[Info-vax] VSI employee retirements

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 1/26/2023 6:19 AM, Neil Rieck wrote:
> On Wednesday, January 25, 2023 at 1:41:55 PM UTC-5, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> But some specific areas has been hit hard. I see at least 3 areas
>> having had to layoff a lot of people including IT people:
>>
>> A) Startups without a solid business model especially
>> in crypto and other fintech. When interest rates
>> went up then their VC funding dried up and they are
>> toast.
>>
>> B) Companies or parts of companies with specific problems.
>> Mortgage divisions in banks has been down-sizing because
>> number of mortgages are dropping due to high interest rates.
>> M&A divisions in banks and capital funds has been down-sizing because
>> number of deals are dropping due to high interest rates.
>> Facebook has problems because the Metaverse is not catching on.
>> Twitter has problems because of lack of relevance (everybody
>> talks about Elon Musk, but Twitter would have had massive
>> layoffs also without Musk - Musk buying Twitter just cause
>> it to be done "the Musk way").
>>
>> C) Companies that has been on a non-stop hiring spree
>> the last 5-10 years. Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc..
>> Their business has not plunged into a hole, but growth
>> has slowed/stopped. And they need to stop hiring. And
>> they realize that during the hiring frenzy they may have
>> hired too many, hired the wrong skill sets, hired at the wrong
>> geographical locations, hired at too high compensation
>> level etc.. So they make cuts to adjust.
> 
> Adding to your points,
> 
> I thought it a little odd that Microsoft announced it was laying off 10,000 employees on Jan-18
> https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/18/microsoft-is-laying-off-10000-employees.html
> then announced a $10 billion dollar investment in OpenAI on Jan-23
> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-23/microsoft-makes-multibillion-dollar-investment-in-openai
> 
> While it might make sense to some, imagine how it affects employees (and their families) who just received a pink slip.

In Danish that is "føje spot til skade" - the equivalent English is
supposedly "add insult to injury".

But the (harsh) reality is that it is not unusual for a huge
company to shrink workforce in some divisions/departments while
grow workforce in other divisions/departments.

MS is not laying off people because they as a company
are loosing money - their profit in last quarter of 22
was 16 billion dollars.

Arne