Microsoft set to axe 18,000 jobs

[Semicolon]

Microsoft is to cut up to 18,000 jobs marking the deepest cuts in the technology firm's 39-year history.

The bulk of the cuts, around 12,500, will be in its phone unit Nokia, which Microsoft bought in April, the firm said.

Microsoft pledged to cut $600m (£350.8m) per year in costs within 18 months of closing the acquisition.

The cuts are much more severe than the 6,000 initially expected.

The firm employs 127,000 globally, including 3,500 staff in the UK.

Microsoft declined to say how many jobs in the UK would be cut as a result of the changes.

Chief executive officer Satya Nadella, who took the helm in February, wants the firm to shift its focus away from software to online services, apps and devices.

"Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary," Mr Nadella wrote in the announcement to staff.

The firm said it also planned to have fewer layers of management "to accelerate the flow of information and decision making."

Microsoft said staff affected by the job cuts would be notified over the next six months, and they would be "fully completed" by the the end of June next year.

In total it said the cuts, including severance pay, would cost it between $1.1bn to $1.6bn (£643m to £935m) over the next year.

Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets & Co, told the BBC that although it was painful the cuts would "put the company in a much better situation for the coming years".

"It's been a decade of pain and now you finally have a chief executive that's going to be pro-active rather than re-active and put Microsoft in a situation that they could be a successful mobile and cloud player," he added.

Source

[Jack]

This article gives a bad guy slant to Microsoft in a situation of a company that's probably being saved. Just looked and Nokia has been failing and has already laid off as many, if not more, in the last couple of years on their own. Yes, Microsoft will cut more with the acquisition, but if Nokia were to go completely under then 127,000 would be out of work instead.

[Semicolon]

This article gives a bad guy slant to Microsoft in a situation of a company that's probably being saved. Just looked and Nokia has been failing and has already laid off as many, if not more, in the last couple of years on their own. Yes, Microsoft will cut more with the acquisition, but if Nokia were to go completely under then 127,000 would be out of work instead.

I've heard that it's difficult to run a business in Scandinavia.

I don't see any effort to portray Microsoft in a bad light. The one subjective sentence in the article was about how many jobs were initially expected to be cut.

[Jack]

The title seems to set the tone. Maybe misread it as a bad guy slant, it could be a slant that Microsoft is failing instead of simply acquiring a company that's failing..

[thomas81]

Poor Bill. He must be feeling the pinch these days.

[Jack]

Poor Bill. He must be feeling the pinch these days.

[Parts]

Poor Bill. He must be feeling the pinch these days.

We should take up a collection so he doesn't have to stoop to buying domestic caviar

[odeon]

I'm more worried about Ballmer.

[Phallacy]

Because Microsoft was doing so WELL with software. 

[odeon]

They are doing well, by most standards.