Microsoft lays off workers in new round of cuts – GeekWire

The Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. (GeekWire file photo / Todd Bishop)

Microsoft this week rolled out another round of layoffs, part of the latest workforce reductions the Redmond tech giant has made this year.

The cuts affected multiple teams and regions. Microsoft declined to provide details on the number of employees laid off.

Posts on LinkedIn from affected employees show how cuts are affecting employees in product and program management roles.

“Organizational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business,” a spokesperson said in a statement. “We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and to support our customers and partners.”

Microsoft’s fiscal year 2024 ended on June 30. It’s not unusual for Microsoft to restructure parts of its business as it starts a new fiscal year.

Last month, Microsoft cut about 1,000 jobs across the company, including at its Azure cloud division and its mixed-reality organization HoloLens.

Microsoft laid off nearly 2,000 employees in its gaming division in January, three months after the tech giant completed its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the company’s largest ever.

The cuts come as Microsoft tries to maintain profit margins amid higher capital expenditures to provide the cloud infrastructure needed to train and deploy the models that power AI applications.

Microsoft’s workforce has surged during the pandemic but has leveled off over the past two years. The company employed about 227,000 people worldwide at the end of calendar year 2023, down from 232,000 a year earlier, according to figures tracked by GeekWire based on regulatory filings and earnings calls.

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