Microsoft Lay-offs - while CEO earns $84m in first year

[JustChilliing]

Yeah, to expand on this point:

 

Sure a CEO works really damn hard. Heck, maybe it's one of the hardest jobs on the planet. So let's say you're a senior engineer (tech field) in a very demanding, very stressful work environment, but you pull in, say, $150,000 a year.

 

Do you think being a CEO is 560 times harder than that?

 

Sure, comparing workloads and its myriad of short, medium, and long term stress levels is difficult, but I think I know the approximate answer: it's not.

 

Imagine the pressure you are under to deliver though. Again, I'm open to both sides of the argument, but one thing he says may end up the company going under completely (not that it will, but just for example).

[6God]

Being the CEO of ANYTHING isn't just sitting at a desk all day counting your millions...

It's tough work. A simple mistake could have horrible consequences...

 

I wish more people understood that being a CEO isn't some easy pass to lots of money and not having to work. Those CEOs that you 9-5 employees like to chastise are putting in more work than you likely ever have or ever will. Their days and responsibilities don't end because they left the office. Their days start and end long after you've already given up for the day. These aren't the lazy goons that the media and movies have ed you to think - these guys are up and about and doing their jobs hours before you even have enough energy to hit the snooze button. 

 

I know this because I was a glorified assistant for a CEO during one of my co-ops. I got emails at 5 in the bloody morning, 3 hours before I was even supposed to be remotely functional. These guys don't sit around counting their millions.They put in work, real work. Maybe 0.5% of this site could do a CEOs job. 

 

Do I think some CEOs get ludicrous money? Yes. Some have salaries that make me think twice. But is it our job to judge that? No. Private companies are free to pay their CEOs whatever the hell they want. Even public companies pay their CEOs handsomely to retain talent. That is their call. Not yours. You want it to be your call? Either get on the board of investors or become the President, then you get to dictate what the heads make. Until then, no one here has any right to judge anyone on their salary. 

 

By the logic in this thread, people who flip burgers at McDonalds sure as shit don't deserve to be making 15 dollars an hour for that kind of 'work'. Yet I will get flamed to hell and back for insulting workers like that. Double standards are amazing,eh? 

[JustChilliing]

I wish more people understood that being a CEO isn't some easy pass to lots of money and not having to work. Those CEOs that you 9-5 employees like to chastise are putting in more work than you likely ever have or ever will. Their days and responsibilities don't end because they left the office. Their days start and end long after you've already given up for the day. These aren't the lazy goons that the media and movies have ed you to think - these guys are up and about and doing their jobs hours before you even have enough energy to hit the snooze button. 

 

I know this because I was a glorified assistant for a CEO during one of my co-ops. I got emails at 5 in the bloody morning, 3 hours before I was even supposed to be remotely functional. These guys don't sit around counting their millions.They put in work, real work. Maybe 0.5% of this site could do a CEOs job. 

 

Do I think some CEOs get ludicrous money? Yes. Some have salaries that make me think twice. But is it our job to judge that? No. Private companies are free to pay their CEOs whatever the hell they want. Even public companies pay their CEOs handsomely to retain talent. That is their call. Not yours. You want it to be your call? Either get on the board of investors or become the President, then you get to dictate what the heads make. Until then, no one here has any right to judge anyone on their salary. 

 

By the logic in this thread, people who flip burgers at McDonalds sure as shit don't deserve to be making 15 dollars an hour for that kind of 'work'. Yet I will get flamed to hell and back for insulting workers like that. Double standards are amazing,eh? 

 

Well put. The move is made after his predecessor bought the company - so you could see it as returning to normal, after all, the majority of the staff weren't employed by Microsoft 2/3 years ago. It's a job of catch 22's - hated if you do, hated if you don't.

 

Also, I imagine being a CEO assistant wasn't easy!

[6God]

Well put. The move is made after his predecessor bought the company - so you could see it as returning to normal, after all, the majority of the staff weren't employed by Microsoft 2/3 years ago. It's a job of catch 22's - hated if you do, hated if you don't.

 

Also, I imagine being a CEO assistant wasn't easy!

 

Another thing is that companies do mass firings all the time. They lay off employees when they truly don't need them, but those employees are usually the first to get called back should they be needed and they are still available to do that position. Only people who don't understand corporations think this is malicious and evil. MS isn't a charity. tHey aren't keeping around employees they don;t need just for being nice. They will obviously try and shift people around where possible, but sometimes you have no choice but to axe entire divisions since its truly not needed. 

[Misanthrope]

I wish more people understood that being a CEO isn't some easy pass to lots of money and not having to work. Those CEOs that you 9-5 employees like to chastise are putting in more work than you likely ever have or ever will. Their days and responsibilities don't end because they left the office. Their days start and end long after you've already given up for the day. These aren't the lazy goons that the media and movies have ed you to think - these guys are up and about and doing their jobs hours before you even have enough energy to hit the snooze button. 

 

I know this because I was a glorified assistant for a CEO during one of my co-ops. I got emails at 5 in the bloody morning, 3 hours before I was even supposed to be remotely functional. These guys don't sit around counting their millions.They put in work, real work. Maybe 0.5% of this site could do a CEOs job. 

 

Do I think some CEOs get ludicrous money? Yes. Some have salaries that make me think twice. But is it our job to judge that? No.

 

Why not? No ammount of "hard work" it's worth 47k an hour even if you somehow work 24/7  even your sleep. Like I said having terribly long hours and immense responsibility doesn't justify it: by that logic a Surgeon should be making 150 million per year since his training is even more extensive, his hours can be even worst with some surgeries literally lasting over a day of continuous, high stress, non stop work and the fact that humans lives literally depend on him alone automatically makes the job more morally valuable than even 100,000 jobs being on the line.

 

Yet we don't pay surgeons 150 million per year. Because their jobs involves mostly helping people and there's no money in that (maybe a little in the US but I digress) and a CEO well that hard work involves usually fucking people out of their hard earned money, be it the competition or specially the consumer  so the better you fucking rip off people for as much money as you can get within (and sometimes outside of the) legal boundaries the better. 

 

So no amount of preaching about hard work and long hours will ever convince me you deserve 84 million dollars per year. Quite simply, no single human being deserves that much.

[Suika]

Maybe 0.5% of this site could do a CEOs job. 

I'd even say that's a generous percentage lol, even if those 0.5% have the mental capacity to run a company like Microsoft, let's not forget that those actually willing to work as hard as a CEO is probably an even smaller percentage.

 

Yes, people, being a CEO doesn't mean you have a 9-5 job. It doesn't mean you have a 7-7 job. It probably means a lot more work.

[Valentyn]

also known as socialism, which leads to issues like a lack of motivation to work. In theory socialism is a great idea, but in practice it doesn't work. 

 

Yeah, it's worked out horribly for Scandinavia,other Nordic countries and some European ones.

Just amazing advances, the best public educational systems, highest Nobel Prizes per capita, highest standards of living, best medical systems, and much more.

 

All those people are horribly lazy and never work at anything.

It's also not pure socialism, and paying people better simply means more disposable income which means more money in the economy.  Pure capitalism is far worse and leads to cronyism which is worse.

[NinerL]

Is Microsoft hurting that bad? I can't believe a multi billion dollar company like Microsoft has put over 10,000 people out of jobs in the past year, I understand some of the positions are not needed anymore but some of those people have been there for over a decade why not move them to another division where does the loyalty to your employees lie? Could you imagine if Google or Apple ever did this, unless bankruptcy is imminent, I doubt they'll ever do this to their employees.

[JAKEBAB]

8,000 people.

 

It was his predecessor who failed though, but this is good criticism!

 

 

Well, to do the right thing, and of course save 8000 employees from being jobless.  Even with Microsoft's severance pay they all still only have so long to find work and now the market has a -lot- more people looking for work due to those layoffs.  

 

 

You don't need $84 million. Those employees could have been paid very well which would over time improve the economy if every CEO did this. Of course dollar values would have to change but in the end everyone would be better off.

 

You guys aren't getting my point, forget morality. Why does he have to be the one to give up his huge pay check when no other CEO has?

[Misanthrope]

You guys aren't getting my point, forget morality. Why does he have to be the one to give up his huge pay check when no other CEO has?

 

So I'm evil because everyone else is? More than proves my point: there's no justification for this kind of money, other than "lol we're all mad rich fuck poor people amirite?!"

[Memphaestus]

He worked all his life for this, why should he give up what every other CEO of every company never did .

Not all CEOs are corrupt assholes. Jim Sinegal of Costco up until a couple years ago, his salary was a mere 350,000 dollars, and his last year he gave himself a pay cut down below 200,000. He made millions off his company shares, so he had no reason to be taking home a massive salary. Granted, Jim is probably the best CEO this world has ever seen.

[AlwaysFSX]

You guys aren't getting my point, forget morality. Why does he have to be the one to give up his huge pay check when no other CEO has?

You think we're saying only he should? K den.

[Nineshadow]

Just so you know; that's $47,000 an hour before tax.

 

I don't even earn that in a year in my current position!

Meanwhile the average in Romania is like $3/hour?

It's $500/month.

So $6000/year.

 

It would the average Romanian 8 years to make what the CEO of Microsoft makes in an hour D: .

[LAwLz]

I wish more people understood that being a CEO isn't some easy pass to lots of money and not having to work. Those CEOs that you 9-5 employees like to chastise are putting in more work than you likely ever have or ever will. Their days and responsibilities don't end because they left the office. Their days start and end long after you've already given up for the day. These aren't the lazy goons that the media and movies have ed you to think - these guys are up and about and doing their jobs hours before you even have enough energy to hit the snooze button.

I don't really care about what people earn. People in power will always make more than the average Joe regardless of who has the toughest job.

 

Just wanted to chip in and say that A LOT of people who get next to no salary works far more than 9 to 5. When Microsoft launched Internet Explorer their developers worked 9:30 in the morning to 3:30 in the night.

I know sysadmins that work 9 to 5 and then have to get up at 4 in the morning because a server went down. So they have to drive and fix it, drive back home, get some sleep and then get up and go to work at 9 again.

 

The one with the toughest job don't get paid the most. The one with the most important job does not get paid the most either (just look at for example football players vs doctor salaries).

The world is unfair.

 

 

You guys aren't getting my point, forget morality. Why does he have to be the one to give up his huge pay check when no other CEO has?

Satoru Iwata did.

Kazuo Hirai and other executives at Sony also took salary cuts.

 

I think taking a pay cut is a sign of a good person, but I am not so sure I think not taking a pay cut is a sign of a bad one.

[MrSuperb]

Being the CEO of ANYTHING isn't just sitting at a desk all day counting your millions...

 

 

 

ahh ... bullshit.

the worst thing that can happen is that you lose your job and get some millions for doing so ...

 

 

also known as socialism, which leads to issues like a lack of motivation to work. In theory socialism is a great idea, but in practice it doesn't work. 

 

In practice capitalism doesn't work either.

[ItsAFeature]

He isn't salaried at $84 million. It's a discretionary year-end bonus decided by the chairman and high equity holders of the company based on the job they think he did. Much of the bonus is meant to reward what they believe is a good job running the company but large parts is also based around ensuring that your CEO does not get an offer they cannot refuse from another corporation.

 

In no way was his decision to lay off a large amount of their workforce based around enlarging his own bonus. It's just business. The employees were part of a technology that the corporation no longer invested in and thus there is no reason to keep them on. It's just part of life. If my own employer does eliminate my entire team due to not needing it anymore, I can't say that I would expect to be kept on. I haven't had exposure to, an interest in, or an understanding of the other parts of our technology and business. I would expect to be laid off and would start to look for opportunities elsewhere. 

[kacper]

Are those comments written by teenagers?

That would explain a lot.

[dimitriianghelov]

i see no problem. To be honest i don't even know what "hardware" was Microsoft doing aside from xbox

[Misanthrope]

He isn't salaried at $84 million. It's a discretionary year-end bonus decided by the chairman and high equity holders of the company based on the job they think he did. Much of the bonus is meant to reward what they believe is a good job running the company but large parts is also based around ensuring that your CEO does not get an offer they cannot refuse from another corporation.

 

In no way was his decision to lay off a large amount of their workforce based around enlarging his own bonus. It's just business. The employees were part of a technology that the corporation no longer invested in and thus there is no reason to keep them on. It's just part of life. If my own employer does eliminate my entire team due to not needing it anymore, I can't say that I would expect to be kept on. I haven't had exposure to, an interest in, or an understanding of the other parts of our technology and business. I would expect to be laid off and would start to look for opportunities elsewhere. 

 

1) In no way his decision to lay off people enlarges his bonus

2) It's just business

3) He's paid bonuses because he's a good business man and they want to keep him

 

It seems to me like 3) and 1) directly contradict each other: firing people like the QA team to instead shift the testing and debugging to public betas is a business decision. He's being paid a bonus because of his business decisions. The math is pretty fucking straight forward.

 

We don't need to argue about whenever it was necessary or not, good idea or not, but you can't sugar coat it like this because well, it's a contradiction.

[marldorthegreat]

Running one of the richest and largest companies in america, and people want him to work on $10 an hour. Great. 

[Misanthrope]

Running one of the richest and largest companies in america, and people want him to work on $10 an hour. Great. 

 

if it was Bill Gates we would be talking about I could see your logic. Nadella however hardly did shit to contribute to that level of wealth the company already had years before he ever had any significant position. By that logic you can just put anybody on this forum to work on Microsoft as the CEO for a week, not had enough time to destroy any of the wealth the company has at all in any significant way, and still walk out with fucking 1.9 million dollars, because you were the CEO for one of the richest and largest companies in America....for exactly 1 week. 

[Memphaestus]

He isn't salaried at $84 million. It's a discretionary year-end bonus decided by the chairman and high equity holders of the company based on the job they think he did. Much of the bonus is meant to reward what they believe is a good job running the company but large parts is also based around ensuring that your CEO does not get an offer they cannot refuse from another corporation.

 

In no way was his decision to lay off a large amount of their workforce based around enlarging his own bonus. It's just business. The employees were part of a technology that the corporation no longer invested in and thus there is no reason to keep them on. It's just part of life. If my own employer does eliminate my entire team due to not needing it anymore, I can't say that I would expect to be kept on. I haven't had exposure to, an interest in, or an understanding of the other parts of our technology and business. I would expect to be laid off and would start to look for opportunities elsewhere. 

Don't be daft.  Every CEO, and even every manager for large companies, know that if you increase profits or cut payroll, your bonus will increase.  It is the same with every major company worldwide.  

[Tech_Dreamer]

Meh, it's business , everybody does it, just discreetly ,

[Derangel]

Satoru Iwata did.

Kazuo Hirai and other executives at Sony also took salary cuts.

 

I think taking a pay cut is a sign of a good person, but I am not so sure I think not taking a pay cut is a sign of a bad one.

 

Taking a pay cut in when your company is losing tons of money and potentially on a death spiral (in Sony's case) is a good sign. That's different then what is going on here though. What good would taking a pay cut do when the people being laid off are not needed and have no work to do at the company anymore? MS isn't getting rid of people because it's a dying company or because they lost billions of dollars, people are being laid off due to the company restructuring itself and trying to refocus on areas where they feel are the best for the business. Let's be blunt here MS' hardware division has never been amazing and it's an area they probably never should have so heavily invested in. Balmer and lot of the former division and company heads are the ones to blame for this mess really, they're the ones that royally fucked over the company. They didn't get rid of Balmer on a whim.

[marldorthegreat]

if it was Bill Gates we would be talking about I could see your logic. Nadella however hardly did shit to contribute to that level of wealth the company already had years before he ever had any significant position. By that logic you can just put anybody on this forum to work on Microsoft as the CEO for a week, not had enough time to destroy any of the wealth the company has at all in any significant way, and still walk out with fucking 1.9 million dollars, because you were the CEO for one of the richest and largest companies in America....for exactly 1 week. 

He is doing GREAT things at microsoft. Look at windows 10, xbox.