Mergers always lead to layoffs, games aren't doing great as they're not essential in an iffy economy.
Microsoft is seeing the writing on the wall and cutting internal studios. It's much cheaper to just pay 3rd parties to release on Gamepass vs having to fund an entire games development.
I don't think we even see a real "Xbox" in the future. You'll have Xbox branded living room PCs with Windows. They're working on a gaming mode that I guess optimizes Win 11 a bit.
Getting a AAA games job will be much more difficult in the future.
If it's outsourced to 3rd parties, in theory, shouldn't the number of jobs be the same?
Or are you alluding to AAA games not being as viable to the industry as it once was?
I am asking mostly because I seldom play AAA games (for some reason most of them turn me off), and I mostly play indie or retro titles. But I always recognized myself as an outlier, and I would presume most people are primarily interested in the big releases.
They are struggling to make the case for buying games from the Windows Store instead of Steam and they are struggling to make the case to buy an Xbox Console instead of a Sony or Nintendo Console.
If we see Xbox branded PCs in the living room- that's more a sign of pivoting due to failure than anything else.
Even when D3D12 came out there was commentary how very close it was to Vulkan, which was supposedly largely the work of DICE engineers working for AMD to create the preliminary Mantle implementation.
Historically, games have actually performed extremely well in economic downturns.
Likely because they're extremely cheap entertainment if you count $ per hour of entertainment, but that's just my view on it.
And gaming as a whole is doing great. The only part that's falling off a cliff is the woke garbage life service games AAA studios have been releasing for the last ~10 yrs or so.
Whenever the studios didn't make dumb political messaging the core of the game... And instead made a good gameplay loop first, they've generally succeeded pretty well. It takes skill to make a game centered around political messaging and have it be good, (e.g. spec ops the line, MGS, metaphor:refantazio ), and none of the woke garbage that flopped ever had anything even attempting to create a world in which this messaging made sense. So we're left with completely nonsensical catering to politics no average person cares about whatsoever.
I mean we've even got single dev games that got to the charts of steam (schedule I).
The explosive growth of the gaming industry over the 90s-2010s was fueled by continuously unlocking new swathes of consumers. Games went from being for kids, to being for adults and kids, to people who would never consider themselves "gamers" with mobile, which in turn created the "whaling" industry of microtransaction fueled F2P. But there's only so many new, large groups of people with money. What we're seeing now is a correction, with growth estimates collapsing back down to what you'd expect from a mature industry.
I could easily be wrong; I can't say I've thoroughly perused every layoff statement from big tech, but I frankly don't even see how it would be positive PR that you're replacing workers with machines, much less worth outright lying about.
> Microsoft Corp. began job cuts that will impact about 9,000 workers, its second major wave of layoffs this year as it seeks to control costs while ramping up on artificial intelligence spending.
And AI is a bullet point in the "Takeaways, powered by Bloomberg AI" section as well.
> Surprisingly no mention of AI in an article about mass layoffs at a tech company.
Sorry if I misunderstood.
Don Mattrick has a lot to answer for. Microsoft was killing it during the seventh generation and he was able to burn everything down over a period of two days. Xbox never recovered after that.
Don Mattrick's mistakes were near-fatal, but Phil Spencer's done more than his equal share of torpedoing the Xbox division. The blame at this point can rest squarely on his shoulders.
Well, him, and the person who refuses to replace him.
Mattrick's missteps were not just about two days of revealing the XBox One, but really the entire second half of the 360's lifespan. The focus on Kinect to chase the Wii audience and the shuttering of many of their development studios left them thin on the exclusive front, which became a huge liability as they transitioned to the next generation.
But Spencer has a lot to answer for. He has been acquiring studios for 7 years now with little to show for it besides Obsidian having prolific output. Game Pass is flat, Xbox Cloud is flat, and their hardware is being outsold by Sony month over month, year over year. They seem to be pivoting to "Play Anywhere" which feels like the first phase of a three phase plan to retreat to the moat of Windows, where they can use Steam's momentum to ensure that games will at least appear on the platform. He inherited a mess but has made plenty of his own mistakes as well.
Edit: Allegedly not.
https://www.financialexpress.com/life/technology-microsoft-c...
"Nadella addressed the recent layoffs, clarifying that the decision was not based on individual job performance. “This is a structural change, not a reflection of how people were performing,” Nadella explained. He emphasized that Microsoft is shifting its strategic focus, with a renewed emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI), which the company views as a key driver of its long-term vision and growth."
Unfortunately, I have never seen a layoff only remove weak people. Plenty of good gets thrown out with the bad every single time. The only signal I take from someone being laid off is that they were unlucky and probably not a total sycophant.
Luckily for leadership, opportunity cost is completely invisible. They can't travel to alternate realities so they can just pretend they made a good decision and go with that. This is what causes the fun phenomena of "failing upwards" we see in modern American corporate leadership.
Not every society expects people to achieve maximal performace on quarterly OKR, while management foreman's play rythmic cadence drums and whip slashes.
Further cutbacks from the level reached by the prior cutbacks due to monetary tightening when the economy was still in robust growth are to be expected, as are relatively transparent rationalizations that try to put an upbeat spin on them instead of the honest “the cost of money has gone up and the return of spending it on higher staffing levels has gone down.”
Union may save job for few who have job but people who don't (and they are lot more and increasing) are not gonna get helped by any union.
Note that in some countries, unions extend to cover workers who are not even part of the union. Heard about this from some french friends:
> Collective bargaining agreements (conventions collectives) may be negotiated between employers and labour unions covering a company or group of companies (accords d’entreprise), or between employers’ associations and labour unions covering an industry as a whole; in the latter case, the government may decide that the collective agreement covers even those employers who are not members of the employers’ association and is therefore mandatory throughout the industry.
https://www.nortonrosefulbright.com/en/knowledge/publication...
Not saying it's the right solution for $COUNTRY, but I was certainly surprised when I heard of this
I know, I know, "union bad." I guess people will say that until all that is left is a person to watch the Machine, and a dog to bite the person if they touch the Machine. Or all the jobs are offshored to the cheapest labor on the globe.
Solutions such as "try harder," "be more lucky," or "just find another job" are...not very actionable when you consider that ~60% of Americans cannot afford a basic quality of life and the current labor macro.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/what-you-need-to-kn...
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/12/majoritie...
https://news.gallup.com/poll/510281/unions-strengthening.asp...
https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/Labor-Unions-And-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_Sta...
(i am once again asking you to think in systems)
People who don’t want to work for a union shop should have the same amount of voice as people who do (1 vote per employee). I think unions have struggled to gain traction because it’s obvious that they cost money to run (which is fine and proper) but it’s not obvious that that expense pays off for the typical member. If a median tech worker pays $1300-2600/yr in dues (1-2% of median salary), I think it’s reasonable for them to expect more than that on a net-present-value basis.
Plenty of people are strong advocates; plenty are strong detractors; I suspect that a well-run union (efficient in its own ops and partnering effectively for the long-term health of the company and its union members) would be good on balance and also fairly “under the radar” making it hard to know how good it actually was.
And I really want to touch on your point about dues and unions. Workers should absolutely have high expectations for what their unions deliver, and should not tolerate any sort of drag, apathy, or lack of effort. With that said, it is another political process one must participate in, it isn't ordering an Uber. I have zero tolerance for union grift. Perhaps this calls for something like a non profit ratings agency, but for unions.
[1] https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2022/08/are-older-work... ("In 2000, only 17.6% of the 55 and older populace had a job. Now the percentage is 37.5%. A 20% increase in the percentage of 55+ who are employed in a 20-year span is unprecedented. If the percentage of employed 55+ had stayed the same, there would only be 17 million 55+ workers today. Instead, there are over 37 million.") [2022]
[2] https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-closing-gender-... ("Gen Zers are the most supportive of unions, with a mean approval rating of 64.3 compared with 60.5 for Millennials, 57.8 for Gen Xers, and 57.2 for Baby Boomers." [death and retirement rate is progress rate in this regard by age cohort; the faster the older cohort(s) who don't support organizing exit the workforce, this should potentially reduced the lift required to organize forward looking])
(demographics + culture + advocacy + time is my mental model on this, and I have arrived at this model from first principles, as a macro and demographics scholar)
Opinions about unions tend to “mature” and become more nuanced with age (after exposure to both as a member and as a manager of union staff), for worse and better.
Adjust expectations for human behavior accordingly.
If workers are not seeing improvements in life over time, why would their viewpoint change? I agree a minority of workers might change their mind when they luck into favorable economic and labor circumstances, but luck will not find the majority, and when it comes to voting, a majority matters.
How the US Is Destroying Young People’s Future | Scott Galloway | TED - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEJ4hkpQW8E
Part 2: Scott Galloway’s Viral TED Talk on How the Old Are Stealing from the Young - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjNV6JwlV2s
Millennials are shattering the oldest rule in politics: Western conservatives are at risk from generations of voters who are no longer moving to the right as they age - https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767... | https://archive.today/lQoLa
IOW, “this time is different!” Maybe that will be true this time, but it’s far from a given.
https://d4pgq7fazddwpa.archive.ph/lQoLa/f1886c78af8eb03745a8...
https://careers.augsburg.edu/blog/2024/03/18/gen-z-does-not-...
https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/05/14/on-the-...
I don't know if it will be different in a good way, but I doubt in 30 years, Gen Z is going to be telling their kids and grandkids to walk into an office and give a good handshake to the hiring manager. Norms and etiquette have completely shifted.
A lot of the benefits my union provides might not matter to the average HN user making $X00,000/yr though so who knows?
The "NPV" is thst you aren't part of the next wave of layoffs. Losing a month of salary every 6-12 months is great insurance compared to losing a month of salary a month after you get laid off.
Do people really not value stability anymore? Do they have no craft to build nor challenge into? Is everyone here just older workers who don't realize how utterly abused Gen Z has been by this workforce, if they can even get in? I'd pay 10% of my salary for some stability after these 2 years of fallout, and I still ended up on thr more fortunate side of these layoffs for my sub-generation of late millennial.
Hey that's actually a great line. It might be even better than the original, where the person is there to feed the dog.
If people would rather lose all job stability their parents had as a career instead of coming together to work in their best interests, what can you really do?
I think "low performance" is typically just a scapegoat. the real reason is they simply don't need that many empolyees to maximize profitability.
corporations feel no moral or ethical obligation towards their employees.
Whether or not that should be the case -- and I think it should not be -- it is.
which one is Microsoft?
> [the New Deal architect, A. A. Berle] argued that corporations should "serve ... all society" through legally enforceable rules
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berle%E2%80%93Dodd_debate
"profit is the only goal" is not a law of nature, it's the outcome of a specific system of laws.
It certainly isn't the worker.
Union leader is one approach. But really if the US had a proper safety net, universal healthcare, and progressive taxes on capital accumulation, layoffs in OPs framing would not be nearly as bad.
The real issue here isnt the layoffs. Its that the top are pulling up profits, theres no quality healthcare for the unemployed (and getting worse), SFH are all levered up making the price unattainable for the average worker and high risk bc layoffs, etc.
The frustrating part is how dead simple the solution is. Universal healthcare. Progressive taxation that applies equally to capital gains. Block SFH investments (by investors and average joes alike). Maybe not emough, but light years ahead of where we are.
No that's what makes management the most money because they're paid in stock. So they want you to think it's legally required.
The first responsibility of a company is "act in the shareholders' best interests".
Is it in shareholders' best interests to have > 20% unemployment?
At the same time our politicians appear to be looking everywhere for a solution to increasing US jobs except for right where the issue is. Everyone else sees it but our politicians are willfully blind.
The main issue though is one of demographics.
Like Japan, we have insufficient young people to do the jobs and produce what's needed to support the old.
Worse, the old have utilized money printing and their privileged position to enrich themselves, and in the process it is tearing the country apart, and through economic manipulation force conscripting the young at suppressed wages to pay their debts off (i.e. social security).
Thomas Paine would have a lot of similar things to say if he were alive today, specifically about dead men ruling.
The economics given such lopsided movement cause chaotic disruption and deflate and are unsustainable.
You are wrong insofar as they'll be earning a 10th of the salary. That may happen upfront, but in terms of purchasing power it will reach parity much more quickly given the macro monetary dynamics going on.
When reading history, I could never imagine how bad it would need to get to make a multi-generational citizen abandon their home country and immigrate elsewhere.
I have my answer today. They do so when there is no reasonable path to a survivable future.
There are times where a reasonable person can see and know everything will burn, because there is nothing that can stop it, and the only thing you can do is remove yourself and your family from the path of that burn.
I know the talking points on HN like to portray Indian developers as cheap, low quality labor, but contrary to popular belief, they aren’t getting workers for $15k. A Median senior developer earns almost $90k in India in Microsoft.
https://www.levels.fyi/companies/microsoft/salaries/software...
https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=microsoft&job=software+eng...
What do you think the salary would be for a US employee that those $101k H1B Software Engineers replaced? They obviously aren't saving 90%, but maybe 50% 33%?
The profitability they embraced was derived from surveillance capitalism which comes from a money-printer seeing as the government is the one paying for it.
It was short-term up-front profit, followed by what inevitably comes after where they pay it back and more. They are laying people off because they wanted that short term profit more than they wanted to do business. There is a potential that they may chase this having the same dynamics as deflation, given that free money is largely no longer available suddenly (which pops the bubble).
The people making those decisions knew the laws and countries would catch up to them eventually but they still did it.
It's not impossible for this to be Microsoft's way to keep the AI flywheel spinning.
It is a service, one side gives work, the other pays the bills, nothing else.
Be a good teammate, that is all.
It is, and they are. It’s why Reagan fired ATC strikers and blackballed them. It’s why private enterprise stockpiled machine guns and chemical weapons against strikers back in the Gilded Age. It’s why companies will spend billions to block Unions rather than just give workers the few million or so more they need over a decade to just maintain a standard of living. It’s why they’ll close down stores, warehouses, offshore jobs and outsource to contractors to penalize Unions.
Unions are a direct response to the inequality of Capital allocation and distribution.
If your job is so important that a strike should be illegal, then that job should also compensate you and your colleagues so well that a strike isn’t even a remote consideration. ATC was being treated like shit, weighed the pros and cons, and decided to strike.
And now in 2025, literally everything they struck against (outdated tech, short staffing, high burnout, low wages) is still here, and still causing harm.
This photo in particular captures something of it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Strikers_Riot
And how are you going to do that when the scabs are in India? Unions work in “physical” domains (like plumbing, factory work, etc.), not so much in “virtual” domains where all you need is a computer to do your work and there’s an entire world full of workers who would think they’ve died and gone to heaven if they could make half your salary.
Lol good luck with that.
Could MS replace them all with scabs? Sure, with enough time and money. But it wouldn't happen overnight, and things would get very dire if not company ruining in the meantime.
What is great about your mission critical bug not getting fixed for a few more weeks?
I'm in tech and I would never join a union. Why do I need collective bargaining to set my salary (and not give me raise until it's collectively raised) when I can bargain for my own raises?
In addition to this, unions don't bode well for innovation and technology. Look at the Taxicab unions. We could only get a cab in person or through the phone, because the unions had no incentive to innovate. It look a non-union startup to push them to actually make it convenient and better for the customer.
OTOH, gig drivers are being paid below minimum wage, with no benefits, no retirement plan, and no stability of work.
As a customer, yay technology and UX! But as a human, it's objectively worse for society.
Gig work is not supposed to be stable, have benefits, or retirement. It's supposed to be there for someone to make extra money. I know lots of people that used it to make extra money and now can't make anything because of new regulations.
If you wanted to drive a Taxi in NYC, it was a million dollar investment for a medallion and the whole system was a monopoly that shutdown any new advancements.
How was this better for humans or customers?
The workers got paid, couldn't be laid off easily, and can make a career.
But i guess I see this line of thinking and see exactly how we got to trumpism. The current system has flaws and bad actors, let's instead burn it down and replace it with even worse actors who make all the money. Don't bother using anti trust or regulating the new industry, the old boogeyman ruined it.
I just want to not be laid off every 3 years becsuse some executive wants numbers to look 1% better for shareholders. I'd gladly join a union that ensures there's proper warning for layoffs and proper payout if it goes through.
>Look at the Taxicab unions.
So you're complaining about regulation because unregulated tech was convinent for you for a few years? That thinking is how we got here.
It's even simpler than this. We call is "collective bargaining" for a reason. If we don't collect... We lose all the power.
But my country's been so individualistic and no one seems to trust anyone anymore. No wonder we're struggling. We can't even come together to say "hey we need better minumum wage" after the longest drought of not raising it.
This idea that companies must be the social safety net is deeply flawed, you want companies to take risks on new business lines that may not pan out. That's how we get innovation. In order to have that, you must not heavily penalize taking those risks.
- Pro: My father only graduated high school, yet was able to support a middle-class family - a house, two cars, 3 children, healthcare, etc., all with his union trucking job. That is almost unheard of today.
- Con: My father often talked about the corruption, like work being throttled to meet only the minimum output requirements in the union contract, and guys just sitting around, playing cards for half-a-day because it only took them a few hours to meet the requirements. (And new guys would get "talked to" in the parking lot if they tried to do too much work.)
A layoff is a complete and utter failure in leadership top down.
Then applying for 6k visas that are going to be compensated well below industry levels is just a complete joke.
It has absolutely nothing to do with managing out low performers or managing existential business risk. It has everything to do with managing annual EPS to Wall Street's expectations. There was an inflection point at the end of 2022 where Revenue growth slowed so to maintain Earnings growth, costs had to be cut continuously, and this process is still playing out.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zoology-us-microsoft-old-time...
Layoffs have always been part of the game. There is reason to believe this latest set of layoffs are different (Scott Hanselmann himself said so on LinkedIn recently - "Laying off my staff is never easy, but this is the first time I've had to lay people off for someone else's business goals" whatever that means).
2. That's how it is for most of these high profile layoffs. They are profitable but do layoffs so they can report record revenue later. It's not about "we can't afford workers", it's about blatant greed in 90% of cases this decade.
3. Yeah, talent retention is gone this decade. They don't care about growth or fostering future labor.
1 - Microsoft investing 3bn USD in India-based developers: https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-invest-3-bln-ex...
2 - Microsoft having 4700 H1B filings for fiscal 2025: https://www.myvisajobs.com/employer/microsoft/
Utterly predictable behavior by Satya Nadella.
If the point of the program is A, and you think it's being used as B, it's fair to ask if the point of the program is really A or if it's actually B.
Just pointing that out or asking the question does not mean you "hate immigrants".
You might! But I don't think it's guaranteed.
I think the language speaks for itself
Most engineers (H1Bs, and not) I’ve met aren’t exceptional. Saying that isn’t xenophobic.
I mean lol..have u heard of american-czech CEO doing that to americans with czechs. Not really right...
What’s really bizarre is that when the CEO happens to be Indian American, there’s a problem and a conspiracy.
Preferably at a lower cost, though...
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/mic...
Everyone in tech thinks they are special but companies will always do what they can to reduce costs and tech salaries are some of the biggest costs companies have. They're going to do everything in their power to reduce them.
I suspect it’s related to the stock buyback safe harbor rule (Rule 10b-18.) Layoff announcements used to be a sign of a company in crisis, now the stock price often immediately rises, perhaps because shareholders are anticipating a short-term windfall.
When a company decides to go public and take their money it's still the company's responsibility to run their business and keep the people they took money from in exchange for shares happy.
FAANG total headcounts have been trending down for years now (2-3).
It was a first, and then the entire collection of CEOs showcased their herd mentality by jumping on that bandwagon. It's kinda like the anti-poaching collusion that happened... gosh, 10 years ago!
https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/apple-google-others-...
...only, this time, there's some bullshit "economic headwinds" arguments being advanced as reasons for these layoffs.
I remember experiencing actual belt-tightening in 2008-09, where it was disgraceful-but-necessary-to-save-the-company. It's nothing like that this time around.
- Revenue was $69.6 billion and increased 12%
- Operating income was $31.7 billion and increased 17% (up 16% in constant currency)
- Net income was $24.1 billion and increased 10%
I doubt that has a big impact on Microsoft's gaming divisions, but it would help explain why they might not think the previous decades of growth will continue.
As they should: "Trump’s sanctions on ICC prosecutor have halted tribunal’s work". [0] Bert Hubert has been writing on the subject as well. [1]
[0] https://apnews.com/article/icc-trump-sanctions-karim-khan-co...
[1] https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/the-european-cloud-ladder/
Even without actual political interference, it's slightly annoying that we bind our public services into having a Google or Apple account.
Cut costs and make 25B next quarter! Cut more in US and hire in India. Make 27B in a quarter next year!
One of the most unconventional things he taught me was that “our highest obligation is to employees and their families. Second is to investors. Third is to the communities we operate in. Obviously don’t ever say this in a board meeting or investor conference”.
And he meant it. When products got cancelled, people got reassigned. Terminations for poor performance happened but were individual cases.
I’m quite sure the idea of firing people to goose the share price never even crossed his mind.
If every third 22 year old isn't making 200K, how are you going to sustain a market of crapshacks "worth" 1M?
My mostly uninformed worse case estimate is a large portion of these companies become something like the "body shops" (I believe MS has some association with Accenture, so that'd fit) where they maintain a minimal US presence for (mostly) customer facing "sales"/"high touch" positions so they have someone to broker deals and contracts with the (often clueless, IME) F500s, and then outsource all implementation work offshore. Same goes for some large portion of "important" managers.
For the "deep"/important/critical technical work, there will likely be staff retained on-shore, while the "boring" CRUD-type work that comprises some portion of the FANNAGS (whatever) is done overseas.
It's unlikely, say, for Google Search or AWS EC2 or something critical at MS (M365 maybe?) to be totally off-shored, but lesser services/functions are a likely target. (I know this is already happening to some extent at these companies; I've heard from reputable sources there's some large services that were nearly entirely built by staffing firms)
Basically, I think it's two things: we've reached the end of stratospheric growth in "tech" (sorry I just don't see the LLM wave getting there; a million SAAS thingys to "vibe code" a React calorie tracker ain't it), there's a massive surplus from the ZIRP era paired with some sort of obvious recession happening (or that's been going on for a while).
It's also a reset of sorts--look I'm as "pro software" as the next commentator here, but it's pretty absurd to think that there's loads of people making 200K+ to write CRUD stuff. There's just not a "shortage" in any way for any of these skills, as anyone doing a job search can attest.
This type of pay is really only "rational" in the markets where the cost of living has skyrocketed in the manner it has (largely/entirely a function of the "growth" era in SF/Seattle/Austin). It never seemed sustainable, and I suspected there would be some abrupt end when the "learn to code" era really took off.
On a positive note, perhaps those cities would be more affordable, but the in-elasticity of housing prices on the "way down" are always a problem for buyers.
In "non-growth" times (i.e the era we're in now (post ZIRP) and probably for the foreseeable future, LLMs being the exception), very little outside the major revenue generators is probably "core" roles.
Someone who was a highly skilled factory worker would have said the same thing in the 80's. That didn't work out too well for them in the long run. You have to assume that eventually those overseas workers will become experts in that "deep" work because they have the incentive to.
No it won't happen overnight, but neither did factory jobs leaving. I suspect though in 10 years the tech market for US workers will look very different than it does today.
Sounds like a Monopoly. Why bother building something new?
American companies have been trying to replace American works for decades....this is not new. I wonder if trying to stop folks trying to make a simple decent living in the U.s. is not the right approach? ...Rather, i think the focus should be against the leaders of the American companies...Because they seem to be the ones pushing to get rid of ALL workers...sure, for now, they're trying to replace American workers, but soon enough they'll want to get rid of the H1B workers too...and eventually get rid of ANY/ALL workers if it means they can squeeze as much money for themselves.
If/When AI and robots come en masse to "steal jobs", would you blame the workers who get kicked out of the companies (even if they had upskilled themselves), or would you blame the leaders who kicked the people out? With all due respect, my opinion is that i think you're blaming the wrong people.
Teams is sort of tolerable now, but still feels terrible and lacks many of slacks niceties. The rest of their productivity stuff is terrible and slow. It’s embarrassing really.
From what I read Azure is a border line dumpster fire.
Then what LLM integration do they really have in their software apps?
And, then of course there's the "do as the competitors do", where when employees DO BRING UP good alternatives, the same aforementioned type of purchasers use the argument: "Well, lots of other firms and even our competitors use Microsoft...so why not stick with Microsoft...etc?"
Years ago, there used to be the phrase: "No one got fired for buying IBM...". I suppose nowadays you swap that brand out with "Microsoft", or "Google", etc. This rabbit hole goes really deep....but i encourage the interested to look up this IBM phrase, and you'll get tons of literature on why companies make purchasing decisions, and more importantly why they're often poor decisions.
Accenture, Deloitte, et al are some of the only businesses that are "trusted partners" for the big F500s* or the only firms that are sufficiently capitalized/insured etc etc such that they can "win" the big jobs. Quality and such doesn't matter much--if you and I could spin up and LLC tomorrow with the ability to deliver something at 10x the quality in half the time, it literally wouldn't matter, for exactly those reasons. It's an identical situation to buying services/software from MS.
*the amount of work outsourced at these places is staggering, speaking from experience.
And then, after any big project is "done" (regardless if there was a colossal mess left behind by the consultant team), the same senior leader who hired the awful big firm gets the promotion or moves on...and the employees are left holding the bag. What's worse, the enterprise's remaining leaders threaten the employees to keep managing the mess - "keep working hard, or you'll be replaced by AI...".
It feels all like an environment of snake oil, and magician's smoke and mirrors. Sad, really.
The amount of money that "enterprises" will spend in order to avoid hiring actual competent people is staggering. They quite literally spend orders of magnitude more than just hiring people, always end up with mixed results and have no ownership over the things they depend on.
I've also seen several cases where these companies maintain a "predatory" relationship: they build some big convoluted Thing of dubious quality and utility, and then, as a result of the hiring company refusing to invest in employees of any expertise, they either pay the same company to "maintain" or "add features" to The Thing, or worse, they hire another outsourcing firm to do that.
My favorite experience was working with a large F500 that outsourced (effectively) 100% of their IT--the internal staff were basically "yappers", people that just attending meetings and said things like "we'll have to ensure this meets security standards" but did no actual implementation work and had no intimacy with anything developed.
The irony, of course, is that attempting to get answers about any of the complex stuff that their employer ostensibly owned was an exercise in futility: "oh you have to ask the 'platform'/'data'/whatever team (another subcontractor or several)". I was under the impression no actual employee at the company knew, in any material way, how any of the stuff the business depended on worked, beyond whatever prepared slide deck they were given.
They'd have zero useful technical input on any solution, only occasionally quipping with some sort of canned platitudes: "we use dotnet internally", right, sure.
Utterly bizarre, and not, I fear, unique.
meanwhile revenue is up 15% YOY
stavros•2d ago