Saturday, April 20, 2024
Microsoft on Wednesday said it would lay off 10,000 employees in the coming months as the economic downturn continues to punish US tech giants.
The job cuts will affect slightly less than five per cent of employees and follow in the wake of similar moves by Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon, and Twitter which have announced thousands of layoffs in the once-unassailable tech sector.
The cuts were "in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities," the maker of the Windows operating system said in a US regulatory filing.
The firings follow a major hiring spree during the height of the coronavirus pandemic when companies scrambled to meet demand as people went online for work, shopping and entertainment.
Microsoft on Wednesday said it would lay off 10,000 employees in the coming months as the economic downturn continues to punish US tech giants.
The job cuts will affect slightly less than five per cent of employees and follow in the wake of similar moves by Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon and Twitter which have announced thousands of layoffs in the once-unassailable tech sector.
The cuts were "in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities," the maker of the Windows operating system said in a US regulatory filing.
The firings follow a major hiring spree during the height of the coronavirus pandemic when companies scrambled to meet demand as people went online for work, shopping and entertainment.
Asked about the layoffs just ahead of the announcement, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that "no one can defy gravity" and pointed to the high inflation that was affecting economic growth around the world.
Microsoft's filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission said the cutbacks would result in a charge of $1.2 billion in their next results announcement.
Those are due on January 24 when the Redmond, Washington-based company is forecast to post its slowest revenue increase in years.
"As we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less," Nadella said in a note to employees, published by the SEC.
He said companies everywhere were exercising "caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one.
Microsoft already made two rounds of layoffs, one in July, which affected less than one per cent of the workforce, and a second one in October that targeted less than one thousand people, according to the news site Axios.
