Laid-Off Microsoft Employees Will Get to Keep Their Extra Severance, After All
Laid-Off Microsoft Employees Will Get to Keep Their Extra Severance, After All
Posted 02/24/2009 at 7:04am
| by Paul Lilly
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Microsoft made headlines yesterday when it was discovered the company had been asking some of the 1,400 employees it laid off last month to pay back money it had overpaid as part of their severance. The letter blamed the mistake on an "inadvertent administrative error," which had our readers divided on whether or not Microsoft was justified in asking for the money back. Reader 'Phated1' pointed out how even a small overpayment could add up if multiplied by a large number of employees, but the best reader comment came from 'punditguy':
"Now I'll have to redo my Silicon Valley edition of Monopoly: 'Microsoft Error in Your Favor. Pay $200.'"
While a Microsoft spokesperson at first refused to offer any details saying it was a "private matter between the company and the affected people," the software maker is now saying it will not pursue trying to get its money back, perhaps figuring out the alternative is not worth the bad publicity.
"Last week, 25 former Microsoft employees were informed that they were overpaid as a part of their severance payments from the company," Microsoft wrote in a statement. "This was a mistake on our part. We should have handled this situation in a more thoughtful manner. We are reaching out to those impacted to relay that we will not seek any payment from those individuals."
According to Microsoft human resources chief Lisa Brummel, the 25 former Microsoft employees received, on average, about $4,000 or $5,000 in extra pay. An additional 20 former employees were underpaid, and Microsoft said it will immediately reimburse them.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Dcoetzee
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johnny3144
February 24, 2009 at 12:42pm
when you get paid with an obviously overpaid check, shoudn't you inform the company that paid you? kinda like somebody made mistake on your tax refound and gave you 15k instead of 10k.
Keith E. Whisman
February 24, 2009 at 3:19pm
It was a severance check. And that letter MS sent made it sound like the stub showed appropriate taxes had been witheld. I for one probably wouldn't have caught it. I did get over paid by about $200 dollars once and I didn't notice and the company informed me and told me to keep it. Of course they never inform you of anything when they underpay but it's nice that MS noticed that they underpaid some people and on their own they are paying the difference.
I Jedi
February 24, 2009 at 9:42am
I just think they didn't want to get hammered by the public over this, so they backed down. I'm sure if this would have been kept behind "closed" doors without the public's knowledge, then Microsoft would still be singing the ol' tune it was yesterday. I don't buy their whole,"We're for the people BS.".
Now that we actually know how much Microsoft did loose in over-payment, it does seem kind of big. At least, in terms for the average Joe, like you or me. If 25 former employees received on average say $4,500 dollars.. that's about $120 thousand dollars Microsoft lost. Getting kinda close to almost a quarter of a million dollars lost. Not to mention the fact that there were several employees they've yet to fully pay, so maybe another $20,000 in losses? Now for that kind of loss, I can understand why Microsoft was bangingat the door on some of these former employees. Again, though, I side with the employeees, as it wasn't their fault for Microsoft's fuck up.
I wonder if Steve Ballmer threw another chair across the room after finding this one out?
Nuxes
February 24, 2009 at 11:27am
Eh, this stuff happends all the time. Some low-level bean counter is trying to make the numbers add up, without thinking about the big picture. Not everything is an evil conspiracy.
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