With the prospect of a significant work at jobs cut at Microsoft looming Thursday, we took a moment to review the occasions over the ended decade or so at what opportunity the company has trimmed jobs through reorganizations and other changes. While sifting through these song, remember that during the corresponding; of like kind date — 1996 to 2008 — Microsoft has grown total worldwide employment more than 340 percent from 20,561 to 91,259 as of June 30. The hiring continued end the latter half of 2008, albeit at a slower rate. As of November, Microsoft counted 95,664 employees globally.
June 2006: 148 positions in the U.S. sales group, including 98 in Redmond, were cut to “more appropriate align a small subset of field and headquarter positions more closely with the needs of our enterprise customers and partners.”
September 2004: 93 positions in the Windows Server group eliminated as the company automated more testing. 44 new positions were created at the same time.
August 2004: 76 positions were divide in the Xbox group as Microsoft closed its sports video game studio. It was part of a broader reduction of the company’session measure creation efforts like third-party studios began developing besides titles for the original Xbox. June 2004: 20 recruiting positions were eliminated as part of human-resources department restructuring. January 2002: 168 positions were lost when Microsoft pulled the plug on its UltimateTV effort. It was described at the time as one of the largest layoffs in Microsoft’s 27-year history. January 1998: 30 to 40 full-time workers at 10 Sidewalk city guides offices were cut as the company learned to operate the effort in greater numbers efficiently, a speaker said. The company planned to enlarge the online guides to more cities in subsequent years.
January 1996: 120 employees at a Bothell floppy-disk manufacturing plant were given layoff notices in the manner that more software was being produced on CD-ROM.
Seattle Times researcher David Turim contributed to this take down.
Original text: http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/2009/01/21/microsoft_job_cuts_since_1996.html
