Layoffs Across Microsoft, 6,000 Employees Impacted
- Ankur Sachdev
- May 14
- 3 min read
Key Highlights
Microsoft lays off 6,000, around 3%, of its workforce.
Laidoff employees last held engineer and manager positions.
Microsoft is reportedly restructuring its strategies and long-term goals.
Colleagues are not your family members, and the company is definitely not your second home. The majority of the corporations knowingly chase profits over people, and there is no counter to this statement. Companies hire and fire at their will with little sympathy for those who lose their livelihood.
Microsoft recently started laying off as many as 6,000 employees across its divisions. Needless to say, industry came out with possible reasons to justify layoffs while ex-employees expressed their disappointments among each other - one of them taking to LinkedIn to share their experience.
Layoffs Across Microsoft
According to a report by Associated Press, Microsoft has laid off approximately 3% of its current workforce. This roughly translates to 6,000 employees losing their jobs after the tech giant reported strong numbers for the January-March quarter. Layoff notices started making rounds this Tuesday. Many employees were scheduled for a last-minute call, only to be greeted by an unfamiliar face to deliver the news.
Employees losing their jobs mainly hail from positions of engineers and managers. Divisions reporting losing people include Xbox and LinkedIn. This is the second-highest layoff report since early 2023, when around 5% of the workforce was laid off. That was as high as 10,000 people losing their earnings.
Two sides have presented the argument. Industry experts have said that layoffs don’t necessarily mean that the company is struggling. If anything, one expert added, it signals that the company is restructuring its strategies for a possible long-term gain. The other side believes that employees are being laid off in large numbers because Microsoft didn’t hesitate to hire aggressively during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic to meet its requirements.
Amy Hood, the Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft, said that the focus was now on building more high-performing teams and increasing the company's agility. The latter being possible only by reducing the layer of managers.
Associated Press said in the same report that the only reason Microsoft stated was that layoffs were a part of organizational changes to better position the company in a dynamic marketplace.
How Layoff Happened?
An ex-employee from Microsoft who was working in the company for 7 years took to LinkedIn to share their experience. According to a report by Hindustan Times, they were called for a meeting which was added at the last moment. He/She wondered what the meeting would be about, but that suspense was soon broken.
The ex-employee got on the call and soon saw an unfamiliar face joining the meeting. That is when they realized that this was a layoff call.
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He/She has reportedly marked their LinkedIn profile as Open To Work, and has sent positive thoughts to all those who were affected by the layoff. Now an ex-employee, they last held the Manager position in the tech company where they had been working since 2018. Others may have simply received a layoff notice from Microsoft.
What After Microsoft Layoff?
The obvious step is to start looking for a job position at other companies. However, this is not the only thing that (ex)employees should do. Regardless of employment status, it is better to continuously scan the industry for opportunities and upgrade skills based on what is happening on the ground.
Connect with as many people as possible on a professional platform like LinkedIn. This gives sufficient support when looking for a new job, or a new role altogether. Alternatively, one can opt to take some time off from career and focus on family & life in general.
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