In a memo released Wednesday morning, Microsoft layoffs confirmed plans to lay off more than 10,000 employees by the end of March. The original story continues below.
Microsoft Layoffs Looking to Cut Around 5 Percent Off the Workforce.
Microsoft is preparing to announce job cuts tomorrow. Sky News reports that thousands of jobs will be cut, with the software giant planning to cut around 5% of its workforce. With more than 220,000 employees at Microsoft, that means over 10,000 layoffs.
While Sky News won’t give an exact date for the expected cuts, a source familiar with Microsoft’s plans told The Verge that the company will likely announce the layoffs on Wednesday, before quarterly results next week.
Bloomberg also reports that some layoffs will be announced tomorrow in Microsoft’s engineering departments. The job cuts would be “significantly larger” than Microsoft’s 1% cut of its workforce last year. Previous job cuts have impacted consulting and solutions positions for clients and partners.
Microsoft is the latest big tech company to grapple with a tough economy, and the job cuts will come just days after Microsoft implemented a new no-limit policy. Microsoft employees with unused vacation balances will receive a one-time payment in April, and managers can approve unlimited “discretionary leave.”
The cuts also come just weeks after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned of two challenging years ahead for the tech industry. In an interview with CNBC, Nadella admitted that Microsoft is not “immune to global changes” and spoke of the need for tech companies to be efficient. The next two years “will likely be the most difficult,” Nadella predicted. “We accelerated a lot during the pandemic, and that demand has normalized. And on top of that, there’s a real recession in some parts of the world.
Before Microsoft, These Companies had also layoffs their Employees
1. Amazon: 18,000 jobs cut
Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company plans to lay off more than 18,000 employees, mostly in human resources and stores. It comes after Amazon said in November that it was looking to reduce its workforce, including in equipment and hiring organizations. CNBC reported at the time that the company was considering laying off about 10,000 employees.
Amazon has ramped up hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic. The company’s global workforce grew to more than 1.6 million by the end of 2021, from 798,000 in the fourth quarter of 2019.
2. Meta: 11,000 jobs cut
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, announced its biggest-ever layoffs in November. The company said it plans to cut 13% of its staff, representing more than 11,000 employees.
Meta’s disappointing forecast for Q4 2022 wiped out a quarter of the company’s market cap and pushed the stock price to its lowest level since 2016.
The tech giant’s cuts come after it increased its workforce by about 60% during the pandemic. The company has been hit by competition from rivals like TikTok, an overall decline in online ad spend, and challenges from Apple’s iOS changes.
3. Twitter: 3,700 jobs cut
Shortly after completing a $44 billion purchase of Twitter in late October, new owner Elon Musk cut about 3,700 employees from Twitter, according to internal communications seen by CNBC. That’s about half the staff. Since then, many employees have left after Musk changed some of his work-from-home policies and wrote that he wants all employees to participate in a “hard-working” environment.
In a November 4 tweet, Musk said there was “no choice” but to fire employees because the company was losing $4 million a day.
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