Microsoft is doing its usual fiscal year-end layoffs, but fewer than usual
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Microsoft's usual end-of-fiscal-year layoffs have been happening for the past week-plus. Compared to some previous years, this year's round seems a lot lighter. As in prior years, the layoffs are impacting a number of different regions and functions.
Microsoft officials aren't saying how many people have been cut or which teams affected, but a spokesman did acknowledge to me earlier this week that the layoffs have happened. The MSN team, Microsoft's sales and marketing organization, and the Azure team are among those units that have made cuts, which I've either read about or directly heard.
I've also seen some tweets about layoffs happening in npm, which Microsoft acquired in March 2020. It sounds as if npm had cut some of its own staff ahead of Microsoft acquiring the Node package manager. But it does seem as though cuts continued after Microsoft's acquisition announcement. (I don't believe Microsoft's acquisition has been cleared officially at this point.)
Microsoft has not issued any kind of official WARN notification about layoffs, unlike the case a few years ago, when the company cut "thousands" -- primarily in its sales organization.Business Insider said the total number of layoffs in the July round is under 1,000. I am hearing the same -- hundreds, but not sure how many hundred.
Microsoft internally announced a shake-up in its sales organization earlier this month. I'm not sure how many of the July layoffs are attributable to that reorg.
Update (July 21): LinkedIn, which is part of Microsoft, has cut 960 jobs. This makes me wonder if the "less than 1,000" total actually included LinkedIn. My guess is no, but I'm asking Microsoft for an official response. On July 20, LinkedIn's CEO Ryan Roslansky said LinkedIn has "reduce(d) approximately 960 roles, or about 6 percent of our employee base, across our Global Sales and Talent Acquisition organizations."
Microsoft currently has more than 156,000 employees worldwide.