After Meta or Amazon, it’s Microsoft ‘s turn to announce a massive layoffs. This is 5% of the group’s payroll which should soon be returned. The tech sector has been facing the economic crisis for several months, the recession is setting in in several countries, and the giants want to reduce the sails and be more cautious about their investments.
Despite the still record profits of the biggest players in the sector, the giants are in turn announcing major savings plans by significantly reducing their number of employees. In the 1st quarter of its fiscal year, Microsoft announced $17.6 billion in profit . After Meta , Twitter or Amazon , it’s Microsoft’s turn to present its plans. 10,000 jobs are affected.
Microsoft boss Satya Nadella published an article to explain the reasons for this Microsoft layoffs. He believes that Microsoft’s customers and partners are reducing their needs, and that the firm must therefore adjust to better weather the bad period.
The firm will therefore reduce its payroll by 5% by the end of the 3rd quarter of its financial year, that is to say before April 2023. It is also for Microsoft to reorient itself. Thus, if positions are eliminated, Satya Nadella recalls that the group will also continue to recruit.
In his announcement, Satya Nadella does not specify the sectors most affected by these job cuts. Frandroid understands that the teams in charge of material design at Microsoft (Surface and Xbox for example) could be affected by these job cuts.
For the group, Satya Nadella indicates that this transformation will represent a cost of 1.2 billion dollars, in particular for compensation. These will be adapted to the countries of the employees concerned according to the legislation. The letter does not mention the many contractors working with Microsoft, but we suspect that here too, the change in strategy should have a significant impact.
FOCUS ON AI:
Satya Nadella does not linger in his letter on the after. After all, it is a matter of emphasizing the current situation and trying to reassure the people concerned. He still evokes the next anticipated revolution in computing: AI, and the necessary investment in the sector on the part of Microsoft. As a reminder, the firm would like to bet 10 billion dollars in OpenAI (ChatGPT) and wishes to integrate generative AI into its services .
This letter is published one year to the day after the announcement of the proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft for 68.7 billion dollars .
