Re: My week with Linux: I'm dumping Windows for Ubuntu to see how it goes

On Sun, 5/18/2025 6:54 PM, CrudeSausage wrote:

On 2025-05-17 10:18 p.m., rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2025 20:04:15 -0400, CrudeSausage wrote:
>

On 2025-05-17 5:07 p.m., Paul wrote:

On Sat, 5/17/2025 1:36 PM, rbowman wrote:

On Sat, 17 May 2025 06:47:31 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oublespeak wrote:
>

Microsoft Office 2024 is available for a one-time purchase. It is not
supported on Linux.

>
Speaking of which I read this week that Microsoft is using React
Native for parts of Office. VS Code is done with Electron. Funny how
Microsoft seldom eats their own dog food. I wonder what Windows 365
uses?
>
>

Microsoft laid off 3% of staff this week.
>
     https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/microsoft-layoffs-hit-bay-area-

staff-20330085.php

>
The staff have "CODEX and The Vibes" on their mind (that's a musical
group).
>
https://soundcloud.com/codex-vibes
>
     Paul

>
They seem to be constantly doing that. It doesn't matter how rich or
profitable a company gets, people are always expendable.

>
What's interesting is who is expendable.
>
https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/16/microsofts_axe_software_developers/<

 
And I get the impression that it doesn't matter how experienced or educated you are either.
 

I don't know how experienced you are with firings, but mass
firings come in "flavors" :-)

You probably think that all mass firings are done on "stack rankings".
It's certainly a popular practice. Maybe 1000 employees in a division
are stack-ranked against one another. Maybe 100 employees in an intermediate-sized
group. The employees then understand what has happened as "business as usual".
If you are performant, "you have nothing to worry about".

The next method is "give me your first born". The ranking is in the lowest
level group. Say I am an entry level manager and I have six reports. There may be
an order to "fire one person in your six person group". The objective of using
this method, is to show each group, how much their services are valued, and
to make sure "each group is touched". Sometimes, this method is used to prevent
"gaming of the system". For example, a sloppy firing method, I might fire the
QA team I wasn't really using anyway. Then later, I inform management we can't
have QA any more, because... there are no staff.

The "give me your first born" will inform employees that perhaps they should
be looking for a new position outside the company. By having the employees
move, I don't pay them severance, because they submitted their letter of
resignation instead.

Usually, the manager will name the method, when talking to the group,
so it's no surprise.

You could put a series of names in a hat and draw them out.

Without the background information, it's dangerous to draw any
conclusions about individual cases.

Experienced employees draw a higher salary, but a firing scheme
based on ageism, could get you in trouble with labor laws. Say for
example, you were firing everyone who had a pension that was about
to vest. (That's assuming your company even has a pension plan any more.)

When an employee with 20 years experience and good stack-ranking reports
was let go, that resulted in a lawsuit. A lawsuit where we didn't get
to hear the results (NDA, presumably). It's still possible for egregious
cases to end up as wrongful dismissal cases. That wasn't a mass firing,
just an employee who was let go, out of the blue. If you have valid
"performance reasons" for letting an employee go, there is a procedure
for that, but it takes six months to execute (give employee tasks,
entry level manager documents all the results, performance report
suited to scrutiny in a wrongful dismissal if necessary). It's when
some manager jumps the gun and just fires someone, it can cost the
company some money.

   Paul