In Window's org and MCIO?...Most impacted - Service engineers, Program managers. Partners and Principals. Now Cloud group has lots of trash added with recent reorg. from OSG. OSG devs are of very low standard compared to Azure devs. They won't stand a chance. Heard from a Partner group manager that lists are being prepared. Watch out.
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Id also expect tighter integration of linked in.
This probably wont mean IC rifs, maybe partner/cvp house cleaning. Id expect Terrys cronies to be worried atm.
Devs need not be worried, we are ramping up new work and need more devs not rifs.
Maybe wdg quality org will be dissolved. Useless.
We’ve got some good stuff in this space as a company, I just hope that they consolidate it.
Azure org has 5:1 dev:pm ratio. Go look in headtrax or who and you’ll see for azure compute, storage, networking, IOT that dev teams are consistently 5x the size of pm teams. I would expect same ratio applied to other feature teams that just reorg’d in.
If there are layoffs, I would think Sep is reasonable timeframe as others mentioned. That’s been trend under Satya. Also Azure team basically doubled with MCIO and WDG teams so next couple months will be used to understand pieces in new org, create all-up strategy and build FY19 plan - including financial targets and headcount budget.
Then org structure will be decided that best supports strategy and plan. At that point there will be some winners and losers at partner and above. Reorg (assuming one happens) would likely take place by July (to begin fiscal year).
Certainly there will be overlapping areas by merging Azure original team, MCIO pieces and WDG pieces. Could result in layoffs, but as others have said impacted employees often get opportunity to look for another role internally. More so, Azure is in land grab for the cloud and I know areas and critical projects that are starved for good engineers - so I would expect reorg and any layoffs to be more about aligning on single resource strategy (dev/pm ratio; service quality/livesite model) and reassigning resources to high need areas than about reducing absolute costs.
As others commented and I stated above, good developers should be fine. However PMs from WDG and those in less technical roles that were duplicated across these orgs (customer programs, partner/ecosystem) could be at higher risk of layoff without soft landing in Azure.
Or I could just be completely wrong.
Jason also seems very pragmatic and not dogmatic - so I don’t expect him to make knee jerk or blanket decisions, such as “This is how we do it in Azure, we’ve got it all figured out, you guys in WDG are clueless.’ He’s one of the most rational and balanced execs I’ve seen.
He did come up through dev track at Microsoft and Azure has 5:1 dev/pm ratio so my assumption is that he’d look to reduce duplication in the new org and shift those resources to advancing the platform.
I’ve spent time in Windows and Azure and love them both. They have long connected history. Makes a lot of sense to merge as one group. Think of this as opportunity and not risk.
Microsoft has become an awful place to work, and might get remembered in history for the company that executed the most layoffs, just for Satya to please investors from time to time. Ridiculous leadership to keep the morale high in the company!
Sincere Advise to LTs, get done with the RIF and let employees feel ownership in the company too.