Naturally, he is very disappointed but he should keep things in perspective. It's not that bad of situation to be in. You have 15 years of software development experience at Microsoft and there are going to be a lot of open doors. This could really be blessing in disguise.
I don't know the details of the Microsoft case, but my job was made redundant a number of years ago and I definitely was able to bounce back.
There are lots of legal regulations around terminating employment and one of the easier legal ways is to remove a particular job or position. That's why generally people are not made redundant, their job, position or title is. It's a legal method of cutting costs by pruning the organisation.
It's nothing to do with whether you are a worthy employee. Redundancies don't work that way. They are a practical, legal way of reducing numbers - payroll and staff. In the video, he's wondering why they couldn't simply find another position for him where he could apply his expertise. It's probably because they had to state his job is no longer viable and so the job (and the person occupying those jobs) are let go. If the company were to find other positions for their favorite employees, it opens all kinds of legal problems for HR.
While I am aware that this is the reality, I find the attitude underlying this reality rather unfortunate.
As an interviewer assessing a candidate, I would like to believe that I'm thoughtful enough to see that corporations lay people off for any number reasons. The macro-scale conditions at Microsoft likely have no bearing on the candidate's quality.
Imagine if the candidate were from RIM. We'd hardly question the reality that RIM has to lay off people, many of whom are competent.
That's just one way of looking at it. An acquaintance of mine who is also a HR guy once told me its in a person's best interest to keep hopping companies every ~3 years at least.
Working at one company for a long time can be interpreted in many different ways. More like a person, who isn't excited about looking for new opportunities. Or a person who is just lazy to not make a move etc etc. Also if you stay at a company for a very long time, unless the company gives you a generous raise every year your salary will be way behind market standards. And if you are OK with your work being valued so little for so long, it only means two things either you just agree that your work or contributions aren't very important to be paid enough, or you are just lazy. And both are negative indicators.
Its pointless to show loyalty that spans across 1.5 decades to a mega corporation where the boss two layers above probably doesn't even know your name, let alone the work you do. No wonder they don't blink twice before letting go some one. As much talented you might be, and how many algorithms you've memorized or how many nano seconds faster you can make a program run.
I fail to understand why anybody would stay so long, its like setting yourself up for a big meltdown sooner or later.
Being laid off is different from being fired. It doesn't necessarily imply anything about you. I think anybody who really wonders that probably hasn't witnessed a large-scale corporate layoff before.
It can still be devastating, though. It depends heavily on how general your skills are. Being laid off is much worse for someone whose knowledge and skills were mostly institutional.
Not necessarily. Having a "brand name" on your resume tends to really impress the small-to-medium sized companies. I think there's plenty of places that'll roll out the red carpet for "the guy from Microsoft", so to speak and look past the fact that he was laid off.
Not in my experience, no. There's no stigma when you are part of a mass layoff that was national news. People understand the ax swings wildly at times like this.
The most common objection I have heard in past six months during my job search. Another two objections that I have heard are "too much experience" and "your past salary was too much, we don't want to offer less but can't afford to pay you what you deserve."
You're don't necessarily deserve $n if the market can no longer bare it. There's nothing wrong with taking $(0.8n) if that's what the market has determined your skills are worth.
The problem is that the company is afraid that you'll bolt the second you get an offer at the n level again. They'd rather not hire you at all than hire you, invest in you, and then lose you just as quickly afterward.
Offer a longer term contract then. The guy in the video was at his last job for 15 years. I'm sure he'd be OK with that assuming the benefits were good enough.
I hope this person is OK but that strikes me as unrealistic. Ageism is a real problem for software developers, but also that 15 years at MS could just as easily be viewed as a negative than a positive.
That 15 years of experience at one of the world's top software companies is seen is a negative disgusts me.
It seems disrespectful to judge an employee based on the negative perception of an entire company. For all the broken things within a company like Microsoft, I think it would be foolish to mark the company's talent pool as tainted.
Perhaps this reflects a subtler form of the fanboy-ism that exists in technology culture today. The sentiment is that companies we dislike must have incompetent employees. Competent employees would surely build a better product, right? Obviously this is naive.
Absolutely right, ageism plays into this as well. If you're hiring, keep in mind that, while fashionable, it is illegal to discriminate based on age. I wish this law was slightly easier to enforce.
yup. you're not hurting for .net / sql dev roles in the Puget sound area. Starbucks, Expedia, Nordstrom, and any number of other consulting firms and smaller dev shops.
Of course - Node, Rails, Django, Spring etc wouldn't be bad to learn.
