We're starting to see the labor dearth caused by the dot-com bust, and it would be nice if students are further discouraged by some newsworthy cuts at Microsoft.

I get annoyed by the large number of junior programmers that think they have a potential career track into Microsoft (or the video games industry), and I would enjoy posting the eventual El Reg story on the cafeteria corkboard to crush their dreams and make them less likely to leave.

It's only fair!

Balmer's tantrum-fuelled furniture abuse has /really/ got out of hand

What a wonderful way to kill productivity. I know I have seen it.

To quote the article:

"meetings and interrogations about the work they are doing"

It's taken this long for M$ to realise that their organisation is top heavy, bloated, slow, expensive, people who are hanging around but wtf are you doing taking resource - does this sound familiar folks ?

It amazes me that it takes 91,000 people to write a half arsed OS, shite browser, wayyyyyyyyyy overpriced office suite, a search engine that can't find dick and an inferior games console. If anyone can add to this list please feel free.

M$ wasting YOUR money !

A quote from the blog quoted in the article:

"you have to realize that the upcoming 2009 Mid Year Career Discussion review process is one of the most important career inflection-points for you that we've had in a long, long time. Already my team is being asked to review people on the HR Watch List deeply and especially look at any two-time-plus 10%'s, no matter whether they are Situation I (eh, should be fired) or Situation II (effective but have reached their career maximum - again, a horrible, horrible concept)."

Effective but have reached their career maximum.

What a bunch of evil bastards. God I thank my lucky stars I don't work for that shower of twats.

Merry Feckin' Christmas.

It amazes me that you knew all this about MS, but they didn't themselves. You must be a genius.

It amazes me that you think you know what you're talking about

You must have worked for Lehman Bothers with your wonderful degree of foresight or maybe a farmyard judging by your debating skills. Ever heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns or Diseconomies of Scale ?

Oh and how much more do you think M$ would have been in it, after dumping such a lemon on the World as Vista, to pay $47.5 Billion for Yahoo? Even a blind,deaf, one legged baboon could have seen this coming. So where does that leave you ?

:0)

The numbers being talked about internally are around the 10% range. The "interrogation" comments are spot-on... and rather disgraceful that a company can treat any human being the way that they are. But for most of Microsoft... they dwell in a right-to-work state so nothing can really be done about it.

-anony

Your doctor called... sad he forgot to prescribe Stockholm syndrome medication.

Seriously... wake up people.... this is the best thing to happen to Microshaft... maybe they will hire on people with brains.

: O P

Windows is a seriously botched OS.... along with everything else.

LOL. Straight out of Dilbert, surely?

I'm now looking forward to the upcoming M$ company inflection-point.