alt Hacker NewsMicrosoft offers mass buyouts for roughly a quarter of its workforce
Comments
Typical bloated Tech company with probably lots of managers who comes off the back of a master degree and happy to create lots of meaningless meeting
The best path is always save up enough for at least 6 months of runway if you get laid off, at a bare minimum.
This was announced back in April. Lot better than doing layoffs imo. If someone is already checked out then giving them an incentive to leave works out for both sides.
Effectively that means that getting blocked from H1B is a non-issue for Microsoft, since they already have way too many workers.
I better hope Microsoft’s H1B applications get denied for a few years.
That’s a lot of workers looking for work.
How much did Satya lose on that sports "prediction market" Sweeney keeps advertising to our kids?
This can be interpreted as a form of soft layoffs, or it can also be interpreted as an attempt to change their labor culture. Microsoft was notorious for stacked ranking, where supposedly "low performers" were regularly culled. If you offer low performers a smooth way out, it's another form of culling without the harsh push.
Is there any word on which divisions/lines of business they are offering for?
Is it known if this is AI related?
Or perhaps, as Zack noted, Musk showed them the way?
Copilot, AI spending, missing mobile, Surface, Xbox taking their toll.
You know what MS also did on Friday? Used auto update to wipe out all Mac Office 2021 Licenses to try to trick people in to 365 subs.
Paywalled so I can’t see the details but was it offered to 25% assuming much less would actually accept? I have to assume a minority take the deal
> In response to the AI-driven platform shift, Microsoft is trying to reskill and relocate workers and is still hiring
Damn, I’m glad I’m not a developer.
Look at this corporate-slop-speak for how they say "we're firing people":
"more ways for employees to shape their next chapter".
There's no doubt big tech is/was bloated. It was (relatively) cheap to stack and retain talent just so your competition couldn't get them. There was also an era where VPs and directors had direct incentives to grow their orgs as large as possible.
The opportunity cost is higher now (companies are actually spending money on capex), and changes in productivity due to AI mean that simply hoarding talented developers isn't as useful any more. Before, you could keep people "busy" doing things that didn't really produce anything useful, and still find ways to justify it. VPs and directors are now being rewarded for "doing more with less" - not just shipping the largest organization.
I think overall SWE numbers will continue to slowly climb, but I think we're going to see more big tech unwind bloated staff numbers.
A quarter were asked. That seems like a lot.
It does seem a bit of a fortuitous timing, with Anthropic IPO S-1 just dropping..
> At the same time, we'll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills, and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.
Anthropic is already doing this - some software engineers have redeployed into research roles, for example. “Redeploying” is going to be the latest HR trend I think.
This is why I bought real estate in the bull market of the last decade.
How can Microsoft justify making thousands of H1B filings when obviously there's no shortage, and in fact there is a glut, of software engineers? https://www.levels.fyi/h1b/?q=Microsoft&employer=Microsoft
Yeah, there is no way this will not make the horrible issues at Microsoft even a tiny bit better.
Azure is an epic shitshow (to be fair, GCP is even worse, but eh). Github is seriously struggling staying up and alive. Windows updates are posing more of a danger for business continuity than the security issues they fix, which is a challenge in itself. Windows itself is being made irrelevant as more and more software moves for SaaS web models and the gaming flank is being eaten left and right by SteamOS/Proton/WINE, what's left of Windows Embedded after CE got terminated looong ago (that was the foundation for a lot of HMI stuff) is being replaced by Android or straight Linux on Raspberry Pi style devices. Office 365 is buggy as hell (and in the case of Outlook, a horribly bloated Electron mess). Wide masses resent Windows itself for the bloatware, espionage and advertising that's forced down your throat.
And to make the already bad situation even worse, the Trump government made American Big Tech their bitch and everyone but the US is now looking to divest from them as fast as possible.
Presumably AI is making everyone, particularly sales & marketing more productive. While at the same time, their customers are building more things, and selling more things.
Why a force reduction?
Ignore AI for a second. If you had a magic wand, that would help everyone at your company produce more, sell more, and all of your customers are producing and selling more, would that be a growth phase?
Microsoft laying off (and yes, this is a layoff, no matter how it's spun) 25% of the entire freaking company is not a sign of a healthy organization.
You can't and won't tell me with a straight face that AI will replace them.
The writing was on the wall for a long time. All of big tech (and many midsize tech too) have way too many employees. In the AI era is just more absurd than it was before. I always appreciate companies that take care of their employees this way so kudos to Microsoft. We haven't seen the package they are offering yet but I'm assuming it'd going to be very good, esp for those who have been there for a while.
This is the biggest recent tech news over even maybe the last five years. This isn’t like Twitter, where the layoffs were arbitrary
You are all getting a first row seat to watching the death of an industry.
I wonder where are all those AI apologists who have been touting here for years that jobs will not go away?
How does the job role break down for these 60k workers? Are they mostly devs? Other roles?
Can't read the article because of the paywall.
Wow, while I think that large headcount often leads to terrible products (looks at Apple for the last 5 years), MS platforms and software are SO BAD and more un-supervised AI slop code isn't going to fix it. I never want anyone to lose their job but this seems like a massive reduction.
Paywall.
[flagged]
[dead]
Text of the memo driving this, from an article posted by Business Insider [0]: Introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer
Today, we're introducing a new Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) to
eligible employees within participating organizations. This offer
gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the
company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It
also gives participating orgs another way to adapt their workforce
to changing needs.
The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're
evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and,
where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter.
This builds on what we learned earlier this year through the
Voluntary Retirement Program.
What employees should know
This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating
teams in Canada, India, United Kingdom and United States at level 70
and below. This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives
those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with
financial support and career planning resources. Some organizations
are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not.
Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer
commitments, and workforce needs.
Eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their
Voluntary Exit Offer details within the next few hours.
Looking ahead
The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We'll learn from it. At the
same time, we'll keep helping people focus on the work that matters
most, build new skills, and, where it makes sense, find new
opportunities across Microsoft. There is no one-size-fits-all
approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the
ways we're trying to meet different business needs while continuing
to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.
My promise is to continue to provide clarity, listen and learn, and
keep improving.
Thank you for everything you continue to do for our customers,
Microsoft, and for one another.
Amy
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
[dead]
Remember, people, that Microsoft is a reformed company that supports open source and DEI Anything else was flagged up to 2025. Now that they have stolen all open source they fire people.
But some people here have a short memory and already support the new thieves on the block Anthropic and OpenAI.
I think it's time we all start talking about a 4day workweek. these tech oligarchs love to talk about sharing AI with the world, well if it increases productivity, don't lay off employees, SHARE the productivity gains by reducing the workweek. We're all going to be completely replaced in the not far future, but the companies are so cut-throat, it all must go straight to the shareholders.