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Microsoft to lay off most employees in over five years

Tech behemoth Microsoft is looking to cut some costs as it integrates its new Nokia handset unit, planning layoffs that would be the company's largest this decade.

The new restructuring could end up being the company's largest in its history, even surpassing the 5800 laid off in 2009 during the tail end of the financial crisis. Most of the layoffs will be in divisions that overlap with Nokia, most notably engineering and marketing.



While the plans are not yet public, new CEO Satya Nadella has been calling for sweeping changes including more focus on efficiency and reducing redundancies. The company plans to focus on mobile devices, the cloud and productivity software into the future, obvious choices as other revenue streams dry up. "Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture," Nadella said last week.

The company now has 127,000 employees, with almost 30,000 of those coming via the Nokia acquisition. There are almost certainly thousands of redundancies with numbers that big.

Expect more clarity next week during Microsoft's quarterly earnings report.

Source:
Bloomberg

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 15 Jul 2014 21:22

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• 4 comments

• DXR88

  Quote: new CEO Satya Nadella has been calling for sweeping changes including more focus on efficiency and reducing redundancies.
  This new CEO needs to be fired.
  
  

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  16.7.2014 01:44 #1

• SomeBozo

  Seems like a lot of speculation, can't see they will be able to lay off most employees in five years this seems absurd and who ever wrote this article doesn't seem to have much insight. As a contractor at MS, there are plenty of teams currently hiring, even with the layoffs in 2009, they still continued to hire people, 2 friends i know got hired 1 week exactly after the 2009 layoffs and another 3 weeks after. We are all developers and , developers always seem to be in short supply there, no matter what MS does, it is a software company, sure doesn't seem that will change.
  
  

  16.7.2014 04:17 #2

• harhumph

  Misleading headline... if one was to infer a outcome based on the headline then one would assume Microsoft is going under. It sounds like one division within the company might layoff a number of people. Still the headline caught my interest, but the inaccuracy of it made me comment!

  16.7.2014 11:45 #3

• SomeBozo

  Originally posted by harhumph: Misleading headline... if one was to infer a outcome based on the headline then one would assume Microsoft is going under. It sounds like one division within the company might layoff a number of people. Still the headline caught my interest, but the inaccuracy of it made me comment! From what i've heard, there are a couple departments that will take nearly 40% of all the layoffs, one i might suggest is not essential to the core products MS produces, but most product groups and department/teams where i work are still hiring and need more people.
  
  While I agree who ever wrote this article, well i'm wondering if it was more of an April fools joke, but they are certainly not in touch with reality. The might have done better by saying windows will not produce windows or office any more.
  
  

  16.7.2014 12:20 #4