The tech giant Microsoft has announced layoffs of thousands across various sectors globally and in its home state, Washington. The AI-focused tech giant has not mentioned the exact number of people that it will lay off, but according to reports by the US Media, it will lay off approximately 6000 people, which is almost 3% of the global workforce. These job cuts will span across various departments, levels of management and regions, including LinkedIn.
A company spokesperson stated that they continue to implement the organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic market situation. The tech giant had a headcount of 228,000 as of June 2024, the company undertakes such layoffs to focus back on key business areas. The latest round of job cuts is part of broader trends within the tech industry, where companies are reshaping their employment structure amid shifting demands and rising operational costs.
Microsoft had last implemented such a layoff in January of 2023, where almost 10,000 people were fired from their jobs, this had directly impacted the teams as there was less manpower, especially those teams who were working on HoloLens, its augmented reality headsets and various other hardware divisions. The Current reshaping comes because of an increase in expenditure on Artificial Intelligence infrastructure and cloud services. The company has committed to spending roughly 80 million dollars in the current fiscal on Azure and its other AI-driven offerings, this figure highlights their ambitions, hence, the company is cost-cutting by laying off its employees across various sectors.
Concerning its year-end practices that conclude in June this year, the company has already begun restructuring some of its internal teams. The most recent changes include the transfer of sales responsibilities for small and medium business clients to third-party firms, along with adjustments within different tech units.
This is just not with Microsoft, there were also tech companies who have laid off their employees, in 2024 Google, Apple and many others laid off a record number of 136,000 people, according to an independent layoff tracker named layoff. Once seen as bastions of job security, big tech firms have now become some of the most unpredictable places to work.
