Microsoft To Sack 9,000 Employees In Largest Layoff Since 2023: Reports

Washington DC: In their largest round of job cuts since 2023, Microsoft are reportedly laying off around 9,100 employees, or nearly 4% of their total workforce. The company had made a large personnel reduction in May, eliminating nearly 6,000 jobs, or roughly 3% of its global workforce. Numerous departments were reportedly impacted by the last wave, including marketing, customer service, and engineering.

Reports had indicated that the company was entering a new phase of corporate reorganisation ahead of the end of 2025 fiscal year by reducing employees. This was apparently in line with the company's continuous transition to AI-led automation. According to a new internal research study released by Microsoft, leaner staffing models may be in store as smaller, AI-assisted teams has become the standard in a number of industries.

Microsoft is OpenAI's largest investor. In 2023, Microsoft reportedly made an additional multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment in attempts to build safe AGI (artificial general intelligence)

Top sales executive takes eight-week leave 

According to reports, the primary sector which will be affected is the sales department. Amid these layoffs, Microsoft's top sales executive Judson Althoff has taken an eight-week-long leave. Bloomberg reported that Althoff, Microsoft's chief commercial officer,  will resume his role in September after the end of the fiscal year stating that "he will be back with his team in September.” It is estimated that Microsoft employs around 45,000 of the company's 228,000 total workforce for the sales and marketing division. 

In May, LinkedIn, owned by Microsoft, had laid off 281 employees across multiple locations in California, impacting engineers and several other departments. The move came a month after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that AI was now responsible for writing up to 30% of the company's code.

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