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The meaning of Microsoft CEO's memo has been translated into action: Microsoft will cut 18,000 jobs, mostly from the Nokia division (12,500 jobs).
Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment.
First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster. As part of modernizing our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change. In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. In addition, our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at different paces.
Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft. We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. The first-party phone portfolio will align to Microsoft's strategic direction. To win in the higher price tiers, we will focus on breakthrough innovation that expresses and enlivens Microsoft's digital work and digital life experiences. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
(Score: 1) by turgid on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:54PM
I can foresee a time when everything is made and distributed by robots owned by a small handful of very rich "large" companies who are only staffed by board members, VPs and PHBs with a couple of people to look after the robots.
No one will be able to afford their stuff, unless people keep buying it on credit...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday July 17 2014, @11:12PM
In your own statement of the problem, you demonstrate how this can never actually happen.
"No one will be able to afford their stuff".
So it won't happen that way, but there is a possibility that there will come a time when
almost everything we need can be produced in quantity by automated factories.
But for that to come into being, and survive its pretty obvious that there will need to be a
total re-think of economics.
People generally want to work and create and build. I suspect only the mind-numbingly boring manufacturing will be totally automated.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1) by turgid on Friday July 18 2014, @07:47PM
My point was that the state of affairs in unsustainable. Yes, no one will be able to afford the "stuff" so they'll keep encouraging us to borrow more money cheaply to pay for it...
That's already what's happening.
All of the "money" will flow into the corporations and the little people will slide further and further into debt.
Even that is not sustainable...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday July 18 2014, @12:30PM
I do not think this is going to happen much longer. We are already loaning money out at 0% trying to kick a dying horse for another run...
Fed Funds Rate [federalreserve.gov].
We have for years sacrificed altitude for airspeed. Year after year we have dropped rates, encouraging borrowing, so merchants can report year over year sales increases. We are now at ground level. The lever to drop interest rates to encourage spending is no longer operational. It is against the stop. Unless they start paying us to take a loan.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by turgid on Friday July 18 2014, @08:04PM
Yes, even the Bank of England is making such noises. However, they always stop short of naming the elephant in the room. We've had 0.5% interest rates for many years now. Every so often they threaten to put them up in the next few months, but they never do. The unemployment statistics have been badly gerrymandered on the last few years to make it look like unemployment is falling, but we have large sections of the population underemployed, not working but ineligible to claim unemployment benefit (hence not in the statistics) or "self employed" but not actually doing anything. There is allegedly an economic recovery, but it appears to be just a house-price bubble in the London area making the whole UK economy appear to be growing, when in fact it's just more debt, and prices are dropping everywhere else. Because of social security cut backs, the poor are being referred to food banks, operated by charities, and then the Conservative politicians publicly denounce these poor people as being scroungers... Fuel (gas, oil etc.) is getting more expensive (and hence food and electricity). But everything's fine if you are a "striver" not a "skiver."
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday July 19 2014, @12:27AM
That fed funds rate chart I linked to shows a little hill starting about 2004.
If I put on my tinfoil hat, I would say Bernanke did that deliberately to force a system crash to make Obama look bad. We are in so much debt right now that any raise in interest rates is going to restart the 2008 crash and few debtors will be able to pay their obligations.
Financially, I feel the system is gamed for the bankers to end up owning everything without having to as much as lay a brick. And our own politicians are the ones who went along with them, penning the legal framework for them to do this.
Since we no longer believe in the Biblical "Jubilee", the French option seems to be the most likely way this will play out. I believe the banking class know this and that's why the federals, controlled by the banking classes, have so much interest in snooping to ferret out any organization of the oppressed.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]