Layoffs cool Microsoft employees' opinion of CEO Satya Nadella
Layoffs cool Microsoft employees' opinion of CEO Satya
Nadella
By Gregg Keizer Computerworld
| Jul 28, 2014 3:56 AM
Although Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's approval rating
before the company's biggest-ever layoff was high enough to place him in the
top 30 of U.S. chief executives, the percentage of employees, both current and
former, who say they approve of him as the firm's leader has dropped since the
job cuts.
Nadella announced the layoffs on July 17, when he said
that the Redmond, Wash. technology giant would shed 18,000 jobs in the next
year, two-thirds of the cuts coming from the Nokia mobile phone division that
Microsoft acquired this year for $7.2 billion.
About 5,500 of the proposed job cuts, however, are to
come from non-Nokia personnel, with at least 1,400 of those from the Seattle
area and elsewhere in the state.
Glassdoor, a Sausalito, Calif.-based online jobs and
careers website, had pegged Nadella's approval rating at 88% for the five
months since he took the CEO job on Feb. 4. That approval rating, based on
nearly 600 reviews by current and former employees on the website, was well
above the average Glassdoor CEO approval rating of 69%, the company said in
response to questions.
At 88%, Nadella would have placed in the top 30 of the
2013-2014 list that Glassdoor published in March, when it unveiled its annual
ranking of U.S. CEOs. In that list, Apple CEO Tim Cook was No. 18 with a 92%
approval rating, while other technology chief executives -- Qualcomm's Paul
Jacobs (No. 5), Intuit's Brad Smith (No. 7), Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg (No.
10), Google's Larry Page (No. 11) and Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff (No. 13) --
came in even higher.
Nadella's approval rating was a stratospheric 96%,
according to data Glassdoor provided to Geekwire a day after the July 17
layoffs. At that level, Nadella would have been No. 4 on last year's list.
However, Glassdoor said it's too soon to assign a
post-layoff approval rating for Nadella. "It's still a little too early to
tell how much his approval rating has been affected [by the layoffs]," a
Glassdoor representative said in a July 24 email. Glassdoor promised to revisit
the topic later.
Instead, Glassdoor suggested that Computerworld peruse
the individual reviews that current and former Microsoft employees posted to
the website since the job cuts.
Which is what Computerworld did, tallying the numbers of
former and current Microsoft employees who posted a review during the eight-day
stretch from July 17 to July 24, then comparing their opinions on Nadella to
those of the former and current employees who added a review in the eight days
before the layoffs, or from July 9 to July 16, inclusive.
While the results were far from scientific -- the sampling
was self-selected and there was no way to tell when a worker switched from
current to former -- they were certainly interesting.
During the July 17-24 post-layoff period, 53 people
purporting to be current or former Microsoft employees published a company
review to Glassdoor, the majority of them (64%) still working for the firm.
In the eight days before that (July 9-16), 34 people
posted to Glassdoor, with almost the same percentage (62%) identifying
themselves as current employees of Microsoft.
The two groups, pre- and post-layoff, however, had
differing opinions of Nadella when asked whether they approved or disapproved
of his performance.
Before the job cuts, 62% of the Microsoft current or
former workers said they approved of Nadella, while just 3% said they
disapproved and 27% answered with the politic "no opinion."
After the layoffs were announced, the mood changed. In
the eight days following the cuts, 47% said they approved of Nadella, 13% said
they disapproved, and 32% claimed they had no opinion. (The figures do not
total 100% because not all who posted a review on Glassdoor provided an answer
on the CEO question.)
Since Microsoft announced its largest-ever layoffs, the
percentage of former and current employees who approved of Satya Nadella as CEO
fell on Glassdoor, while the percentage who disapproved grew. (Data:
Glassdoor.)
The 15-point drop of those who approved of Nadella
represented a decline of 24%, while the 10-point increase in those who
disapproved translated into a huge 333% gain.
The increase in the percentage who disapproved was not
surprising. After all, one would assume former employees would be angry at
Nadella for laying them off. However, that wasn't necessarily the case.
Although the percentage of former employees who disapproved post-layoff was
11%, the percentage of current employees who disapproved was even higher, at
15%. Both groups saw an increase in the percentages of those who disapproved
after the layoffs.
At the same time, the percentages of both former and
current workers who approved of Nadella went down: The share of
"approve" among former employees dropped from 43% before the layoffs
to 21% after; among current workers, "approve" also fell, albeit less
sharply, from 71% before the job cuts to 62% after.
Those changes showed that the experts were right: Layoffs
affect everyone at a company, not just those shown the door. And uncertainty
can psychologically cripple those who remain when layoffs are extended over a
long period. Microsoft has said that about 5,000 of the 18,000 jobs to be cut
won't be identified until as late as next June.
Even more fascinating were the comments employees wrote
in their reviews of Microsoft as an organization and when asked to give advice
to senior management.
Some of the most scathing commentary came from those
still working at Microsoft.
"The recent layoff was insane for a company that IS
PROFITABLE," wrote a self-identified senior program manager on Thursday.
"Becoming even more profitable by dismissing people does not look
good."
"Where are you going to invest, in the people that
do the work for you or shipping features and services?" asked another
senior program manager on July 22.
"Don't lay off any more [people]. We join[ed]
Microsoft because we have trust in this company. The day you announced the
news, I was immediately thinking about quitting," confided a
still-employed senior software development engineer on July 18, a day after the
layoffs and the day when Glassdoor recorded more new reviews than any other day
in the July 9-July 24 period.
But the layoffs did not seem to leave a bad taste among
those who said they were no longer with Microsoft. In comments added to
Glassdoor after the job cuts, 73.7% of those identified as former employees
said they would recommend the company to a friend, while only 15.8% said they
would not.
Naturally, not every former employee was happy. "Too
much politics. The people you work with will be smart; but good luck finding
good people," wrote an ex-program manager after the layoffs. "I'm not
optimistic about the outlook for this company."
Nadella has promised to shake up the company's culture --
"Nothing is off the table," he wrote in a 3,100-word memorandum sent
to employees the week before the layoffs -- to flatten the organization by
eliminating some middle management, and to focus on productivity and platforms.
A majority of those on Glassdoor were optimistic about
the future, at least prior to the layoffs. Of more than 400 reviews of
Microsoft added to the site from April 18 to July 17, 52% believed business
performance would improve, Glassdoor said. Of the remainder, 39% thought it
would stay the same, and only 9% said it would worsen.
If Nadella is able to make good on his promises, even
after the layoffs, he has the support of some current employees who took to
Glassdoor.
"Frustrating politics and indecisive management can
make things rough," said a senior program manager. "Lots of work left
to do to change the engineering culture to modern standards, but I think Satya
is up to the challenge."
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple,
Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow
Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His
email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
This story, "Layoffs cool Microsoft employees'
opinion of CEO Satya Nadella" was originally published by Computerworld.
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