News hardware But why did Microsoft lay off more than 1,000 employees?
Published on 19/10/2022 at 17:05
A few months ago, Microsoft indicated that it was preparing to lay off almost 1% of its staff. Promised thing, thing due, the American giant took action overnight from Monday to Tuesday.
It was last spring that Microsoft indicated that it was thinking very hard about parting with part of its workforce. The company, which has nearly 180,000 employees worldwide, has just delivered on that promise and launched – without making much noise – his “little” redundancy plan. Note, however, that Microsoft is not the only company in this situation, many other companies are too, and this is a direct consequence of the current world situation.
Sources close to the company thus indicate in Business Insidercomment this week’s layoffs affected 1,000 people in various teams around the globe. As has happened before with Meta or Google, these silent dismissals are done, as their names suggest, with the aim of making as little noise as possible. These cuts therefore took place in various sections of the company, and surprisingly, even those who were doing well were affected. Several publications show that some employees were even affected at Xbox. Besides that, it also seems that the hierarchy was not taken into account in the process. The Product Manager to the Chief Technology Officer and long-time Microsoft employee, KC Lemson, announced his dismissal this Monday, October 17 on his Twitter account.
Microsoft: an inevitable restructuring?
A Microsoft spokesperson explained that “like all companies, we periodically evaluate our employees and make appropriate structural adjustments. We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the coming year.”
One of the executives of the multinational, Zach Kramer, also gave in a leaked email the context of his internal changes. He explained that they “stopped giving priority to work already in progress”. He also mentioned how they had worked hard on some ideas that could have a big impact on the business: “We have to make sacrifices, because resources are not unlimited and time is more precious than anything”.
Microsoft isn’t the first and certainly won’t be the last to take such action.. Today, virtually every major tech company is cutting spending. Snap Inc, the parent company of Snapchat, has already announced even more drastic measures – 20% of the workforce will leave the company. Mark Zuckerberg et Meta have meanwhile announced the cessation of hiring and the imminent arrival of a wave of layoffs.
