Microsoft Layoffs
Microsoft on Tuesday said that it’s laying off 3% of employees across all levels, teams and geographies, affecting about 6,000 people.
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The company reported better-than-expected results, with $25.8 billion in quarterly net income, and an upbeat forecast in late April.
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In total, it’s likely Microsoft’s largest round of layoffs since the elimination of 10,000 roles in 2023. In January the company announced a small round of layoffs that were performance-based. These new job cuts are not related to performance, the spokesperson said.
The Redmond-based software giant said Tuesday that the layoffs, which will affect almost 2,000 workers in Washington state, are meant in part to strip away layers of management and create more nimble teams.
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Microsoft isn’t alone in this strategy. It’s the same reasoning Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol gave when Starbucks laid off more than 1,000 corporate workers and removed hundreds of open roles.Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said last year that the company was working to lower the manager-to-employee ratio.
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But the company is pumping billions of those dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure, namely data centers, that won’t make a return on investment in the immediate future.
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Scott Hanselman, vice president of Microsoft’s developer community, wrote on LinkedIn that it was a “day with a lot of tears,” and the first time he’s had to lay people off to support business goals that weren’t his own.
Ron Buckton, a former senior software development engineer at Microsoft who contributed to the development of the TypeScript compiler and language service in native code, was among the 6,000 employees laid off by the company on Tuesday.
Buckton, who had served Microsoft for 18 years along with his team, helped TypeScript achieve a 10x speed boost in build times and editor responsiveness.
Sadly, this is an example of my tweet from last week, showing just how little Microsoft understands the web; and now they are down yet another thought leader.
What they have done here is optimize for some short-term quarterly revenue goal, while completely wrecking their long-term technical strategy (which they may not even have…but that’s a whole different issue). This is all so common among Microsoft’s middle management layer (VP, CVP, etc.).
Seeing a wave of posts about the layoffs at Microsoft and I’m deeply curious about the narrative. A few years ago you could blame ZIRP ending or COVID overhiring. A few months ago it was low performers.
What reason are employees being given now for layoffs after a record earnings quarter?
Although I was not privy to any inside baseball and the orgs affected are (so far) quite distant from my endeavors, the article rings true where it points to post-pandemic growth spurts and long overdue org chart calibration as key drivers–although I’m positive there will be the usual misinterpretations about AI “replacing” people and other such idiocy.
Previously:
