alt Hacker NewsThey are making $600k in net income per employee. 10+ years ago, I'd never seen a mass layoff at any company making that kind of money per employee.
Their net income is up more than 2x in just the last 5 years. 10 years ago, Microsoft only had $85B in revenue, now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?
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If I have a team of 20, making a lot of money, but I think I can do the exact same job with 15 because of AI productivity gains, should I keep the other 5 employed for the vibes?
The total net income doesn't matter: The move is management saying they are overstaffed for the work they think they need.
Assume Microsoft is expecting just a third of people to take the offer. It's just too many people to want to move to a different division that needs more labor: It's basically entire divisions that they'd have to create from whole cloth.
> now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?
Tomorrow they’ll announce that they’re going to spend $134b on new data centers.
Contrast that with NVIDIA's princely $2.5M net income per employee.
profitable divisions are making more than that per employee
while other divisions are sinking ship
there always a case for a yard cleanup and decluttering
I'll also note that the 25% didn't include anyone VP or higher. So, the most expensive employees aren't being shown the exit, just the people doing the actual work.