Microsoft facing significant job losses?
The current economic climate is affecting even the big players with recent news that Sony would cut 16,000 jobs and pull out of business to save $1.1 billion a year, due to the financial crisis.
In even more recent developments, Electronic Arts, one of the largest interactive entertainment publishers have reported staff reductions of up to 1,000 employees; this amounts to around 10% of the entire EA workforce. These are nearly double the initial lay-off figures first reported, with the ever changing financial environment forcing ever further changes.
Today some interesting rumours have surfaced regarding significant lay-offs and cutbacks at Microsoft. If the rumours are to be believed, Microsoft will be facing considerable reductions in staff across the board. These would encompass the bottom performers (10% of the entire Microsoft divisions) resulting in 5,000 to 10,000 job losses.
It still isn’t clear where the majority of staff reductions will come from but cuts to the games division are also likely. How this will affect Microsoft’s stance in the gaming industry is unclear but come January 15th 2009 we will find out the extent of these cutbacks.
What have those fine folks been sharing over the past couple of posts here? Bad news on the rise and with perhaps January 15th 2009 as an interesting day for Microsoft news. Bad news. 15 Jan is a week before FY09Q2 quarterly results and it’s better to share as much news, good and bad, before the results are released vs. surprising Wall Street (something I think we’ve learned).
