Microsoft to hire 4,000 in UK

It's about time

...that there was real investment into apprenticeships and college training, i.e. vocational, rather than sending waves of kids on to uni where most of them have more than enough time on their hands to waste on being in the boozer (I know from experience).

I am not convinced the condem govt has handled the uni situation well with regards to funding, they would have been better off being honest and simply saying that there will be no increase in overall uni places and that there should instead be a steady decline and a re-introduction of entrance exams rather than the current nonsense.

Create?

So offering temporarily free software via BizSpark qualifies as a quantifiable way of creating jobs?

Epic

Awesome news. After you lose your professional job of 20 years in the public sector you will be saved by the shelf stacking, trolley collecting, call centre answering jobs pledged to pick up the slack. Woo.

yeah

but as usual none of these new jobs are advertised anywhere so the people who actually need them still won't get them. you can't expect people to read minds.

So that's...

A few thousand low paid tech jobs for IT apprentices, but thousands more low paid, low skill opportunities to be trained to stack shelves, flog tat, and flip burgers.

Would you like fries with that?

Might as well work in McDonalds - you'll have more self respect and have the added bonus of not being a Ballmer Minion .

Microsoft Britain Works campaign scheme vouchers not available

Apparently, Microsoft which is plugging the Britain Works campaign has expired vouchers that were part of the scheme. Just contacted the Microsoft Britain Works campaign team and they say the vouchers scheme has been stopped. These vouchers provide access to training.

So how is this apprenticeship training going to work?

Don't know if this is just a PR exercise ?

Anyone know....

Low paid is better than nothing at least they get a start

British Corporate and Government IT is now dominated by on-shored staff, can't remember the last time I saw a UK graduate being taken on, if this works at least we'll have some UK based staff for when the outsourcers raise their prices or decide there's more money to be had elsewhere.

What crap

What a bunch of bollocks.

Microsoft UK displays some of the worst HR behaviours & policies in the UK.

In addition to the 80-odd staff Microsoft UK laid off in 2009, Microsoft is still "constructively" dismissing additional staff.

Ask any current Microsoft UK employee whether they received a merit increase for FY 2010 or

whether staff who performed their duties adequately were re-categorised as "underperformed" during their performance review and are being managed out of the company.

None of this makes the news as those unfortunate employees who have been laid off are forced to sign legal agreements preventing them from exercising their legal rights or from speaking to the press.

If Microsoft UK were to create 4000 positions, that would more than double the current number of employees !

What absolute bollocks !

Shame....

...that they had to lay off quite so many people to 'create' these new jobs, eh?