Microsoft CFO calls for 'intensity' in an internal memo, after blowout earnings
Microsoft CFO calls for 'intensity' in an internal memo, after blowout earnings
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/33767928
"We're entering FY26 with clear priorities in security, quality, and AI transformation, building on our momentum and grounded in our mission and growth-mindset culture," Hood wrote, mentioning Nadella's email. "Both the pace of change and customer expectations are continuously accelerating."
Hood's email, notably, didn't mention Microsoft's recent workforce cuts, which have exceeded 10,000 this year even as profit swells. Nadella's email last week attempted to explain this "seeming incongruence" as the "enigma of success." Some employees weren't satisfied with the explanation.
These people get paid so much for spouting this utter bullshit every day. I hope they have moments when they realize the hollowness of what they do.
Agreed. What even the fuck is that string of complete nonsense? These C-suite dipshits say it so much, someone is eating it up.
The "someone" is the investors, or generally speaking, the market.
Major CEOs can't say they're taking a financial hit, for whatever reason. This is why I like working for small companies, and most Americans work for small businesses.
Last company: CEO announced to the board that he intended to lose money in order to build staff and products. Yes, he even included tech debt. The board applauded him.
Meh, we fucked around and still made a profit, so he gave the board the same report the following year, same results. We fucked around a made a profit. Again.
tl;dr: Don't mistake all CEOs for the bullshit you hear from Nadella and Musk and the like. Remember; You only hear crazy talk reported, because it's crazy talk.
They're trying to tell their "stakeholders", employees, customer, shareholders, what to believe, what to think that's the bullshit dazzle spell to preserve your suspension of disbelief just a little longer.
customer expectations are continuously accelerating
Just make a functional OS that doesn't get in user's ways. Those are the expectations.
Microsoft doesn't expect growth in their OS offerings. These days all their focus is on AI and cloud.
They know every single word is hollow. Eat it and rejoice peasant. Are you not filled?
I wounder how this person defines quality in their mind?
“The enigma of success” whoever came up with that line has truly mastered the art of auto-fellatio.
Burn the business colleges to the ground
the hollowness of what they do
i suspect they intentionally hollow out their soul to save weight or sth
Writing is on the wall. Xbox and Windows made money, but a fraction of what Office and enterprise services made.
That is how it has been for a long time at Microsoft. They know Enterprise is where the money is, it hasn't stopped them from trying to venture out into other areas tho.
Vertical integration. Windows underpins Office, and even cloud services.
Xbox though, they've already pretty much written its epitaph.
Xbox is actively being dropped from Target and Walmart, but it doesn't help that the push is for digital games with no physical presence in stores.
Isn't Linux mostly used for cloud services though?
Xbox should’ve been the prestige product for Microsoft (just like Logic/Final Cut for Apple) but Xbox itself depleted any prestige it ever accumulated over the last few years.
its like what AWS for amazon, its delivery/online market pale in comparison to thier licensing to the govt and other services.
Publicly traded companies have to continually make more money than they did last month, last quarter, same time last year.
Failing to do so means they are somehow "losing" money that is "rightfully owed" to them and the stock market punishes them.
It doesn't matter if you're profitable or not, so long as you're continually making more money.
It's not only "more". The company I work for had "record profits, far and beyond anything we were expecting" in 2021. In 2022, we were told that the company made more than in 2021, but didn't meet the earnings projections. That's still record profits, but phrased like a loss.
Not only must the line go up, but it has to go up faster than it did before. Nothing less than exponential growth.
It's supposed to be growth related to the things which didn't progress, so to say. So it's not literally supposed to be growth of processes, just that stagnation makes things diminish in value, and compared to them things more alive "grow". Something like that.
Kinda like inflation. And that's fine, that can describe a pretty sustainable society, it's not about consuming more and more, it's like rotation.
Except with today's oligopolies there's a different idea, that they really have to grow as in capturing more and more of humanity's resources. The AI bubble (or not) is their most recent approach to that.
That's because expectations were shaped by the 90s when many things exploded (unfortunately much of that were countries, also landmines and other expendable means of destruction).
In the 00s it was possible to create illusion of that explosion still going on brighter and brighter, despite just continuing what started in the 90s, and then to create a few large-scale scams (or madness pandemics, or tech fashions, whatever ; point is they weren't the same as years 1993-1999) with iPhones, new Apple in general, Google, Facebook, Twitter.
I'm not saying it was fake or worthless, it was a revolution too, but not what companies try to show since the dotcom bubble.
So - they are still trying to show that, with kinda rough, generic, and insincere effort, a bit like sex workers in their makeup.
And they can't show that without such expansion in width, not in height.
It goes a layer further than that even. If the rate at which that growth is happening isn't itself growing then investors start getting nervous.
They actually have a legal obligation to maximize profits. It's insane.
Technically they don't - it's a lie told often by CEO. But its a lie. https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Fiduciary-Duties-of-the-Board-of-Directors.pdf
Yeah, except for Tesla, how the fuck man.
I'll assume that is a rhetorical question? I mean, it's obvious why Tesla has been going off a cliff and continues doing so
It was 10x overbloated at the least, it's CEO is publicly a nazi, most claims that Tesla can do were all lies for over a decade now, the only new design it came up with is the cyber truck garbage container, the quality of all the cars is shit (even though they're overpriced) with the cybershit being literally more explosive than a Ford Pinto, and now there are way WAY cheaper options competing with Tesla. Then add to that that Tesla just decided to give the CEO 26 some billion dollars because that is apparently okay to do during a shitshow like this
Anyone still investing in Tesla gets what they deserve, you're an idiot if you do
Capitalism is collapsing under the weight of record profits and additional billionaires.
These people are fucking insane, Greed is a sickness and with Trump in the white house the disease is absolutely flourishing.
it's crazy for me to watch people rapidly waking up to that fact after i've said it for what feels like decades and was completely ignored for the longest time.
At what point will we look at these numbers with skepticism? When not one worker is left who can afford their services nor one customer left who wants anything to do with their utterly shit "products" - but they still blow out the quarter with 100 billion? At what point will society recognize that this money can't possibly represent anything actually real? Will it matter if all of us starve to death and only billionaires are left if the Microsofts of the world will still be able to post 200 billion dollar "profits"?
I'm actually curious. Because I personally think that's increasingly what all this is. Fake as shit. Some combination of algorithms, cryptocurrency, dark pools and I dunno, the Illuminati I guess.
I wouldn’t say it’s fake, it’s the money other companies steal from their workers by not paying a fair wage being given to Microsoft to burn at the pyre of ai.
I mean, I don't disagree that that's historically what it's been. But increasingly, it seems like record profits just keep going through the roof no matter what. And record stock market numbers. And record everything. Nothing goes down, not substantially. Negative news seems to have no (net) effect anymore.
Business contracts and licenses are MS's bread and butter. They don't give a shit about individuals, they know we pirate Windows, and they don't care. But if a business pirates Windows....
Big companies are subject to constant audits. You, too, can check their balance sheets that are released and scrutinize the numbers.
While you may personally dislike MS products, most of the world's businesses and governments run on them. That's licensing money every month without fail. They can literally charge whatever they want because companies with staff want Office and Windows Server backend.
Societal collapse. Greed has won.
So dramatic, LOL
Very happy to see my employer slowly moving away from their shitty products.
All they're good for is stress, frustration, and justifying the jobs of old Sys Admins that sit in ivory towers.
The rest of the world is moving on. I challenge them to show growth next year.
I remember it when old sysadmins would remember OS/2, Fidonet and be respectful to FreeBSD (despite not having touched it for many years). And I'm kind young.
There are now "old" sysadmins loyal to Windows? Something is wrong with this decade.
God I can't wait to get out of the grind.
I'm over halfway to freedom, I really want FIRE so I never have to deal with this corporate bullshit again.
I call for employees to tell their employers to FTFO.
quick, shut down activision blizzard king, bethesda, and xbox game studios before they make any more money
Collaborate in a few more genocides eh Microsoft
You know, Im not certain, but I think the job of being a cunty CFO could be done by AI... Are you listening Microshaft?
"intensity, clarity, and bold execution"
Not just "intensity".
Maybe if they keep going and add a few more words it will magically start to mean something.
I prefer emphasis, highlighting, and italics execution.
There is no explaining job cuts when you've made record profits. You're just being greedy assholes.
clicks reply
Intensity huh? Here you go
@#$% YOU
Paywall
Maybe don't release an operating system that cannot be installed in a lot of computers?
Take note. It's never enough, no matter how much you give.
Do more with less.
In good times and bad.
Work your wage.