Master the right corporate style for Big layoffs can’t be easy.
But Microsoft may have lost its way off key this week. eve of Wednesday announcement of 10,000 layoffs, based in Redmond tech Giant hosted Stone star The sting in “intimacy” event with Microsoft’s top executives in Davos, the annual gala gala for global VIP in Switzerland, according to the Wall Street Journal.
“It was an intimate encounter of 50 or so peopleincluding the company’s senior executives, who I listened to while you were away in the evening listening to Sting, a 71-year—a vibrator and an old bleached blond movie star, the newspaper reported, quoting:people familiar with the event. “
The timing, according to the paper, was “a bad note for some (Microsoft) employees,” who that you know just hours Later that company was cutting 5% of Its staff, including 878 workers in Seattle areaas part of a group of post-pandemic cost-cutting Sizes.
Cuts, CEO Satya Nadella will explain in Blog, there was a need at the time when “some parts of the world We are in Slack and other parts you expect one. “
embarrassment of Sting-then-cut timing quickly became viral, with Much praise on songs by Sting and his former band, police.
“the message in bottle you’re fired,” read one A tweet referring to the 1979 police hit “Message in Flask.”
other reactions were more Grand. The optics here are not goodtweeted Angus Norton, who described himself as A former Microsoft Vice President. “I big admirer of Satya Nadella, but this is dangerous bad executive symbolism added Columbia University business Expert Rita Gunther McGrath.
“You don’t get much more Marie Antoinette than that,” concluded Steve Malloy, attorney and Fox News contributor. stong”.
be sureDavos events Planned now in Which makes it hard to change them.” But at least one said the firm’s public relations expert with several years in The spotlight is because Microsoft might have better anticipated the backlash.
Although “reservation of sting l perform Maybe in Davos made Months ago, it was decisions and discussions about cutting The staff was not made just Also yesterday, Lawrence Parnell said, director of Strategic Public Relations graduate program at George Washington University.
Microsoft did not respond to questions about event.
Others were happy to fill the void inHowever.
“When world He runs downyou make best of what is still there” one online Suspended, referring to the 1980’s Police hit of the same name.
But perhaps the better observation came from one of the German attendees in Davos: “Even in times of Crisis, the Davos man never stops partying.”
