Microsoft: "Just kidding; keep the money"

In Tuesday's IT Blogwatch, Richi Jennings watches Microsoft overpay redundant employees, ask for the money back, then change its mind. Not to mention Error'd...

Gregg Keizer never sleeps:

Microsoft Corp. will let about two dozen laid-off workers who were overpaid severance keep the money, the company's head of human resources said Monday afternoon. The decision was a quick turn-about for the company, which last week sent letters to some of the 1,400 employees who were laid off in late January, asking them to return some of their severance because of an "administrative error."
...
Most of the overpayments were in the $4,000 to $5,000 range ... Microsoft overpaid between $100,000 and $125,000. An additional 20 former employees were initially underpaid, but have since been paid what they were owed.

Bobbie Johnson adds:

Microsoft said that it had mishandled the affair and would no longer be chasing repayment ... The gaffe came after 1,400 workers were given their marching orders in January – the first major job cuts in Microsoft's long history, and part of the software titan's plan to reduce its staffing levels by 5,000 posts next year. Most employees affected were given a 12-week severance package as part of the deal.

However, news that the company was asking for the excess cash to be returned spread across the internet last weekend, after one letter demanding repayment was published online.

Preston Gralla is nice to Microsoft, for a change:

It's nice to see a major corporation do the right thing, especially in these tough times ... In the midst of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, such a letter was clearly very bad news.
...
Kudos to Microsoft for doing the right thing.

Michael Santo gets real:

According to a lawyer that Computerworld spoke to, those employees may not have been required to pay that money back, anyway, noting it was "bad PR," as well.

Well, duh.

Eric Krangel agrees:

Given how little money is involved, Microsoft should have just let the employees keep it in the first place. (Actually, not screwing up the severance would have been the right move in the first place.) But even so, if even one of those 25 refused to pay back the money and kept leaking every communication from Microsoft onto the Internet, the PR damage would have been far worse than $125K, so smart move.

Gary E. Sattler expands:

The PR implications here are ugly. First, simply bringing up the subject of laid off employees is muddy water that most employers would rather stay out of. Next, consider the impression this gives of kicking people when they're down. Then, add a vision of buffoonery when a tech company fails to issue accurate checks while no doubt using its own accounting software.

Imagine the awesome potential here for some hot shot, wet-behind-the-ears lawyer kids to do some pro-bono work. I envision them fighting reclamation of these funds, in exchange for the incredible exposure such litigation could provide ... Nobody ... stopped to do a cost-benefit analysis regarding the subtle costs of pursuing these errant funds ... A serious public relations blunder for Microsoft Corporation.

Murad Ahmed's chum Nigel quips:

If only there were some sort of spreadsheet application with which one could calculate these things.

And finally...

• Error'd

Previously in IT Blogwatch:

• Steve Jobs is "offline"
• HP has "hurd" about a recession
• Terry Childs speaks from SF jail cell

Buffer overflow:

• Jacqui Cheng: RIAA denies rumors that Last.fm turned over user data
• John Battelle: Patch Funded by Google Exec
• Paul McNamara: 40% of geeks surveyed really work fewer than ... say what?
• Storagezilla: Unified Storage: File System Deduplication
• Spencer Ante: Andreessen & Friedman: Start-ups and VCs to the Rescue!
• John Paczkowski: "Elevate America" Program Actually Elevate Microsoft Program
• The Old New Thing : Why is there no supported way to get the command line of another process?

Other Computerworld bloggers:

• Michael R. Farnum: New Excel 0-day being exploited
• Frank Hayes: Those that can...won't
• SJVN: It's Novell, Microsoft & Citrix vs. VMware with free XenServer
• Don Tennant: Alleviating panic
• Eric Lundquist: Jobs and the auto industry? I don't think so.
• Mark Everett Hall: SaaS gives project management tools a reality check
• Douglas Schweitzer: Government computing forecast? Cloudy!
• Shark Tank: Scope creep
• Shark Bait: Quit turning off the lights!

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Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 23 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You can follow him on Twitter, pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.