Microsoft has confirmed that it is laying off 3% of employees, taken from across all levels, teams and regions that the tech giant works in.
In what will be the biggest set of job cuts since early 2023, this will affect around 6,800 jobs – if we take 3% from the 228,000 strong workforce that the company had in June 2024.
In a statement to CNBC, a Microsoft spokesperson said, “We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace.”
These new job cuts are not related to performance, the spokesperson said, which is in contrast to more targeted cuts made back in January. Of course, blanket percentage job cuts couldn’t really be performance related, especially when Microsoft just announced better-than-expected quarterly results, with $24.8 billion in net income and a positive forecast.
That said, given the gigantic scale of the company, the number of markets that it tries to serve and how various different departments could be performing in relation to one another, some of these job cuts could serve to optimise internal structure. It just absolutely sucks that there’s seemingly no good reason for this – good quarter, bad quarter, good economic outlook, bad economic outlook, it doesn’t seem to make a difference these days.
For Microsoft’s now sprawling gaming empire, the impact will likely look like hundreds of job losses. Having ballooned in size thanks to the acquisitions of Bethesda and Activision Blizzard in recent years, Microsoft made job cuts over the last few years with 1,900 job losses in early 2024, closed studios like Arkane and Tango Gameworks (which was later rescued), split off Toys For Bob, and then cut a further 650 jobs last September.
One thing that could help preserve jobs is that a number of studios and teams within Microsoft are unionising. Following in the footsteps of the World of Warcraft team last July, and testers at Bethesda and Raven, the Overwatch team at Blizzard unionised last week, meaning that the wall-to-wall team of 200 employees will be able to bargain collectively and have some ability to push back against layoffs such as this. Of course, while Microsoft should be recognised for not engaging in union-busting activities, they have also been very slow to actually respond and negotiate with these unions under their umbrella.
Source: CNBC
