SEATTLE — Striking the right corporate tone for a major layoff can’t be easy.
But Microsoft might have strayed off key this week. On the eve of Wednesday’s announcement of 10,000 layoffs, the Redmond-based tech giant hosted rock star Sting at an “intimate” event with top Microsoft execs at Davos, the swanky yearly shindig for global bigwigs in Switzerland, according to The Wall Street Journal.
“It was an intimate gathering of 50 or so people, including the company’s top executives, who got to while away the evening listening” to Sting, a 71-year-old bleach-blond rocker and film star, the Journal reported, citing “people familiar with the event.”
The timing, according to the Journal, was “a sour note to some (Microsoft) employees,” who would learn just hours later that the company was cutting 5% of its staff, including 878 workers in the Seattle area, as part of suite of post-pandemic cost-cutting measures.
The cuts, CEO Satya Nadella would explain in a blog, were needed at a moment where “some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.”
The awkwardness of the Sting-then-cut timing quickly went viral, with many riffing on songs by Sting and his former band, the Police.
“The message in a bottle was you’re fired,” read one tweet, referring to the 1979 Police hit “Message in a Bottle.”
Other reactions were more serious. “The optics here aren’t good,” tweeted Angus Norton, self-described as a former Microsoft VP. “I’m a big fan of Satya Nadella, but this is seriously bad executive symbolism,” added Columbia University business expert Rita Gunther McGrath.
“Doesn’t get much more Marie Antoinette than that,” concluded Steve Malloy, an attorney and Fox News contributor. “Stung.”
To be sure, Davos events “are planned far in advance making it difficult to change them,” the Journal noted. But at least one PR expert said a company with as many years in the limelight as Microsoft might have better anticipated the backlash.
Although “the booking of Sting to perform at Davos was probably made months ago, the decisions and discussions about cutting staff weren’t made just yesterday, either,” said Lawrence Parnell, director of the Strategic Public Relations graduate program at George Washington University.
Microsoft did not respond to questions about the event.
Others were happy to fill in, however.
“When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around,” noted one online commenter, referring to the 1980 Police hit of the same name.
But the most apt observation might have come from a German attendee at Davos: “Even in times of crisis, Davos Man doesn’t stop partying.”
———
(Microsoft Philanthropies underwrites some Seattle Times journalism projects.)
———
