{"id":235068,"date":"2025-07-03T15:43:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235068\/"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:43:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T15:43:16","slug":"microsoft-cutting-9000-jobs-with-largest-layoff-in-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/235068\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft cutting 9,000 jobs with largest layoff in years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., in April. The company is cutting thousands of jobs, including 830 positions at its head offices, in its second mass layoff in months.Jason Redmond\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Microsoft MSFT-Q<\/a> says it is laying off about 9,000 workers, its second mass layoff in months and its largest in more than two years.<\/p>\n

The tech giant began sending out layoff notices Wednesday that hit the company\u2019s Xbox video game business and other divisions.<\/p>\n

Among those losing their jobs are 830 workers tied to Microsoft\u2019s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, according to a notice sent to state officials Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Microsoft said the cuts will affect multiple teams around the world, including its sales division, part of \u201corganizational changes\u201d needed to succeed in a \u201cdynamic marketplace.\u201d The company won\u2019t say the total number of layoffs except that it was about 4 per cent of the workforce it had a year ago.<\/p>\n

A memo to gaming division employees Wednesday from Xbox CEO Phil Spencer said the cuts would position the video game business \u201cfor enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Xbox would \u201cfollow Microsoft\u2019s lead in removing layers of management to increase agility and effectiveness,\u201d Spencer wrote.<\/p>\n

Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of June 2024, the last time it reported its annual headcount. Its latest layoffs would cut fewer than 4 per cent of that workforce, according to Microsoft. But it has already had at least three layoffs this year and it\u2019s unlikely that new hiring has matched the amount lost. Either way, a 4 per cent cut would amount to somewhere in the range of 9,000 people.<\/p>\n

Until now, this year\u2019s biggest layoff was in May, when Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers, nearly 3 per cent of its global workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years.<\/p>\n

The cutbacks come as Microsoft continues to invest huge amounts of money in the data centers, specialized computer chips and other infrastructure needed to advance its AI ambitions. The company anticipated those expenses would cost it about US$80-billion in the last fiscal year. Its new fiscal year began Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Microsoft just last month cut another 300 workers based out of its Redmond headquarters, on top of nearly 2,000 who lost their jobs in the Puget Sound region in May, most of them in software engineering and product management roles, according to information it sent to Washington state employment officials.<\/p>\n

Microsoft\u2019s chief financial officer Amy Hood said on an April earnings call that the company was focused on \u201cbuilding high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company has repeatedly characterized its recent layoffs as part of a push to trim management layers, but the May focus on cutting software engineering jobs has fueled worries about how the company\u2019s own AI code-writing products could reduce the number of people needed for programming work.<\/p>\n

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said earlier this year that \u201cmaybe 20, 30 per cent of the code\u201d for some of Microsoft\u2019s coding projects \u201care probably all written by software.\u201d<\/p>\n

The latest layoffs, however, seemed centered on slower-growing areas of the company\u2019s business, said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re focused more and more on AI, cloud and next-generation Microsoft and really looking to cut costs around Xbox and some of the more legacy areas,\u201d Ives said. \u201cI think they overhired over the years. This is Nadella and team making sure that they\u2019re keeping with efficiency and that\u2019s the name of the game in Wall Street.\u201d<\/p>\n

The trimming of the Xbox staff follows Microsoft\u2019s years-long expansion of the business surrounding its gaming console, culminating in 2023 with the $75.4-billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard \u2014 the California-based maker of hit franchises like Call of Duty and Candy Crush.<\/p>\n

Before that, in a bid to compete with Sony\u2019s PlayStation, it spent $7.5-billion to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Maryland-based video game publisher Bethesda Softworks.<\/p>\n

Many of those game studios, which have locations across North America and Europe, were struggling with the layoffs Wednesday, according to social media posts from employees who announced they were looking for new jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Wash., in April. The company is cutting thousands of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235069,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[6934,6925,6935,1500,6918,6936,51,943,6917,6930,6931,6927,6919,6916,1700,2266,728,6929,6923,6946,6920,6921,1234,897,6926,388,3611,6607,603,6941,6942,6944,6939,6943,6937,6940,6922,6932,6933,285,3027,6938,6924,53,183,6928,16,15,727,263,6945],"class_list":{"0":"post-235068","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-business","15":"tag-canada","16":"tag-canada-news","17":"tag-canada-sports","18":"tag-canada-sports-news","19":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","20":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","21":"tag-canadian-news","22":"tag-economy","23":"tag-education","24":"tag-environment","25":"tag-federal-government","26":"tag-foreign-news","27":"tag-globe-and-mail","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","29":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","30":"tag-government","31":"tag-jobs","32":"tag-life-news","33":"tag-lifestyle","34":"tag-local-news","35":"tag-manitoba","36":"tag-national-news","37":"tag-new-brunswick","38":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","39":"tag-northwest-territories","40":"tag-nova-scotia","41":"tag-nunavut","42":"tag-ontario","43":"tag-pei","44":"tag-photos","45":"tag-political-news","46":"tag-political-opinion","47":"tag-politics","48":"tag-politics-news","49":"tag-quebec","50":"tag-sports-news","51":"tag-technology","52":"tag-travel","53":"tag-trudeau","54":"tag-uk","55":"tag-united-kingdom","56":"tag-us-news","57":"tag-world-news","58":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}