14 DAY TRIAL // Several long-time Microsoft employees are retiring or leaving the company for jobs at other firms, a new report reveals, as the workforce transition that usually takes place in the fall is happening this year too.
Mary Jo Foley’s of ZDNet writes that some of the Microsoft veterans who decided to retire left the company silently and only updated their LinkedIn profiles to state that they are now “retired,” while others even had retirement parties with other employees.
“Retired”
Bill Laing, who joined Microsoft in 1999 and was most recently involved in the firm’s internal server hardware, is one of those who retired, according to his LinkedIn profile, while Bob Kelly, who’s been with the software giant since 1996 and is currently Corporate Vice President of Mergers & Acquisitions Strategy and Business Development for the Cloud and Enterprise Business, will do the same thing on September 15.
Rick Rashid, often referred to as the founder of Microsoft Research, will give up on his role as Chief Technology Officer in the Applications and Services Group to retire, and so will Chuck Thacker too, who contributed to setting the foundation of the Microsoft Tablet PC team.
Dave Campbell, who spent no less than 22 years at Microsoft, will leave the company for a new role at a different firm, but details regarding his next destination are not yet available.
What’s important to note, however, is that none of these departures seems to be related to the internal changes going on at Microsoft these days, as it’s a well-known thing that not only many workers left the company following the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices and Services unit, but several top executives were out as well.
In this case, they’re all Microsoft veterans and given that the majority decided to retire, it’s mostly just a shift of generations, which kind of makes sense given that the company is looking for a fresh approach for this rapidly changing tech industry.