Microsoft's Self-Destructing Email Pink Slips (1400 jobs cut this week)

[Fleshdancer]

Now this is an odd way to lay people off IMO:

http://valleywag.gawker.com/5138270/microsofts-self+destructing-email-pink-slips

Fired employees often say impolite things. But only at Microsoft are their pink slips unprintable. The software giant fired 1,400 people this week with specially encoded, read-only email.

A tipster who saw one of the notices says the email had DRM restrictions — similar to the ones that prevent the copying of music files — that prevented it from being forwarded or printed, and instructed the 1,400 fired employees to pack up their things and go home, where their severance package would be mailed: "No meeting with their boss. No meeting with HR. Nada."


ON EDIT: Looks like they're expecting to layoff 5,000. If the rest don't get their crappy pink slip emails today, then everyone at MS is going to have a crappy weekend.

http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090122/ap_on_hi_te/earns_microsoft

[dkofos]

1. Mr. bill must have got those 1400 H1-b visa's he requested.

[aquart]

2. How elegant.

[Mugweed]

3. Maybe someone will take a photo of the screen

if a screen-shot doesn't work? I'd like to see what it's like to be canned from a monopoly.

[Ian David]

5. You could take a photo with your camera phone.

Some of them disable the printscreen function.

[PeaceNikki]

4. I'll withhold an opinion until someone other than "a tipster" reports it to a blogger.

[TheHeathen]

6. WOW

Some people really do believe everything they read on the Internet.

:crazy:

[Fleshdancer]

7. the layoffs are very real

as for the way the employees are getting laid off, I guess only time will tell since I'm sure someone will think to take a picture of it if true.

[TheHeathen]

9. Yes I know the layoffs are real

But for anybody to believe that Steve Ballmer wrote that email, that person has to be a fool.

Ballmer's e-mail to employees regarding layoffs
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10147964-75.html

:crazy:

[Deja Q]

10. All that marketing drivel and faux morale shoveling, how could it not be Steve? (link here)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbWLfr-Z4s
And, sadly, that was no joke.

[Deja Q]

8. Maybe their Exchange server bunged the other 3,600 emails as being spam?