Microsoft to lay off 6,000 employees in biggest round of job cuts since 2023
Continuing the streak of mass layoffs in the tech sector, Microsoft has decided to lay off around 6,000 of its employees, which amounts to around 3% of the tech giant’s total workforce. The announcement came on Tuesday.
According to Microsoft, the layoffs are being done across all teams, levels and geographies.(AFP)
This round of job cuts is Microsoft’s second biggest since 2023, when the company laid off around 10,000 employees. The move comes as the tech conglomerate shifts focus towards artificial intelligence to keep up with the competition.
One of the most affected geographies by this round of job cuts is Washington, where as many as 1,985 workers are being asked to leave at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, according to an AP report. Most of these employees are in software engineering or product management roles.
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According to Microsoft, the layoffs are being done across all teams, levels and geographies and are mainly focused on slashing the number of managers at the company.
The job cuts also affect Microsoft’s video gaming platform, Xbox, and its career networking platform, LinkedIn.
“We continue to implement organisational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” said the company spokesperson on the reason behind the job cuts.
Job cuts come amid soaring profits
Just a month ahead of the job cuts, Microsoft announced sales and profits that exceeded the expectations of Wall Street in the January to March quarter this year. It announced a revenue of $70.1 billion and net income of $25.8 billion.
During a call about the earnings of the January-March quarter, Microsoft’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, said that the company was focused on “building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers,” reported AP.
As of June last year, a total of 228,000 people were employed by Microsoft full-time, out of which, 55% were in the US.
“I think many people have this conception of layoffs as something that struggling companies have to do to save themselves, which is one reason for layoffs but it’s not the only reason. Big tech companies have trimmed their workforces as they rearrange their strategies and pull back from the more aggressive hiring that they did during the early post-pandemic years,” AP quoted Daniel Zhao, lead economist at workplace reviews site Glassdoor, as saying.
With AP inputs.
