Microsoft’s quarterly target – the numbers it’s planning to report for revenue and profit – could end up lower than their original expectations thereby forcing the gentle giant to shed “thousands of jobs,” according to Reuters.
Wall Street is looking for quarterly revenue of $17.1 billion, according to Reuters Estimates, also short of Microsoft’s own target of $17.3 billion to $17.8 billion.
This correction could cost Microsoft 6,000 to 8,000 jobs, about 6 percent of its 95,000 strong workforce. There could be more cuts later this year or there could be no lay-offs and they would lose the number by attrition and a hiring freeze. Either way, Microsoft’s salad days are over.
So what does this mean? Well, first off I’m kind of amazed that Microsoft has 95,000 employees. While I understand that Windows is a pretty big program, what are all these people doing? Could it be time for Microsoft to start crowdsourcing some of its projects and hire folks as remote contractors? Bug fixes could be done by Counter-Strike clans turned programming shops and the company could save fixed costs of keeping all those people in Seattle.
I know I’m being ridiculous and I’m actually torn – I hate it when people lose jobs and I’m constantly worried that my friends and relations will get canned. But seriously: 95,000 people? Did Microsoft HR look at those numbers one day and say “Whoa! We have 3,000 guys doing desktop backgrounds in building three. We need 1,000 guys to manage them.” Throwing more men at a job rarely gets the job done.