Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks with Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Data Know-how Budi Arie Setiadi, on the day of their assembly with Indonesian President Joko WIdodo, on the Presidential Palace in Jakarta, Indonesia, April 30, 2024.
Willy Kurniawan | Reuters
Microsoft has laid off over 15,000 folks up to now in 2025. The stress of the belt-tightening has gotten to CEO Satya Nadella.
“Earlier than the rest, I need to communicate to what’s been weighing closely on me, and what I do know lots of you might be fascinated about: the current job eliminations,” Nadella wrote in a memo to staff Thursday.
After Microsoft’s startup labor reductions, buyers pushed the inventory’s closing worth above $500 for the primary time on July 9. The corporate introduced the layoffs of about 9,000 people per week earlier. Microsoft employed 228,000 folks as of June 2024 — it hasn’t supplied a brand new determine that takes into consideration its layoffs this 12 months.
“That is the enigma of success in an business that has no franchise worth,” he wrote. “Progress is not linear. It is dynamic, generally dissonant, and all the time demanding. However it’s additionally a brand new alternative for us to form, lead by means of, and have higher affect than ever earlier than.”
The cuts at Microsoft are reflective of an general pattern throughout the tech business, with over 80,000 positions eradicated up to now in 2025, in keeping with one count. Recruit Holdings announced earlier this month that it could lay off 1,300 folks from its human assets expertise section that features the Certainly and Glassdoor web sites. The corporate’s CEO pointed to synthetic intelligence in a memo, Bloomberg reported.
On social media in current months, some Microsoft staff have change into disheartened concerning the firm’s cutbacks, given its stature.
“I’ve beloved working for this firm, nonetheless do, however this has finished a lot harm to that loyalty as a result of it has proven that Microsoft’s espoused values don’t apply to enterprise selections on the macro stage,” an individual who lists themselves as a Microsoft directed on LinkedIn posted last week.
Microsoft is the world’s most useful public firm after Nvidia, whose chips have change into a important piece of the AI arms race. Microsoft’s Home windows and Workplace franchises stay dominant, and its Azure cloud companies have seen quicker development lately as OpenAI and different corporations hire out Nvidia graphics playing cards to run AI fashions.
Within the memo, Nadella touched on Microsoft’s mission for the previous 10 years, which has been to empower each particular person and each group on the planet to attain extra, and the way the rise of AI is altering it.
“We should reimagine our mission for a brand new period,” he wrote. “What does empowerment appear to be within the period of AI? It isn’t nearly constructing instruments for particular roles or duties. It is about constructing instruments that empower everybody to create their very own instruments. That is the shift we’re driving — from a software program manufacturing facility to an intelligence engine empowering each particular person and group to construct no matter they should obtain.”
Microsoft stories fiscal fourth-quarter outcomes on Wednesday.
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