微軟大批裁員 重點拿諾基亞開刀

SEATTLE — Microsoft is trying to shake the effects of middle age.

西雅圖——微軟(Microsoft)正努力擺脫中年危機。

The company, which is now 39 years old, said on Thursday that it was laying off up to 18,000 employees, in an attempt at reinvigoration. The cuts are the first major change made by Satya Nadella, the company’s new chief executive, who said Microsoft needed to be more nimble and focused.

爲了重現活力，走過了39個年頭的微軟週四宣佈，將裁減至多1.8萬名員工。此次裁員是公司的新首席執行官薩蒂亞·納德拉(Satya Nadella)的首項重大變革舉措。他表示，微軟需要變得更爲靈活而專注。

The job cuts would be the largest in the company’s history, representing about 14 percent of its work force. Most of the cuts will come from the Nokia mobile phone business Microsoft acquired this year.

本輪崗位削減將會成爲公司歷史上規模最大的裁員行動，佔到全體員工的14%左右。多數裁減將來自微軟今年收購的諾基亞(Nokia)手機業務部門。

While Microsoft still makes profits that executives at other companies would be ecstatic to have, it has been beaten on the biggest new trends in tech, including mobile, Internet search and cloud computing. As a result, it is regularly left out of conversations about companies defining the next generation of technology, outflanked and overshadowed by companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.

儘管微軟的利潤仍會讓其他公司的高管們豔羨不已，但它在最大的科技業新動向中連戰連敗，比如移動科技、互聯網搜索和雲計算。結果，當談到左右下一代技術的企業時，微軟常被人遺忘，爲蘋果(Apple)、谷歌(Google)、Facebook和亞馬遜(Amazon)等公司所趕超，光芒不再。

Cutting jobs does not mean the company will suddenly begin creating products that people love. And the cuts did not suggest a sharp shift in strategy. But it is a start of something new, in the view of many Microsoft critics, and one that could help the company concentrate on the businesses where it is likely to have the most impact.

裁員並不意味着，微軟能立即變出人們喜愛的產品；也不意味着，公司戰略的重大調整。不過，在許多批評微軟的人士看來，這是一個新的起點，或許會幫助公司把注意力集中到可能產生最大影響的業務部門。

“I think this is a jolt to the culture, which is really needed,” said George F. Colony, the chief executive of Forrester Research, a technology research firm. “It was frozen in place, and lacked new creativity and innovation.”

“我想這是一次文化震動，亟需的震動，”科技調研企業弗雷斯特研究公司(Forrester Research)的首席執行官喬治·F·科隆尼(George F. Colony)說。“微軟固步自封，缺乏新鮮的創造力和革新能力。”

Investors have bought into his vision. The company’s stock, which languished during the tenure of Steven A. Ballmer, the company’s previous chief executive, is up about 22 percent since Mr. Nadella assumed the top job. On Thursday, its shares hit a 14-year high.

投資者對他的願景頗爲認同。在前任首席執行官史蒂文·A·鮑爾默(Steven A. Ballmer)治下，公司股價停滯不前，而自從納德拉接任以來，則飆升了22%左右。本週四，微軟股價創下14年來的最高點。

But critics of Microsoft, including many former employees, believe the company has become overly bureaucratic and slow moving. The company has grown to 127,000 employees worldwide, up from 57,000 a decade ago. Apple, which is just a year younger than Microsoft, has about 85,000 employees, nearly half of them in its retail stores. During the first three months of this year, Apple’s revenue and profit were each roughly double Microsoft’s.

然而，批評微軟的人士，包括許多以前的員工認爲，公司已變得過於官僚，行動遲緩。十年前，微軟在全球擁有5.7萬名員工，如今則增加到了12.7萬名。在歷史僅比微軟短一年的蘋果，員工人數爲8.5萬名，而且其中近一半在其零售店工作。今年前三個月，蘋果的營收與利潤均爲微軟的兩倍左右。

On Thursday, Mr. Nadella said in an email to employees that the layoffs were an effort to move faster, a message he has given repeatedly in recent months.

週四，在發給員工的電子郵件中，納德拉稱，裁員是爲了輕裝上陣。這是他在最近幾個月中反覆強調的訊息。

“Having a clear focus is the start of the journey, not the end,” he said in the email. “The more difficult steps are creating the organization and culture to bring our ambitions to life.”

“明確重點是旅程的起始，而非終點，”他在郵件中寫道。“更困難的是，創造出能把我們的理想轉變爲現實的組織架構和企業文化。”

He added: “The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our work force.”

他還說：“爲我們的理想打造出正確架構的第一步是，調整我們的員工。”

Some investors were hoping for an even bolder move by Mr. Nadella, including trimming some product lines. The company’s investments in the search engine and video game businesses have come under particularly harsh scrutiny, raising questions about whether the company would be better off narrowing its focus to other more lucrative markets.

一些投資者之前表示，希望納德拉採取更爲大膽的舉措，比如裁撤部分產品線。微軟在搜索引擎和電子遊戲業務上的投資尤其受到嚴厲批評，讓人質疑，若是把注意力集中到利潤更豐厚的其他市場上，公司是否會表現更好？

Mr. Nadella did, however, take a scalpel to some projects that were especially far afield from its primary business. The company said it planned to shut down Xbox Entertainment Studios, a group in Santa Monica, Calif., that was dedicated to producing original television programming for viewing on Microsoft’s video game system. Microsoft said it would complete some programs that were already underway, including two series based on the Halo game franchise.

納德拉也的確拿一些遠離主要業務的項目開了刀。公司宣佈，計劃關停Xbox娛樂工作室(Xbox Entertainment Studios)。這座工作室位於加州聖莫尼卡，專門用來打造在微軟的電子遊戲系統中播放的原創電視節目。微軟表示，工作室將完成手頭上的一些節目，包括基於《光暈》(Halo)系列遊戲改編的兩部電視劇。

The biggest chunk of job losses, though — about 12,500 — will come because of the Nokia deal. Mr. Nadella has singled out Microsoft’s mobile business as one of his top priorities, but the layoffs announced on Thursday amount to a significant retrenchment in one area of that market.

然而，此次裁員的最大一部分——約1.25萬人——源自收購諾基亞的交易。納德拉曾將微軟的移動業務列爲自己的重中之重，但週四宣佈的裁員決定是在這個市場的一個領域裏的重大收縮。

The vast majority of the jobs being eliminated will come from the Nokia groups, though some will come from overlap at Microsoft resulting from the deal. Microsoft said 1,100 job cuts would come from Finland, and 1,800 from a Nokia factory in Hungary. The result is that Microsoft is letting go of nearly half of the 25,000 people who joined the company from Nokia.

裁減的工作崗位中，絕大多數將來自諾基亞的部門，不過也有一些來自收購交易造成的微軟冗餘崗位。微軟稱，其中的1100個崗位來自芬蘭，還有1800個崗位來自匈牙利的一家諾基亞工廠。結果，從諾基亞進入微軟的2.5萬人中，有近一半將不得不離開。