Microsoft reportedly laying off thousands of employees tomorrow
According to recent reports, Microsoft is expected to cut around 5 percent of its workforce, which could mean upwards of 10,000 layoffs.
According to reports from outlets like Sky News, Microsoft (MSFT) is planning mass layoffs that’ll affect thousands of employees, with estimates currently suggesting that around 5 percent of its workforce may be cut. As noted by The Verge, Microsoft currently employs more than 220,000 people which means upwards of 10,000 employees could be laid off.
The upcoming layoffs at Microsoft are rumored to be significantly larger than ones seen in the past, such as those that took place back in October where Microsoft cut over 1,000 jobs across various departments including its Xbox and Edge teams. An exact date for these imminent layoffs has yet to be shared, but The Verge claims that Microsoft told it that it plans to announce the layoffs this coming Wednesday ahead of the release of its quarterly earnings report.
It's unclear exactly who will be affected by these new layoffs, however, they're said to be targeting employees in Microsoft’s various engineering divisions. In regards to why Microsoft is cutting so many people, hints can be found in recent interviews including one with CNBC in which Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella cautions about imminent challenges facing the tech industry, noting that Microsoft hasn’t been “immune to the global changes” that’ve been taking place and expects the next two years to be the most challenging.
“The next two years are probably going to be the most challenging,” Nadella told CNBC. “We did have a lot of acceleration during the pandemic, and there’s some amount of normalization of that demand. And on top of it, there is a real recession in some parts of the world.”
We’ll be sure to update you on the impact of Microsoft’s latest layoffs as additional information rolls out. Until then, be sure to catch up with some of our other recent Microsoft-related coverage including how Microsoft may invest $10 billion in ChatGPT creator OpenAI, and how Google and Nvidia have expressed concerns to the FTC over Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
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replyMorgan Shaver posted a new article, Microsoft reportedly laying off thousands of employees tomorrow
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ATTN: Downforce, get some!
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Subject: Re: Recently Vacated Positions
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What am I missing here about Downforce?
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Yes, and a lot of it comes down to that the "recession" and other companies doing it gives a complete smokescreen so they don't take a reputation hit.
I mean this may age like stale milk but is anyone going to remember that Apple is the only FAANG that didn't axe people during the early start of the recession of 2022/2023?
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apple paused hiring and raises or something. here's the list
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-07/tech-layoffs-2022-tracker-these-companies-are-making-big-job-cuts
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Doesn't every tech book say the companies that don't just follow what others are doing usually end up being the best ones?
Like the whole sector is based on (possibly bullshit) of disrupting and innovating but then as soon as one companies does layoffs it's like every day another news article about tech company x also announced layoffs.
Maybe we don't hear about the hirings -
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It's not just tech companies. Don't underestimate the desire to fall in line behind the lead bird that all CEOs and company leadership fall for. Business fads and cargo culting and groupthink are very real and very destructive.
What do you think things like Davos are for, it's to align everyone into the same groupthink. -
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Do you actually buy into this or are you being sarcastic?
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I think its just tech being tech.
While you are hiring you dont fire people and all the tech companies has been hiring for a long time.
Over the years you will have to much people but as long as you are hiring you cant really fire anyone.
When it does not look that good anymore you stop hiring and sit down and look at what you need.
In a way you are safer the younger you are in the company. If you got hired the last year it means you were hired because MS needed people in that area compared to if you got hired 11 years ago or something like that.
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Weird how it's the same day Amazon is - almost as if we're all part of a shitty algorithm
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Job market must be awesome now with all of the laid off people vying for the same soon to be closed positions .
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p.s. LOLCRYPTOOOOOOO
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/17/ftx-says-415-million-of-crypto-was-hacked.html
no wonder russia had some staying power in the war, they have plenty of money-
"Hacked"
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My employer had layoffs today (12-of-150 employees). My job is safe, fortunately, but still... it's gotta suck trying to look for a job in 2023's tech market. And apparently it's just gonna get harder.
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The tech industry is not a happy place right now. Interviewed someone from Amazon this week who assumes he's about to get laid off because he works on Alexa.
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It's been like this every tech boom/bust cycle. This is the third one I can remember; the first one was the worst for me, because I was a recent graduate.
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“We did have a lot of acceleration during the pandemic, and there’s some amount of normalization of that demand. And on top of it, there is a real recession in some parts of the world.”
What an absolute bunch of bullshit.-
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“Some amount of normalization” and “recession in some parts of the world”
Vague BS justification for this company:
“Microsoft annual gross profit for 2022 was $135.62B, a 17.06% increase from 2021.”
135 BILLION PROFIT, but the employees can get fucked right-
72 BILLION net profit
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But the WAR man, the WAR!
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10,000 employees being paid 300k a year getting cut equals 3 Billion in salary. Microsoft made that in NET PROFIT in only 15 days last year. Employees are nothing to these companies, absolutely nothing. But no, we definitely don’t need unions, right?
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and so many directors/vp's intentionally inflate their headcount way past what they need, when given the chance, because they think it's good for their career to have a shitton of reports.
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Exactly, which is why workers need protection.
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That's not really fair to all the other employees who are actually doing work and making the company turn a profit.
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You are so incredibly out of touch and sheltered, as well as brainwashed by corporate propaganda, if you think layoffs only affect those that aren’t “actually doing work”. Do you know how ignorant and gross that statement is? 10,000 fucking people, give me a break.
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Nope, I'm an adult who has experienced both sides of layoffs, and I've worked at several large companies where an awful lot of the folks were apparently hired to keep seats warm and not much else. Lots of folks in upper management intentionally inflate their headcount beyond what they need because it makes them look better on paper to say they manage a department of 50 people vs 20 people. Hell, even my last job was a vanity hire for my boss, he wanted to tell people he had a chief architect to help address some of the massive issues in their major product lines. It took me 6 months to start to realize he never intended to empower me to actually do the stuff I was hired to do, so when I was eventually laid off it was not a huge surprise.
I think you're under the impression that I'm blaming the workers for not contributing anything, that couldn't be further from the truth - this is 100% a failure of management. That doesn't mean the company shouldn't take action to bring things more in line with reality.-
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In my case I really tried to find ways to make a difference, but it was difficult given that I was basically put in a position where I could recommend solutions to different teams but it was entirely up to the VP running those teams to implement, and 9 times out of 10 they decided they didn't have time/money to make the changes. My big "win" the last year I was there was figuring out a way to identify waste in our AWS spend, which was entirely outside the scope of what my job was SUPPOSED to be, but it was one of the few areas where I was able to find a willing collaborator in a team that was empowered to get shit done.
To say it was super frustrating is an understatement, I am thankful I got laid off because otherwise I would have quit and missed out on my severance payout.
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They never said they can't afford to pay people, but dragging around that much dead weight is not good if you want to get shit done. Facebook is having the same problem, I bet most of the big tech companies are.
Thankfully the market is still great for people who know how to create software, very few of these people are going to be tossed out on their ass with no good options.-
Let me ask you some questions.
How many of those 10,000 people knew they were “dead weight” when they were screened and hired by MS? When the company offered them a job, they accepted, and they moved their families?
How do you know, in any way shape or form, AT ALL, that those people didn’t contribute to that 75 billion in profit? Do you think they built careers that made them employable at a place like MS and then showed up and all or most of them were incompetent? That is a likely and plausible scenario to you?
Dude, the most fucking charitable read of this is that MS hired people irresponsibly and recklessly. And that’s being fucking charitable.-
MS has been up front about the fact that they hired people irresponsibly and recklessly...
And to answer your question about "how many knew they were dead weight", I imagine it occurred to a lot of them a few months after they started work. I know that was the case for me when I was in that position. It's shitty, but these people are lucky that they have marketable skills. I've been laid off twice in my career and both times I was aware of how lucky I was that I wasn't a factory worker somewhere (like my dad was when he lost his job when I was in high school). -
Amazon has tons of people in their Alexa department and the division is apparently not a money maker. Should Amazon continue to invest in that in todays market after 10 years of not making any money and no sign of change? I feel awful for people who are getting laid off but isn’t this a responsible move for a business? Not every part of Amazon or Microsoft or sales force is profitable.
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Is laying these people off smart? Maybe yes maybe no. But it's a little hypocritical to paint it as immoral and try to manufacture outrage about it.
People often say that workers shouldn't have loyalty to their firm beyond their contractually agreed duties. If someone offers you more, then jump ship! If you don't like the job -- leave! You don't need to feel bad about what happens to the firm.
But then why should the firm have any loyalty to workers beyond those same contractual and legal duties? There's a difference between doing something stupid, and doing something immoral. Maybe firing these workers is stupid and short-sighted, in which case the managers/owners will get their "comeuppance", but it's no more immoral than it is for a worker to move to some other company.
It's like saying "How dare that worker quit! I was paying them a huge salary and gave them a raise just last year!"
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Here’s a radical thought for you guys. If you make it harder to get rid of people via worker protections, it also makes companies more careful about hiring people. It helps on both ends, both of which are the companies fault.
Which goes back to my original point which is fuck MS for this, they hired all these people irresponsibly, the people helped the company make that profit, so YES the company should be responsible for retraining and finding new work for them. Let the employees decide to stay or not with new roles. You guys are way to comfortable siding with corporations like this rather than fellow workers.-
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Just wait a few months when they go begging to increase the H1-B quotas because they can't find workers
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