I was a journalist in the old days. With all due respect it was mote than just a job. It was a community, a calling. It felt important. I went out to dinner with my first ever boss and some original colleagues a couple of months ago and had a great time.

Local journalism _feels_ like more than a job. Before my CS career, I was a photojournalist for a few different daily papers. It felt like important work. We were history keepers and story tellers for a community.

I agree that it's a job, but.. for most of humanity, people lived and worked in the same spaces with the same humans. The home was a unit of (pre) industrial production. Your neighbours were your partners, or at least involved in general economic activities with you.

Our human brains unsurprisingly still default to that, and it is quite understandable imo.

I tend to agree with the idea that one shouldn't define oneself by a job, especially since one's career is generally dependent on some combination of market forces, institutional gatekeepers, and other factors that are beyond one's control to varying degrees. However, people do tend to put that kind of personal investment into things they spend most of their time on, and especially things they had to spend a long time training for. In order to realize a world where people aren't defined by their career, we would need to first realize a world in which people weren't equal parts encouraged and forced to put most of their time and effort into one, which would require somewhat different economic arrangements than presently exist

I think you should review your equation

reality - expectations - uncertainy = happiness/saddness

It might just be a job but someone living happy in good conditions that feels like the rug might get pulled under them for something they cannot control for is a lot more unerving even if your material conditions work out just fine in the end.

Also I think your being a little atomizing in the impact here. 1 Person losing a job is their problem, I agree. 60 thousand people losing there job is a problem for the government and society. 60K people is a lot and it has a ton of consquences. This is also leading into the prospects of we have these massively profitable corportations who are on the cusp of firing large % of high income people. Whats the tax implication of losing 60K engineering staff level saleries. Its atleast in the billions which is small in the total Federal revenue but if this is a sign of whats to come we have problems. Maybe those people go to different employment but change will effect a lot of local economies.

Granted I know you are really talking about the local emotional effect but the granular net effect is worth the conversation too.

> it's just a job

Considering what you're responding to, it sounds like you're suggesting people over 55 don't deserve to be respected or have a good position in life.

Such a great moment to ask for a raise.

For most Microsoft employees, the maximum unemployment benefits in most states are a rounding error vs the buyout offer. Here in Missouri it's $320, maxed to 20 weeks. So for most local employees that might get this letter, It's less than a month of salary, and that without accounting for months of health benefits, which I bet the buyout includes.

Unemployment isn’t very much, is it?

Often, buyouts terms are more generous than layoff terms. Even if the company has a history of generous layoff terms, the next one may be less generous.

The other thing to consider is if you'll want to keep working at the company after so many people have left due to the buyout and the layoff. If not, taking the buyout and looking for a new job is likely to be better for you than not taking the buyout, not getting laid off, and looking for a new job once you conclude you don't like the new environment. For one thing, you'll probably have buyout compensation and new job compensation at the same time; for another, it may be easier to find a new job if you're in the market before the layoffs increase the hiring pool.

Ahhh, I retract my previous statement. I assumed it was "do you want to accept the offer". If it is "do you want to be considered for the offer" that's a little more complicated...

> There has never been a time in last 40 years where being laid off seemed terrifying for knowledge workers in tech.

How about the last several times all of big tech was laying off tons of people at the same time?

I'm not going to disagree with "this time it's different", but I've seen this fear several times before. This time it's AI that's going to take our jobs, and maybe that will happen, but it's not the first threat.

I imagine they don't extend the offer to specific people they want to keep.

I'm still not sure what the advantage to the company of an offer like this is versus layoffs where management gets to choose who leaves, unless they feel the "loyalty test" of deciding to stay is worth more than their own evaluation of employee performance.

You say that but the economy seems pretty strong to me, we have lower than average unemployment with above average job listings. It's harder if you're on visa otherwise it's pretty competitive

You cannot act with perfect information when you're making an offer to 25% of a company that size. If they were able to and willing to plan this on a per-person basis, they wouldn't be in the position of mass-buyouts.

It's very common in these situations to target every org in the company with a goal of X% reduction. If a small fraction of these teams now need extra headcount, easy enough to allow those teams to hire. Usually you don't keep the severance if you return in under X days.

I've personally been laid off, only for the post-re-org team to hire several people, including asking to rehire me. It's rare, and those affected should probably plan to find new jobs, but it happens.

Yes, but companies realise the important cogs much later in the process.

typically in that case the boomerang is they come back but as a consultant. just doing the same thing they were doing before but at a different rate. usually higher to cover health ins plus a bit of a bonus.

But with the job market the way it is, they could re-hire at a lower compensation?

They are making $600k in net income per employee. 10+ years ago, I'd never seen a mass layoff at any company making that kind of money per employee.

Their net income is up more than 2x in just the last 5 years. 10 years ago, Microsoft only had $85B in revenue, now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?

But like if your company is making money hand over foot you didn't typically cut staff by 25%. You could just as easily do a hiring freeze and get out ahead of it. I mean if your profit metric is showing all green and growing you have to be really cold to say we need to fire 1/4 people now why? (to maximize shareholders short term value of course)