Edit: Allegedly not.
https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-c...
"Nadella addressed the recent layoffs, clarifying that the decision was not based on individual job performance. “This is a structural change, not a reflection of how people were performing,” Nadella explained. He emphasized that Microsoft is shifting its strategic focus, with a renewed emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), which the company views as a key driver of its long-term vision and growth."
Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union.
Further cutbacks from the level reached by the prior cutbacks due to monetary tightening when the economy was still in robust growth are to be expected, as are relatively transparent rationalizations that try to put an upbeat spin on them instead of the honest “the cost of money has gone up and the return of spending it on higher staffing levels has gone down.”
I know, I know, "union bad." I guess people will say that until all that is left is a person to watch the Machine, and a dog to bite the person if they touch the Machine. Or all the jobs are offshored to the cheapest labor on the globe.
Note that in some countries, unions extend to cover workers who are not even part of the union. Heard about this from some french friends:
> Collective bargaining agreements (conventions collectives) may be negotiated between employers and labour unions covering a company or group of companies (accords d’entreprise), or between employers’ associations and labour unions covering an industry as a whole; in the latter case, the government may decide that the collective agreement covers even those employers who are not members of the employers’ association and is therefore mandatory throughout the industry.
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...
Not saying it's the right solution for $COUNTRY, but I was certainly surprised when I heard of this
Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.
I think "low performance" is typically just a scapegoat. the real reason is they simply don't need that many empolyees to maximize profitability.
Solutions such as "try harder," "be more lucky," or "just find another job" are...not very actionable when you consider that ~60% of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life and the current labor macro.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp...
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta...
(i am once again asking you to think in systems)
Hey that's actually a great line. It might be even better than the original, where the person is there to feed the dog.
At the same time our politicians appear to be looking everywhere for a solution to increasing US jobs except for right where the issue is. Everyone else sees it but our politicians are willfully blind.
It's not impossible for this to be Microsoft's way to keep the AI flywheel spinning.
People who don’t want to work for a union shop should have the same amount of voice as people who do (1 vote per employee). I think unions have struggled to gain traction because it’s obvious that they cost money to run (which is fine and proper) but it’s not obvious that that expense pays off for the typical member. If a median tech worker pays $1300-2600/yr in dues (1-2% of median salary), I think it’s reasonable for them to expect more than that on a net-present-value basis.
Plenty of people are strong advocates; plenty are strong detractors; I suspect that a well-run union (efficient in its own ops and partnering effectively for the long-term health of the company and its union members) would be good on balance and also fairly “under the radar” making it hard to know how good it actually was.
And I really want to touch on your point about dues and unions. Workers should absolutely have high expectations for what their unions deliver, and should not tolerate any sort of drag, apathy, or lack of effort. With that said, it is another political process one must participate in, it isn't ordering an Uber. I have zero tolerance for union grift. Perhaps this calls for something like a non profit ratings agency, but for unions.
[1] https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/08/are-older-work... ("In 2000, only 17.6% of the 55 and older populace had a job. Now the percentage is 37.5%. A 20% increase in the percentage of 55+ who are employed in a 20-year span is unprecedented. If the percentage of employed 55+ had stayed the same, there would only be 17 million 55+ workers today. Instead, there are over 37 million.") [2022]
[2] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-closing-gender-... ("Gen Zers are the most supportive of unions, with a mean approval rating of 64.3 compared with 60.5 for Millennials, 57.8 for Gen Xers, and 57.2 for Baby Boomers." [death and retirement rate is progress rate in this regard by age cohort; the faster the older cohort(s) who don't support organizing exit the workforce, this should potentially reduced the lift required to organize forward looking])
(demographics + culture + advocacy + time is my mental model on this, and I have arrived at this model from first principles, as a macro and demographics scholar)
The profitability they embraced was derived from surveillance capitalism which comes from a money-printer seeing as the government is the one paying for it.
It was short-term up-front profit, followed by what inevitably comes after where they pay it back and more. They are laying people off because they wanted that short term profit more than they wanted to do business. There is a potential that they may chase this having the same dynamics as deflation, given that free money is largely no longer available suddenly (which pops the bubble).
The people making those decisions knew the laws and countries would catch up to them eventually but they still did it.
It is, and they are. It’s why Reagan fired ATC strikers and blackballed them. It’s why private enterprise stockpiled machine guns and chemical weapons against strikers back in the Gilded Age. It’s why companies will spend billions to block Unions rather than just give workers the few million or so more they need over a decade to just maintain a standard of living. It’s why they’ll close down stores, warehouses, offshore jobs and outsource to contractors to penalize Unions.
Unions are a direct response to the inequality of Capital allocation and distribution.
which one is Microsoft?
The main issue though is one of demographics.
Like Japan, we have insufficient young people to do the jobs and produce what's needed to support the old.
Worse, the old have utilized money printing and their privileged position to enrich themselves, and in the process it is tearing the country apart, and through economic manipulation force conscripting the young at suppressed wages to pay their debts off (i.e. social security).
Thomas Paine would have a lot of similar things to say if he were alive today, specifically about dead men ruling.
The economics given such lopsided movement cause chaotic disruption and deflate and are unsustainable.
You are wrong insofar as they'll be earning a 10th of the salary. That may happen upfront, but in terms of purchasing power it will reach parity much more quickly given the macro monetary dynamics going on.
When reading history, I could never imagine how bad it would need to get to make a multi-generational citizen abandon their home country and immigrate elsewhere.
I have my answer today. They do so when there is no reasonable path to a survivable future.
There are times where a reasonable person can see and know everything will burn, because there is nothing that can stop it, and the only thing you can do is remove yourself and your family from the path of that burn.
I agree with you, but that is only for right now.
7-10 years from now, I see no new tech jobs and the same work shouldered by a decreasing number of people until they vanish with no replacement.
Chaotic whipsaws from disruption or other things can break brittle systems. Resilient systems don't have these problems, but they are only resilient because of their decentralization and lack of single points of failure (SPOF).
Profit through money printing optimizes for SPOFs, and there are no existing incentives that can produce any other behavior. Its a terrible fate of societies which embrace money-printing.
A lot of the benefits my union provides might not matter to the average HN user making $X00,000/yr though so who knows?
This idea that companies must be the social safety net is deeply flawed, you want companies to take risks on new business lines that may not pan out. That's how we get innovation. In order to have that, you must not heavily penalize taking those risks.
- Pro: My father only graduated high school, yet was able to support a middle-class family - a house, two cars, 3 children, healthcare, etc., all with his union trucking job. That is almost unheard of today.
- Con: My father often talked about the corruption, like work being throttled to meet only the minimum output requirements in the union contract, and guys just sitting around, playing cards for half-a-day because it only took them a few hours to meet the requirements. (And new guys would get "talked to" in the parking lot if they tried to do too much work.)
I know the talking points on HN like to portray Indian developers as cheap, low quality labor, but contrary to popular belief, they aren’t getting workers for $15k. A Median senior developer earns almost $90k in India in Microsoft.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software...
If your job is so important that a strike should be illegal, then that job should also compensate you and your colleagues so well that a strike isn’t even a remote consideration. ATC was being treated like shit, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to strike.
And now in 2025, literally everything they struck against (outdated tech, short staffing, high burnout, low wages) is still here, and still causing harm.
Union leader is one approach. But really if the US had a proper safety net, universal healthcare, and progressive taxes on capital accumulation, layoffs in OPs framing would not be nearly as bad.
The real issue here isnt the layoffs. Its that the top are pulling up profits, theres no quality healthcare for the unemployed (and getting worse), SFH are all levered up making the price unattainable for the average worker and high risk bc layoffs, etc.
The frustrating part is how dead simple the solution is. Universal healthcare. Progressive taxation that applies equally to capital gains. Block SFH investments (by investors and average joes alike). Maybe not emough, but light years ahead of where we are.
> [the New Deal architect, A. A. Berle] argued that corporations should "serve ... all society" through legally enforceable rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate
"profit is the only goal" is not a law of nature, it's the outcome of a specific system of laws.
No that's what makes management the most money because they're paid in stock. So they want you to think it's legally required.
The first responsibility of a company is "act in the shareholders' best interests".
Is it in shareholders' best interests to have > 20% unemployment?
A layoff is a complete and utter failure in leadership top down.
Then applying for 6k visas that are going to be compensated well below industry levels is just a complete joke.
This photo in particular captures something of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Strikers_Riot
It certainly isn't the worker.
It has absolutely nothing to do with managing out low performers or managing existential business risk. It has everything to do with managing annual EPS to Wall Street's expectations. There was an inflection point at the end of 2022 where Revenue growth slowed so to maintain Earnings growth, costs had to be cut continuously, and this process is still playing out.
Opinions about unions tend to “mature” and become more nuanced with age (after exposure to both as a member and as a manager of union staff), for worse and better.
Adjust expectations for human behavior accordingly.
If workers are not seeing improvements in life over time, why would their viewpoint change? I agree a minority of workers might change their mind when they luck into favorable economic and labor circumstances, but luck will not find the majority, and when it comes to voting, a majority matters.
How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future | Scott Galloway | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E
Part 2: Scott Galloway’s Viral TED Talk on How the Old Are Stealing from the Young - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjNV6JwlV2s
Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics: Western conservatives are at risk from generations of voters who are no longer moving to the right as they age - https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767... | https://archive.today/lQoLa
https://d4pgq7fazddwpa.archive.ph/lQoLa/f1886c78af8eb03745a8...
https://careers.augsburg.edu/blog/2024/03/18/gen-z-does-not-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-...
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-time...
Layoffs have always been part of the game. There is reason to believe this latest set of layoffs are different (Scott Hanselmann himself said so on LinkedIn recently - "Laying off my staff is never easy, but this is the first time I've had to lay people off for someone else's business goals" whatever that means).
Could MS replace them all with scabs? Sure, with enough time and money. But it wouldn't happen overnight, and things would get very dire if not company ruining in the meantime.
Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
i guess the real message is the boom is over if you want cushy or easy money
And how are you going to do that when the scabs are in India? Unions work in “physical” domains (like plumbing, factory work, etc.), not so much in “virtual” domains where all you need is a computer to do your work and there’s an entire world full of workers who would think they’ve died and gone to heaven if they could make half your salary.
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=microsoft&job=software+eng...
What do you think the salary would be for a US employee that those $101k H1B Software Engineers replaced? They obviously aren't saving 90%, but maybe 50% 33%?
Lol good luck with that.
I'm in tech and I would never join a union. Why do I need collective bargaining to set my salary (and not give me raise until it's collectively raised) when I can bargain for my own raises?
In addition to this, unions don't bode well for innovation and technology. Look at the Taxicab unions. We could only get a cab in person or through the phone, because the unions had no incentive to innovate. It look a non-union startup to push them to actually make it convenient and better for the customer.
OTOH, gig drivers are being paid below minimum wage, with no benefits, no retirement plan, and no stability of work.
As a customer, yay technology and UX! But as a human, it's objectively worse for society.
Gig work is not supposed to be stable, have benefits, or retirement. It's supposed to be there for someone to make extra money. I know lots of people that used it to make extra money and now can't make anything because of new regulations.
If you wanted to drive a Taxi in NYC, it was a million dollar investment for a medallion and the whole system was a monopoly that shutdown any new advancements.
How was this better for humans or customers?
2. That's how it is for most of these high profile layoffs. They are profitable but do layoffs so they can report record revenue later. It's not about "we can't afford workers", it's about blatant greed in 90% of cases this decade.
3. Yeah, talent retention is gone this decade. They don't care about growth or fostering future labor.
It's even simpler than this. We call is "collective bargaining" for a reason. If we don't collect... We lose all the power.
But my country's been so individualistic and no one seems to trust anyone anymore. No wonder we're struggling. We can't even come together to say "hey we need better minumum wage" after the longest drought of not raising it.
I just want to not be laid off every 3 years becsuse some executive wants numbers to look 1% better for shareholders. I'd gladly join a union that ensures there's proper warning for layoffs and proper payout if it goes through.
>Look at the Taxicab unions.
So you're complaining about regulation because unregulated tech was convinent for you for a few years? That thinking is how we got here.
The workers got paid, couldn't be laid off easily, and can make a career.
But i guess I see this line of thinking and see exactly how we got to trumpism. The current system has flaws and bad actors, let's instead burn it down and replace it with even worse actors who make all the money. Don't bother using anti trust or regulating the new industry, the old boogeyman ruined it.
If people would rather lose all job stability their parents had as a career instead of coming together to work in their best interests, what can you really do?
The "NPV" is thst you aren't part of the next wave of layoffs. Losing a month of salary every 6-12 months is great insurance compared to losing a month of salary a month after you get laid off.
Do people really not value stability anymore? Do they have no craft to build nor challenge into? Is everyone here just older workers who don't realize how utterly abused Gen Z has been by this workforce, if they can even get in? I'd pay 10% of my salary for some stability after these 2 years of fallout, and I still ended up on thr more fortunate side of these layoffs for my sub-generation of late millennial.
I don't know if it will be different in a good way, but I doubt in 30 years, Gen Z is going to be telling their kids and grandkids to walk into an office and give a good handshake to the hiring manager. Norms and etiquette have completely shifted.