Microsoft Slashes Jobs

The first thing I read this morning was an e-mail by Steve Ballmer in my inbox, stating that Microsoft had announced a $16.6 billion quarterly revenue, $900 million short of what was expected. Luckily the actions are not quite as drastic as the loss of 15.000 jobs that had been rumored on the internet, yet this is the painful reminder that the economy is really in bad shape. I feel like I cannot complain too much about spending 4 hours in the car each day to get to my project at Dow Jones right now.

As part of the process of adjustments, we will eliminate up to 5,000 positions in R&D, marketing, sales, finance, LCA, HR, and IT over the next 18 months, of which 1,400 will occur today. We’ll also open new positions to support key investment areas during this same period of time. Our net headcount in these functions will decline by 2,000 to 3,000 over the next 18 months. In addition, our workforce in support, consulting, operations, billing, manufacturing, and data center operations will continue to change in direct response to customer needs.

On a positive note, with the Microsoft shares seeing lows they haven’t since the early 90s, I think the time to go on a stock buying spree is getting closer. Microsoft isn’t going anywhere, their products are running on almost every computer out there.

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