather than a 5 minute talk, she expected people to spend hours researching it and figuring it out themselves. And then she'd get really upset when things were done wrong. >

They were also hiring like crazy for no apparent reason last year. Headcount went up 40,000 from 2021 to 2022.
Cutting 10k and the other minor previous cuts still adds up to significantly more employees remaining than they had in 2021 AFAIK. >

Lol so Microsoft CEO got a 10% raise in 2022 making $55 million. When will these bum executives ever take a pay cut?
Their lowest paid executive made $12 million last year >

Satoru Iwata, then-President of Nintendo, cut his and all executive pay after the Wii-U console proved to be a failure.  Unfortunately, the tech wasn't quite there yet.  He recognized and admitted his faults.
Incredibly sad that he died before the MASSIVE success of the Switch  which is effectively the console he envisioned when brainstorming the Wii-U.
As I've stated numerous times, I've watched executives and upper-management PERSONALLY make decisions that have cost our company (at least) millions of dollars but they are NEVER held responsible.  Instead, the company does a round of layoffs to makeup for the lost revenue then rehires for those positions a couple years later.  Conveniently, all at the base-level pay as well. >


the Wii-U console proved to be a failure. 

Maybe commercially but honestly I loved mine (still have it). I found it the best platform to play Zelda:BoTW because I love having a secondary screen to access map/inventory at a whim. >

That because it was designed originally with thw Wii U in mind. 
The Wii U really is a great system, years ahead of its time.  The most underrated game library in console history imo. >


The most underrated game library in console history imo

Pikmin 3 am i right? >

You know I finished one and two but didn't make it through three, it was mildly challengeing and haven't put it back in.  Mariokart 8, Yoshi Woolly World, Tropical Freeze are all such fire though. >


Mariokart 8, Yoshi Woolly World, Tropical Freeze are all such fire though.

Agreed but seriously if you made it through 1 you can beat 3 easy. >

I realized after I posted what it was. I never got used to the new controls for 3 in that they removed the "swarm" ability with the C stick from GameCube. 
If you've never played vs mode on pikmin 2 I highly recommended it. >


“No one can defy gravity and gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth,” he told WEF founder Klaus Schwab in a livestreamed discussion.

Interesting, since A Kansas City Fed report found that corporate price markups were 58% of 2021's inflation. The same year, U.S. corporate profits surged to their highest level since 1950 >

Yeah isn’t it funny how inflation is usually 7% (and is more this year) but everything has gone up at least 30%? These poor companies are making record profits since Covid hit! What a world!
Edit: My wife paid $5 for a dozen eggs (not even free range, no anti biotic, blah, blah, blah). They used to be the cheap option for protein and fats, may as well eat beef for every meal now. I guess I should add that I live in central NY
Edit 2: inflation is not normally 7% and eggs have gone up due to avian flu >


Yeah isn’t it funny how inflation is usually 7% (and is more this year) but everything has gone up at least 30%?

Inflation hasn't been in the 7% range since the late 70s/early 80s until this past year. It's definitely not "usually" 7%, at least in the US. >

Yeah, but this is reddit where you can say whatever garbage you want, and get enough upvotes that people will believe it's true. >

Sad but true >

A previous co-worker just got shit canned from MS. He was on the "neuro-diversity committee" and claimed to be autistic (he wasn't), and was doing everything to play the system. He's been bragging the last 18 months how he doesn't really do shit there but was making 240k a year. >

Good. Fuck that guy. >

Yes, fuck that guy.
Also, asking for a friend—
How exactly might one go about getting such a $240K do-nothing job? >

Well, first you have to pretend to be autistic... >

who said anything about pretending? >

Right? Everyone's on the spectrum after all... >

Not everyone, but won't deny that several people born pre 2000 are probably not diagnosed.
I don't have proof available, but I've seen within my circle adults that after fighting for months, finally got a certificate that says they are in the spectrum. And several others than do show signs of ADHD that are also not diagnosed. >

That's not what I mean. I always understood spectrum when used to describe autism to mean something like a graph of the hight of a population or grades of the class of student. People who have autism are outside the standard deviation. >

Autism as far as I am aware a collection of conditions or deficiencies people show in their development and everyday life, but is not a specific set of them as it depends on their daily lives and experiences how they develop coping mechanisms. 
Some may be incorrect, but here are some examples (not an expert): Extremely slow depelopment of verbal language and social skills, lack of empathy/sympathy, over focusing on specific subjects/work, difficulty to do things outside of the norm, need for rituals in their daily activities, introvert behaviour...
You don't need to show signs of all of these specific behaviours, but if you display several of those related to autism, that's when you are told you are within the spectrum. Then there are different grades depending on how severe your condition presents itself.
Edit: grammar. >

maybe SFC /scannow would help >

If that doesn't work, try a dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth >

For reference, this is about a 5% staff reduction. Old M$ under previous leadership used to do yearly 10% layoffs to "get rid of the chaff". I feel for anybody that loses their job, but this isn't exactly a bad signal. Especially since they are doing it over a period of time instead of slashing them all at once.
EDIT: Fixed saying. Thanks u/Eknoom >


Old M$ under previous leadership used to do yearly 10% layoffs to "get rid of the chaff".

Citation needed, as I believe you are incorrect.  The stack ranking system was indeed a horrible system, but there were no regular 10% layoffs.  Consistently poor performers would be put on a PIP and pushed out, but that was it.  Manage up or manage out is a strategy, but that doesn't sound like the seemingly fictional accounting you're giving. >

He's right in a very broad sense; they identified the bottom 10% for removal in one way or another. It didn't always play out this way practically, but that was the general idea. >

Yeah, I read it as an urban legend-ish interpretation of how the Jack Welch stack ranking bullshit worked.  As stated, it reads as inaccurate: people on PIP were managed out or fired.  Those weren't layoffs, and it wasn't 10%.  Stack ranking was bad, if that's what they were referring to, but it was nothing like what they're describing. >

I mean, they did say they were giving everyone unlimited time off. Can’t get much more unlimited than unemployed… >

Amazon is doing a large layoff today as well >

Let's see here, we've got record corporate profits (the primary driver of that inflation), historically low unemployment, and steady GDP growth, but "economic uncertainty" is the stated reason for mass layoffs all over the place. It's almost like the CEOs and bankers WANT the recession that doesn't exist despite the best efforts of the Fed and media to create one. "Hey, I know what might slow down the labor market and wage growth! Let's fucking fire everybody!" >

Seems like a lot of the layoffs during this impending recession are all from tech companies 🤔 >

SAAS companies specifically. 
When you run a high retention business like most successful SAAS products, when the economy goes down you can get rid of a lot of people in the sales org and not reduce current revenue by THAT MUCH. You just lose growth. >

There are still tons of SaaS companies hiring though. 
​
Honestly, a lot of it is leadership that hired a ton during COVID so they could have tax write-offs.   
It's all bullshit, I work in the sector. >

how do those tax benefits work?  curious if they are a short-term benefit or if they can be stretched out over several years. >

That's not remotely how it works.
I'm going to over simplify here, but if you hire some guy at 100k but get a 30% "write off" you're spending 100k to save 30. It is absolutely a benefit, but unless you're getting 70k of value, you're not keeping that person. >

Unless you're the government and you start printing money and decide to hand it directly to corporations.   
There was a huge uptick in hiring during COVID. It's not like the economy started booming. Certainly, companies like Shopify benefited from people staying home, but the majority of these larger tech companies had more money to burn. They either do that by hiring or investing in smaller companies, which end up hiring more people.   
You can't sit on cash with low-interest rates.  Doesn't matter how much revenue you're taking in. >

The SaaS space actually grew significantly during COVID because of lockdowns. A shockingly high amount of American (and likely global but I won't assume things I don't know) businesses were not remotely ready for work from home and had to quickly increase tech spend to make up for it. >

All of these Tech & Financial companies laying off people "in preparation of a recession", are gonna cause a fucking recession
Everybody remember... when they seek bailouts after years of record, predatory profits..  tell your elected leaders NO >

Good for their bottom line, good for the stock price, bad for the people.
Another example why the stock market is not the economy. >

Yesterday MSFT:  We don't respond to rumors of this layoff
Today MSFT: Surprise, we're having layoffs
My company did the exact same thing recently.  Deny Deny Deny, then "oh yeah, it's true".  It bugs me that companies do this.  Just confirm and move on. >


It bugs me that companies do this. Just confirm and move on.

Isn't that because they are a publicly traded company, though?  I believe the SEC forbids the type of off-the-cuff communication you're referring to. >

They do, but these executives are getting paid bank. Why can't they take months of inflation and recession predictions and prepare a statement, like, what exactly are they being paid for?
The answer is less to do with the SEC and more to do with corporate control. They only ever want things to happen on the timeline they want that is best for them and the company. Screw everyone else downstream. >

Really weird how many layoffs there have been considering it's 'not a recession'. >

Unemployment is still near a historic low as tech workers are a very small percentage of the labor force. Unemployment can get much higher. >

The tech sector overbuilt because they expected the pandemic to lead to permanent changes to consumption. They didn't expect there would be such a rebound in in-person services and retail. The culling in the tech department is correcting mistakes and mismanagement that took place during the COVID pandemic. 
This is why the tech layoffs are so large but other sectors are still strong. >

They didn't really overbuild though. There's still a huge shortage of engineering talent, so instead what you're seeing is executives trying to protect absurdly high profit margins. >

"Sure you all helped us make 100 billion dollars for the first time ever last year but yea, you gotta go now. We just can't afford to keep you around" 🙃 >

They could be firing from the departments they are loosing money on. They’re hiring in other departments. >

That's what Amazon was doing iirc. For example they have several thousand people working on Alexa which has just constantly been a cost sink. >

At some point the Royal We need to tell Wall Street to fuck off. 
Profit over people is not sustainable.  
Anyone willing to let others suffer, solely for their own lifetime of abundance, should be drawn and quartered in public. 
Greed is not the way to progress this species. 
Having said that, I realize not enough people think this way because basic survival doesn't afford the opportunity. 
Good luck to the impacted. You deserve better. >

Occupy Wall Street was  powerful movement that had real potential.
Luckily the elites learned from from it and keep us peasants divided and fighting amongst ourselves over cultural and racial matters, rather than unifying and fighting for a common goal.
As long as social media exists to fuel outrage and resentment among the peasant class, directed against the peasant class, it'll never happen. >

The guy who started the Occupy movement said afterward that it was a colossal waste of time and accomplished absolutely nothing. It was just airtime and entertainment value, got a ton of press but changed nothing for anyone.
No matter how large or organized the protest, all it does is give the news something to talk about. They don't have an impact now, but people still insist that protesting has some sort of intrinsic value. >

Protesting has a value when you start damaging property. Then you get some reaction cause the wealthy starts losing money. >

No, protesting has value when you have a political outcome in mind. Direct action then becomes pressure to enact the demanded changes, which will give the protestors what they want.
A strike is a good demonstration of this - we put pressure on you by bringing your business activity to a halt, and we'll keep it up until you give us exactly what we want.
If you don't have a demanded political outcome, (and no, utopian garbage doesn't count) it's just a performance. >

How did that strike workout for the railworkers though 😳 >

Record profits all round but sure, these are “uncertain economic times”. The only thing certain has been record profits. Fuck. I loathe corporate America. >

I just got my first it cert and started looking at it jobs the beginning of this month.. this job climate is tough >

It really is.  My daughter got a masters in computer science degree just over a year ago with multiple international papers published, and was awarded "Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year" for the department.  Yet she had to search for a year to find a job doing actual programming, and when she did the starting salary was half of what my company used to offer freshly-graduated programmers with a bachelor's degree.  Good luck out there!
I might suggest looking into the often-overlooked realm of medical IT for hospital and clinic systems.  It's an area of the industry that never seems to go through a recession, as people always need healthcare! >

I am studying operations research and management for my masters. I highly doubt I'll be able to fully utilize mathematical models or whatever but I'm very employable. Basically what I'm saying is she is employable just may not be in the exact sector. >

Awful time to be a new or recent stem grad >

If you want to work at a fortune 100 sure. 
Last I checked, tech jobs are booming down below where the real pay and benefits are. >

Well it was either lay off 10,000 employees or reduce salary of top executives by 10%. >

Corporate America: clearly we're the best system ever
Also Corporate America: Due to minor economic disturbances we're laying off 10,000 people today >

No wonder my application, that was pending since Aug, was denied yesterday. >

at this point I'm probably going to get denied before even applying >

Just as the East Link Light Rail is about to go live, connecting Seattle to the Redmond Campus. >

Microsoft only disclosed some 900 employees will be cut from WA payrolls.
So sounds like other areas will be getting the biggest boot... for now. >

But they have the money to buy another game studio curious. >

With high schoolers learning coding you don't need as many highly qualified employees anymore. Slowly the Tech sector will replace six figure earners with coders making minimum wage. >

Or rely on ChatGPT to get like 60% of the code done, then finish the rest >

Do we really need senior management? >

lets see a corporation that basically runs the entire business sector of the US and most of the known world as well as most personal computers in the known world by way of their OS... is worried about a maybe recession? i say maybe because it hasn't happened yet and even if all signs point to it, it may not. Who knows what will happen 5 minutes from now let alone in a few months time Sure sounds like bullshit corporate greed wanting bigger profit margins. >

I'm beginning to really like the words "corporate greed" because it implies companies are doing something they don't have to do, they just want to because money.
This is what the system is. This is exactly what it incentivizes. This is exactly what's required of companies by their shareholders, lest they take their money elsewhere. >

Exactly. Greed is the whole point. >

Even just "greed" implies malice, or at least selfishness imo. It is not a useful way to frame the realities of a capitalist system. It's actually harmful to our understanding, leading us to think, "if only there were more ethical capitalists! If only we had the proper regulation!" 
It's ultimately delusional, and an intentional muddying of the waters, that causes us to assume capitalism to be the "given," the default, unchanging. >

We can get rid of capitalism and devolve into a dictatorship. 
Would you prefer fascism or communism? Based on the death tolls the difference seems marginal. >

You don’t understand the words you’ve used here. You’re comparing economic systems to political systems. They are not the same. >

Economic System, Political System?
I truly do not care. They have led to incomprehensible amounts of death, suffering, and misery for hundreds of millions of people, and have had nowhere near the benefits of liberalism & capitalism for the destruction of poverty and empowerment of working people. >

Couldn’t you just have remove the unwanted Programms from my PC instead of personal?? I don’t have a XBox and don’t need Xbox Live >

Don't Worry - TONS of jobs that don't pay a living wage but are somehow essential are available though !!! >

Tech layoffs have always seemed normal to me, you hire a ton of people and then some time later you cut them loose, pretty sure this is how things have ran in the tech sectors for a long time, just we have these things called twitter and facebook and people act like this is the first time ever layoffs of these types happen. >

Your Job Creators, folks >

Just in case anyone it still in doubt we're in a recession >

Sorry what are the overall unemployment numbers? >

So Microsoft is still buying Activision? I feel like there should be some common sense laws that you can't lay people off in the middle or before acquiring another company. >

O365 admin center already sucks now good luck getting anything done. >

Microsoft needs to be broken up. >

It would be nice if I had an OS  that wasn't forcing machine breaking "updates" down my throat, and wasn't annoying to use, like Mac.  A diversified OS market would be great. >

There is a diversified OS market. You have Windows, Chrome OS, macOS, and many flavors of Linux. >

they all have severe limitations for some users (e.g. gamers) >

Be that as it may, the market has choice and is diversified. >

There's no (true) choice that's the point >

There is it's just that you've limited your choices. It's like me going to buy a car and there are hundreds of choices on the lot but only one red one and I start saying there is no true choice at the dealership because what I want is a red one. 
"There really are no choices at all in the gaming landscape because only playstation has God of War ragnarok."
A company specializing in something to differentiate themselves from the competition doesn't mean there is no competition in the base market.  Aside from that this isn't even a Microsoft issue but rather a developer issue since any can develop for Mac or Linux if they wanted but they choose to go with Microsoft. >

I could tell you started to realize how dumb that was halfway through >

Publicly traded companies are the biggest mistake in human history. >

Huh, they did this to us at the end of July too, and they just keep making a bunch of people unemployed. >

Couldn't they come out with a decent operating system before they hunker down. It's been down hill since XP. >

Well I did wanna eventually work in azure datacenters and get outa government IT but I guess now is not a good time to attempt that.... >

There’s still no recession, and that’s less than 5% of Microsoft’s workforce. >

Step back and look at where the jobs are. More fearmongering news. Desperate for a downturn. >

Well there goes my stock... >

Meanwhile Blackrock withdrew out of Entertainment.
ESG money's gone. Really makes you think, now that Phil Spencer said they are "no longer trying to divide their audience". >

hope the employee who did decide to push damn microsoft edge browser on my desktop last week is one of them! >

Rough time to be in tech >

Sting, play that don’t stand so close to me song. >

TIL Micro$oft has over 10,000 employees.  Don't hear much about MS these days its all google, amazon and Apple. >

As of last June Microsoft had over 220,000 employees. >

That's their own fault for accepting the position >

How can a company worth 1.7 trillion justify cutting jobs. Don’t they have more than enough value to keep these 10,000 employees hired? Their salaries totaled be a rounding error compared to the market cap of Microsoft. >

They're not a charity. If they don't need those 10,000 employees, they are expendable regardless of cost. >

This is good news for Bill Gates's philanthropy.  In the end, we will all live in a better world because of this -- even the impoverished laid-off employees.  Creating a better world through the philanthropy of billionaires is really what capitalism is all about. >

Per TeamBlind they're doing so over 3 months.
Instead of a 5% staff reduction they get 100% of their staff panicking and interviewing elsewhere. Great thinking! >

If they quit and find a new job no severance! >

But then you get good workers, who weren’t going to get cut, leaving for elsewhere. >

But now they can hire cheaper less experienced people to do the same but lower quality work while making more profit! This is how large companies decline in quality. >

I wish we would hire some young developers, we have entire teams where everyone is over 40 because they don't want to spend time training anyone. >

I'm over 40.  Where I work, management tries to accomplish "training" by throwing the younger workers right into a complex task, and telling the more senior people to be on-call for questions and support.  Inevitably what happens is that the younger folks never ask questions, then when the SHTF, the senior folks have to scramble to figure stuff out in the remaining schedule.  It's pretty stressful. >

Do the older staff take questions well? I guess I'm getting closer to the old crowd now, but as a youngster coming into a job, I ALWAYS asked a LOT of questions because I'd rather learn to do it right the first time than do it wrong for months and get in trouble and have to correct now ingrained habits. Some people were very helpful, others were complete ass holes about it. I kept asking questions either way, but the environment where questions were discouraged, I got a reputation for being inept rather than curious and diligent... Jobs that answered my questions got a hell of a lot less questions pretty quickly along with good work product from me. When a team is constantly putting newbies down for asking questions, you get shitty work product from probably well meaning but poorly trained people. >

I am a senior and I absolutely love it when the juniors ask questions or want to discuss something. Working with young people is a joy and privilege, and I cannot understand why seniors would be put off by this. >

I had a manager that was a wealth of knowledge. She would not share that knowledge. She loathed questions. She saw it as lazy. She "had to learn it all on her own" so everyone else should get to, as well. Rather than a 5 minute talk, she expected people to spend hours researching it and figuring it out themselves. And then she'd get really upset when things were done wrong. >

They were also hiring like crazy for no apparent reason last year. Headcount went up 40,000 from 2021 to 2022.
Cutting 10k and the other minor previous cuts still adds up to significantly more employees remaining than they had in 2021 AFAIK. >

Lol so Microsoft CEO got a 10% raise in 2022 making $55 million. When will these bum executives ever take a pay cut?
Their lowest paid executive made $12 million last year >

Satoru Iwata, then-President of Nintendo, cut his and all executive pay after the Wii-U console proved to be a failure.  Unfortunately, the tech wasn't quite there yet.  He recognized and admitted his faults.
Incredibly sad that he died before the MASSIVE success of the Switch  which is effectively the console he envisioned when brainstorming the Wii-U.
As I've stated numerous times, I've watched executives and upper-management PERSONALLY make decisions that have cost our company (at least) millions of dollars but they are NEVER held responsible.  Instead, the company does a round of layoffs to makeup for the lost revenue then rehires for those positions a couple years later.  Conveniently, all at the base-level pay as well. >


the Wii-U console proved to be a failure. 

Maybe commercially but honestly I loved mine (still have it). I found it the best platform to play Zelda:BoTW because I love having a secondary screen to access map/inventory at a whim. >

That because it was designed originally with thw Wii U in mind. 
The Wii U really is a great system, years ahead of its time.  The most underrated game library in console history imo. >


The most underrated game library in console history imo

Pikmin 3 am i right? >

You know I finished one and two but didn't make it through three, it was mildly challengeing and haven't put it back in.  Mariokart 8, Yoshi Woolly World, Tropical Freeze are all such fire though. >


Mariokart 8, Yoshi Woolly World, Tropical Freeze are all such fire though.

Agreed but seriously if you made it through 1 you can beat 3 easy. >

I realized after I posted what it was. I never got used to the new controls for 3 in that they removed the "swarm" ability with the C stick from GameCube. 
If you've never played vs mode on pikmin 2 I highly recommended it. >


“No one can defy gravity and gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth,” he told WEF founder Klaus Schwab in a livestreamed discussion.

Interesting, since A Kansas City Fed report found that corporate price markups were 58% of 2021's inflation. The same year, U.S. corporate profits surged to their highest level since 1950 >

Yeah isn’t it funny how inflation is usually 7% (and is more this year) but everything has gone up at least 30%? These poor companies are making record profits since Covid hit! What a world!
Edit: My wife paid $5 for a dozen eggs (not even free range, no anti biotic, blah, blah, blah). They used to be the cheap option for protein and fats, may as well eat beef for every meal now. I guess I should add that I live in central NY
Edit 2: inflation is not normally 7% and eggs have gone up due to avian flu >


Yeah isn’t it funny how inflation is usually 7% (and is more this year) but everything has gone up at least 30%?

Inflation hasn't been in the 7% range since the late 70s/early 80s until this past year. It's definitely not "usually" 7%, at least in the US. >

Yeah, but this is reddit where you can say whatever garbage you want, and get enough upvotes that people will believe it's true. >

Sad but true >

A previous co-worker just got shit canned from MS. He was on the "neuro-diversity committee" and claimed to be autistic (he wasn't), and was doing everything to play the system. He's been bragging the last 18 months how he doesn't really do shit there but was making 240k a year. >

Good. Fuck that guy. >

Yes, fuck that guy.
Also, asking for a friend—
How exactly might one go about getting such a $240K do-nothing job? >

Well, first you have to pretend to be autistic... >

who said anything about pretending? >

Right? Everyone's on the spectrum after all... >

Not everyone, but won't deny that several people born pre 2000 are probably not diagnosed.
I don't have proof available, but I've seen within my circle adults that after fighting for months, finally got a certificate that says they are in the spectrum. And several others than do show signs of ADHD that are also not diagnosed. >

That's not what I mean. I always understood spectrum when used to describe autism to mean something like a graph of the hight of a population or grades of the class of student. People who have autism are outside the standard deviation. >

Autism as far as I am aware a collection of conditions or deficiencies people show in their development and everyday life, but is not a specific set of them as it depends on their daily lives and experiences how they develop coping mechanisms. 
Some may be incorrect, but here are some examples (not an expert): Extremely slow depelopment of verbal language and social skills, lack of empathy/sympathy, over focusing on specific subjects/work, difficulty to do things outside of the norm, need for rituals in their daily activities, introvert behaviour...
You don't need to show signs of all of these specific behaviours, but if you display several of those related to autism, that's when you are told you are within the spectrum. Then there are different grades depending on how severe your condition presents itself.
Edit: grammar. >

maybe SFC /scannow would help >

If that doesn't work, try a dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth >

For reference, this is about a 5% staff reduction. Old M$ under previous leadership used to do yearly 10% layoffs to "get rid of the chaff". I feel for anybody that loses their job, but this isn't exactly a bad signal. Especially since they are doing it over a period of time instead of slashing them all at once.
EDIT: Fixed saying. Thanks u/Eknoom >


Old M$ under previous leadership used to do yearly 10% layoffs to "get rid of the chaff".

Citation needed, as I believe you are incorrect.  The stack ranking system was indeed a horrible system, but there were no regular 10% layoffs.  Consistently poor performers would be put on a PIP and pushed out, but that was it.  Manage up or manage out is a strategy, but that doesn't sound like the seemingly fictional accounting you're giving. >

He's right in a very broad sense; they identified the bottom 10% for removal in one way or another. It didn't always play out this way practically, but that was the general idea. >

Yeah, I read it as an urban legend-ish interpretation of how the Jack Welch stack ranking bullshit worked.  As stated, it reads as inaccurate: people on PIP were managed out or fired.  Those weren't layoffs, and it wasn't 10%.  Stack ranking was bad, if that's what they were referring to, but it was nothing like what they're describing. >

I mean, they did say they were giving everyone unlimited time off. Can’t get much more unlimited than unemployed… >

Amazon is doing a large layoff today as well >

Let's see here, we've got record corporate profits (the primary driver of that inflation), historically low unemployment, and steady GDP growth, but "economic uncertainty" is the stated reason for mass layoffs all over the place. It's almost like the CEOs and bankers WANT the recession that doesn't exist despite the best efforts of the Fed and media to create one. "Hey, I know what might slow down the labor market and wage growth! Let's fucking fire everybody!" >

Seems like a lot of the layoffs during this impending recession are all from tech companies 🤔 >

SAAS companies specifically. 
When you run a high retention business like most successful SAAS products, when the economy goes down you can get rid of a lot of people in the sales org and not reduce current revenue by THAT MUCH. You just lose growth. >

There are still tons of SaaS companies hiring though. 
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Honestly, a lot of it is leadership that hired a ton during COVID so they could have tax write-offs.   
It's all bullshit, I work in the sector. >

how do those tax benefits work?  curious if they are a short-term benefit or if they can be stretched out over several years. >

That's not remotely how it works.
I'm going to over simplify here, but if you hire some guy at 100k but get a 30% "write off" you're spending 100k to save 30. It is absolutely a benefit, but unless you're getting 70k of value, you're not keeping that person. >

Unless you're the government and you start printing money and decide to hand it directly to corporations.   
There was a huge uptick in hiring during COVID. It's not like the economy started booming. Certainly, companies like Shopify benefited from people staying home, but the majority of these larger tech companies had more money to burn. They either do that by hiring or investing in smaller companies, which end up hiring more people.   
You can't sit on cash with low-interest rates.  Doesn't matter how much revenue you're taking in. >

The SaaS space actually grew significantly during COVID because of lockdowns. A shockingly high amount of American (and likely global but I won't assume things I don't know) businesses were not remotely ready for work from home and had to quickly increase tech spend to make up for it. >

All of these Tech & Financial companies laying off people "in preparation of a recession", are gonna cause a fucking recession
Everybody remember... when they seek bailouts after years of record, predatory profits..  tell your elected leaders NO >

Good for their bottom line, good for the stock price, bad for the people.
Another example why the stock market is not the economy. >

Yesterday MSFT:  We don't respond to rumors of this layoff
Today MSFT: Surprise, we're having layoffs
My company did the exact same thing recently.  Deny Deny Deny, then "oh yeah, it's true".  It bugs me that companies do this.  Just confirm and move on. >


It bugs me that companies do this. Just confirm and move on.

Isn't that because they are a publicly traded company, though?  I believe the SEC forbids the type of off-the-cuff communication you're referring to. >

They do, but these executives are getting paid bank. Why can't they take months of inflation and recession predictions and prepare a statement, like, what exactly are they being paid for?
The answer is less to do with the SEC and more to do with corporate control. They only ever want things to happen on the timeline they want that is best for them and the company. Screw everyone else downstream. >

Really weird how many layoffs there have been considering it's 'not a recession'. >

Unemployment is still near a historic low as tech workers are a very small percentage of the labor force. Unemployment can get much higher. >

The tech sector overbuilt because they expected the pandemic to lead to permanent changes to consumption. They didn't expect there would be such a rebound in in-person services and retail. The culling in the tech department is correcting mistakes and mismanagement that took place during the COVID pandemic. 
This is why the tech layoffs are so large but other sectors are still strong. >

They didn't really overbuild though. There's still a huge shortage of engineering talent, so instead what you're seeing is executives trying to protect absurdly high profit margins. >

"Sure you all helped us make 100 billion dollars for the first time ever last year but yea, you gotta go now. We just can't afford to keep you around" 🙃 >

They could be firing from the departments they are loosing money on. They’re hiring in other departments. >

That's what Amazon was doing iirc. For example they have several thousand people working on Alexa which has just constantly been a cost sink. >

At some point the Royal We need to tell Wall Street to fuck off. 
Profit over people is not sustainable.  
Anyone willing to let others suffer, solely for their own lifetime of abundance, should be drawn and quartered in public. 
Greed is not the way to progress this species. 
Having said that, I realize not enough people think this way because basic survival doesn't afford the opportunity. 
Good luck to the impacted. You deserve better. >

Occupy Wall Street was  powerful movement that had real potential.
Luckily the elites learned from from it and keep us peasants divided and fighting amongst ourselves over cultural and racial matters, rather than unifying and fighting for a common goal.
As long as social media exists to fuel outrage and resentment among the peasant class, directed against the peasant class, it'll never happen. >

The guy who started the Occupy movement said afterward that it was a colossal waste of time and accomplished absolutely nothing. It was just airtime and entertainment value, got a ton of press but changed nothing for anyone.
No matter how large or organized the protest, all it does is give the news something to talk about. They don't have an impact now, but people still insist that protesting has some sort of intrinsic value. >

Protesting has a value when you start damaging property. Then you get some reaction cause the wealthy starts losing money. >

No, protesting has value when you have a political outcome in mind. Direct action then becomes pressure to enact the demanded changes, which will give the protestors what they want.
A strike is a good demonstration of this - we put pressure on you by bringing your business activity to a halt, and we'll keep it up until you give us exactly what we want.
If you don't have a demanded political outcome, (and no, utopian garbage doesn't count) it's just a performance. >

How did that strike workout for the railworkers though 😳 >

Record profits all round but sure, these are “uncertain economic times”. The only thing certain has been record profits. Fuck. I loathe corporate America. >

I just got my first it cert and started looking at it jobs the beginning of this month.. this job climate is tough >

It really is.  My daughter got a masters in computer science degree just over a year ago with multiple international papers published, and was awarded "Outstanding Graduate Student of the Year" for the department.  Yet she had to search for a year to find a job doing actual programming, and when she did the starting salary was half of what my company used to offer freshly-graduated programmers with a bachelor's degree.  Good luck out there!
I might suggest looking into the often-overlooked realm of medical IT for hospital and clinic systems.  It's an area of the industry that never seems to go through a recession, as people always need healthcare! >

I am studying operations research and management for my masters. I highly doubt I'll be able to fully utilize mathematical models or whatever but I'm very employable. Basically what I'm saying is she is employable just may not be in the exact sector. >

Awful time to be a new or recent stem grad >

If you want to work at a fortune 100 sure. 
Last I checked, tech jobs are booming down below where the real pay and benefits are. >

Well it was either lay off 10,000 employees or reduce salary of top executives by 10%. >

Corporate America: clearly we're the best system ever
Also Corporate America: Due to minor economic disturbances we're laying off 10,000 people today >

No wonder my application, that was pending since Aug, was denied yesterday. >

at this point I'm probably going to get denied before even applying >

Just as the East Link Light Rail is about to go live, connecting Seattle to the Redmond Campus. >

Microsoft only disclosed some 900 employees will be cut from WA payrolls.
So sounds like other areas will be getting the biggest boot... for now. >

But they have the money to buy another game studio curious. >

With high schoolers learning coding you don't need as many highly qualified employees anymore. Slowly the Tech sector will replace six figure earners with coders making minimum wage. >

Or rely on ChatGPT to get like 60% of the code done, then finish the rest >

Do we really need senior management? >

lets see a corporation that basically runs the entire business sector of the US and most of the known world as well as most personal computers in the known world by way of their OS... is worried about a maybe recession? i say maybe because it hasn't happened yet and even if all signs point to it, it may not. Who knows what will happen 5 minutes from now let alone in a few months time Sure sounds like bullshit corporate greed wanting bigger profit margins.