Still Here

It’s been a while since I’ve posted. Things have been busy and it’s been hard to find the time to blog.

In case you haven’t heard the news, Microsoft laid off 1,400 employees today, 800 of them in the Redmond area. The layoffs reflect the worsening economy and were announced in conjunction with the quarterly financial report released today, which showed that profits are down compared to the same quarter last year. 3,600 more employees will be laid off worldwide over the next eighteen months, for a total of 5,000 employees. Fortunately I wasn’t among the 1,400 laid off today, but I was sweating it for a while after I got to work this morning and read the news and some internal e-mails. I’m the newest member on my team, so I figured I’d be the first to go if someone had to be cut. It seems that today’s cuts have come from other teams and product areas, but it’s not known where future cuts will be made. It may be that my department just hasn’t yet figured out how it will reduce its costs, and will eventually find me. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping for the best, but at the same time thinking about what I would do if it happened to me. My heart goes out to those who lost their jobs today. This job—my first—helps me appreciate how much a job can be a part of one’s life and what a shock it would be to lose it.