And they had the GALL to ask for the chump change back?
"Microsoft won't seek return of pay: by Associated Press | February 24, 2009
SEATTLE - A few weeks after launching the first wide-scale layoffs in its history, Microsoft Corp. admits it miscalculated a key part of the plan.
First Microsoft realized that an administrative glitch caused it to pay more severance than intended to some laid-off employees. The company's response: It asked the ex-workers for the money back.
But when one of Microsoft's letters seeking repayment surfaced on the Web, the situation turned embarrassing, and yesterday , the company reversed course and said the laid-off workers could keep the extra payouts.
Three cheers for the BLOGS!!!!!!!!
Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft also gave about 20 employees too little severance. When the company noticed its mistake, it sent checks and explanations to those people.... With the recession biting into software sales, the company said it would let up to 5,000 of its 94,000 employees go. Microsoft remains profitable, however, and has a nearly $21 billion in cash.
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Update:
They must have fixed the glitch; avaricious arrogance back on full throttle.
CAMBRIDGE - The slumping economy is deflating the high-tech business along with other industries, but Microsoft Corp. will continue to invest in research and hopes to emerge from the recession stronger, the company's top executive said yesterday.
"Our whole industry will come down," Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's chief executive, said in an interview at the company's New England Research and Development Center near Kendall Square. "But that's OK. The innovation opportunities are fantastic for us. So are the opportunities to improve market share, and all those good things. We may have to do a little reset economically, but we'll still be profitable."
Microsoft has already had two rounds of cost-cutting in response to the downturn and is paring between 2,000 and 3,000 jobs globally. The first round of layoffs, at the end of last month, didn't touch its Massachusetts operations, which now employ nearly 1,000 workers, including about 200 in its new office at One Memorial Drive.
While it is scaling back in some areas, Microsoft is investing in others, especially the start-up labs and long-term research operations that have opened in Cambridge over the past year.
I'll bet that is some VENTURE CAPITAL going in there, huh? I mean, if they are SITTING on $21 BILLION -- with a "b" -- in CASH!!!!!!!
And still Americans are getting their mouths swabbed with the wrong side of the plunger when it comes to.... well, YOU NAME IT!
Ballmer said the company expects to hire small numbers of new researchers and engineers in the near future. "I think we will, net, want to add talent here," he said. "But that means, net, taking talent out someplace else."
Probably bring foreigners here, too!!
See: Bank Bailout to Pay For Foreign Workers
Sitting in a conference room overlooking the Charles River, the Microsoft chief said he was impressed with the level of technology sophistication in Massachusetts, where he attended Harvard University and met Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates.
And the TAXPAYER HANDOUTS, too!!!!
From a too 'too-pid to see it public because their brains have been soaked in Zionist brainwashing in this "liberal" test laboratory for them.
Hey, I USED to BE ONE, so....
"Massachusetts is an unbelievable place: the talent, the schools, the educational institutions, the start-ups," Ballmer said.
Yup, CORPORATE WELFARE and STATE LARGESSE EVERYWHERE!
"I bet if you do Microsoft people per capita, Massachusetts, if it was a country, would probably be our second or third most dense. Ireland, Denmark, Israel, and Massachusetts. I just think it's a testimony to the great talent here."
Well HOW ABOUT THAT, huh? The MICROSOFT-ISRAEL CONNECTION!!!
That must have been a MSM glitch!
From the standpoint of an outsider, Ballmer said he thought the area's high-tech center of gravity had shifted to Cambridge from the Route 128 corridor that dominated technology in his college days.
"Cambridge is a great brand," he said. "Route 128, I don't think is a tech brand any more. The mentality now is more around MIT, Harvard, and the other universities than it is around the 128 corridor."
Please see Massachusetts Whores For High Tech for more.
Also see: Biotech Giveaway Was Borrowed Money
Ballmer, who met with Microsoft employees, Boston financial analysts, and Governor Deval L. Patrick during his visit to the area yesterday, said he was confident that job cuts already undertaken will be sufficient to carry the company through the downturn to recovery.
"We went through two rounds over the last three months of saying, 'What's the right cost basis?' " he said. "You can't do that forever. If you keep doing that forever, you provide no stability to your people on where you're going. We have to achieve the plans we've set out. We're not at the cost structure we want to be at. But we need to complete that."
Translation: Despite the $21 BILLION -- with a "b" -- AND PROFITABILITY there will be MORE JOB CUTS!!
At the same time, Ballmer conceded Microsoft, like its rivals, is being hurt by a pullback in business investing in computers and servers, and in consumers buying home computers and electronics. He said capital spending is plunging and information technology, a category that includes computers running the Windows operating system and Office suite of business software, makes up roughly half of all capital spending.
I'm not really interested in his whining sob story; after all, things are gonna be just great for him. I've got many other problems the Globe never addresses. What a waste of time they are.
"We've done some scenario planning that's probably been a little edgier than some others . . . a little edgier in terms of how much could the personal computer and server hardware markets be affected," he said. "I have what I hope is worst case, and I've modeled it."
He gets paid BIG BUCKS for that stuff? It's like trying to bet the football games!!! Guys like this have been rong the whole way!
Ballmer declined to spell out his worst-case scenario for sales during the recession.... Praising President Obama's stimulus plan, Ballmer said, "The economy needs stimulating, so I'm glad to see that happen. I think it was important to act quickly, and quick action has happened."
Yup, it was IMPORTANT to get that LOOT into the PIPELINE -- even if NO ONE KNOWS WHERE it is going or WHERE it will END UP!
But he said a recovery wouldn't begin until excess debt is wrung out of the financial system. "Money has to come out," Ballmer said. "You can't have a painless deleveraging...."
GOOD LORD, he sounds like RON PAUL -- who curiously is NEVER REFERRED TO in these s***sheet pages! Strange at this time, when the issue is right up his alley.
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Well, maybe not: CNBC Anchors Upset at Ron Paul
