Just a quick little note to say that, yes, I am still employed. Microsoft announced on Thursday that they would be eliminating 5,000 jobs over the next year and a half, including 1,400 jobs on Thursday (full press release here). I’ve heard that about 700 of them would be at the Puget Sound campus—which is mostly Redmond–which, I think staffs about 35,000-45,000 people. How many of these other 3,600 positions will be due to attrition, reduced hiring, or by other means is unknown.
Thursday morning I woke up and read a flurry of e-mails from some of the executives in the company, including Ray Ozzie, talking about the downsizing. Ray Ozzie is Bill Gates’ replacement in the role of “Chief Software Architect” at Microsoft, and he’s the guy who started the group that I joined just a few months ago. If you’re interested, there’s an article about him that was in the December issue of Wired – you can skim it online here. It talks a little bit about Live Mesh (the product I work on). In Ozzie’s e-mail, he reiterated that there would be cuts across the company, including his division (of which I am a part of). This, of course, got my heart pounding a little faster than normal.
However, the next e-mail that I got put all fears and doubts aside; it was from our “Dev Manager” – my boss’s boss – saying that there would be no cuts in our team and that we are the right size in the eyes of the executives. So that was wonderful news.
However, I also know some of the few that weren’t so lucky. The team that I had moved from had about a third of them laid off. This made the day bittersweet – they were part of my family at Microsoft, as I had worked with many of them since I started. I wish them the best of luck in all that they do and pray for all the unemployed that the economy gets better soon and they can find jobs.
I certainly feel blessed that I still have my job and can continue to support our family.