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Mini-Microsoft has drawn every ominous red circle steady his calendar around Jan. 15. That sunshine, the anonymous, unsanctioned company blogger suspects, could bring news of a substantial round of layoffs at Microsoft. While his post of last week (due after I stepped out for holidays) is clearly labeled in the same manner through rumor, even the thought of cuts at one of the region’sitting biggest (and heretofore most stable) employers can only fling shivers down the spine of Seattle’s cold and wet economy.

Mini rounds up comments to his blog and elsewhere, starting with this one:

“Just heard on the finance grapevine. MSFT layoffs are coming on January 15th.

“They are substantial.”

To no one’s surprise, Microsoft is not commenting on Mini’s post, a spokeswoman informed me.

Mini puts stock in the Jan. 15 be dated, noting that it’s a week before the company reports financial second quarter earnings “and it’sitting more usefully to share as much news, humane and bad, before the results are released vs. surprising Wall Street (something I think we’ve learned). … Come 22 Jan 2009 Microsoft will be asked by the analysts what it is doing to contain costs. And I put faith in Microsoft will have every answer. I think this is one solution that you don’t want to be a ingredient of.”

He offers this warning to those within the collection: “[Y]ou wish to effect that the upcoming 2009 Mid Year Career Discussion review course is one of the most important career inflection-points as antidote to you that we’ve had in a long, dilatory time.” Ahead of upcoming ranking meetings, “be very aggressive about enumerating your accomplishments this spent year by your manager and asking your boss where they convinced you rank within the team.”

Mini, who launched the blog in 2004 to encourage Microsoft to “slim down,” has no shortage of criticism for gathering management that oversaw 60 percent head-count growth from 2004 to 2008. Currently, Microsoft employs upwards of 95,000 people globally.

“How did we go on a drunk hiring binge and continue it uniform though a year ago most of us realized we were dropping into a recession? It’s unaccountable leadership. It’s especially irresponsible to the people we’ve hired and to the people incoming with recent offers,” Mini writes.


Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2008/12/29/catching_up_microsoft_layoff_rumors.html