Microsoft Hit With Small Round of Layoffs

Redmond is starting off 2018 with a small round of layoffs. The company has carried out a small round of employees this week, affecting employees in its HQ and overseas offices.

It’s important to note that the latest round of layoffs at Microsoft aren’t part of a larger set of layoffs. The company has laid off employees from different teams as part of the latest round of layoffs, including Bing, a couple of tooling teams, and other product groups. What’s more interesting is that the Windows and Devices Group has been hit the hardest by the latest round of layoffs, reports Petri. It’s not clear exactly how many employees are being laid off, although the cuts are said to be reasonably small.

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Microsoft has laid off thousands of employees and went through multiple organizational reforms ever since Satya Nadella took over the company as its new CEO. The software giant’s transition to becoming a cloud-focused company has been massively successful so far, with its cloud business going exponentially every quarter.

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Conversation 22 comments

  • skane2600

    22 January, 2018 - 9:14 pm

    <p>If there were really a shortage of qualified technical talent in the industry, these layoffs would never happen, workers would simply be transferred to different groups. </p>

    • TedHoward

      23 January, 2018 - 3:00 am

      <blockquote><a href="#239664"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p>As someone who has worked there, that's how layoffs work. When an org/product/team is laid-off, they have 6(?) weeks to interview internally and they have implicit priority not in hiring but in interviewing because time matters. There is no guarantee that you will be hired by another group. What tends to happen is other teams hear about they layoff and start trying to hire the best employees.</p><p><br></p><p>However, that's all from an R&amp;D (software dev) perspective from 2008. Policies could have changed. More commodity roles (HR, admin, …) may suffer more when layoffs happen.</p>

  • GT Tecolotecreek

    22 January, 2018 - 9:36 pm

    <p>Poor Surface sales coming home to roost. </p>

  • Chidoro

    22 January, 2018 - 10:34 pm

    <p>The cloud business is growing ‘exponentially ‘ every quarter?</p><p><br></p>

    • GT Tecolotecreek

      22 January, 2018 - 10:57 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#239670"><em>In reply to Chidoro:</em></a></blockquote><p>Yeah, it's right at the very start of the curve… </p>

  • Bats

    22 January, 2018 - 10:45 pm

    <p>How can Microsoft be laying off? The economy is booming, a lot of companies are hiring and some of them are reinvesting in their employees…. And Microsoft is not?</p><p>Apple is even expanding, and hiring more employees and Microsoft is doing the opposite? That's not good.</p>

    • GT Tecolotecreek

      22 January, 2018 - 11:03 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#239671"><em>In reply to Bats:</em></a></blockquote><p>W10 adoption is slowing and it doesn't help having Consumer Reports giving the Surface line a "not recommended" rating. </p>

    • TedHoward

      23 January, 2018 - 3:03 am

      <blockquote><a href="#239671"><em>In reply to Bats:</em></a></blockquote><p>I have no idea when they are required to issue a PR according to SEC rules, but if they choose to end development on ______ then that team is laid-off. That doesn't mean headcount decreases overall. </p>

    • warren

      23 January, 2018 - 5:22 pm

      <blockquote><a href="#239671"><em>In reply to Bats:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Maybe it's nothing more complicated than the employees being laid off simply being not good enough at their jobs to continue at the company.</p>

  • PeteB

    23 January, 2018 - 4:49 am

    <p>Not surprising, all their consumer offerings have been disasters. It's basically ELA renewals, Azure and Office 365 subs keeping the entire company afloat. Eventually it'll run out since the company just doesn't innovate anymore.</p>

  • Hassan Timité

    23 January, 2018 - 8:01 am

    <p>Microsoft is really annoying and disapointing.</p><p>They seem to never learn.</p><p>Windows is essential for the long term survival of the company especially if they are serious about cloud computing.</p><p>Without an O.S with a significant share, and especially by hurting continuously their customers i don't see how they expect to be successful in the long term in this era. The failure of Windows will not increase the confidence of potential customers for Microsoft products on other platforms.</p><p>Google has understood that and has the most used O.S of all and is doing its best to increase the share of its other O.S such as Chrome O.S.</p><p>So instead of firing people Microsoft should manage to better utilize them and especially put a lot more efforts on improving Windows in order to a least keep the share or even increase it.</p>

    • maethorechannen

      Premium Member
      23 January, 2018 - 8:26 am

      <blockquote><a href="#239703"><em>In reply to Hassan_Timite:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>If they're serious about cloud computing, Linux is more important to them than Windows.</p>

      • skane2600

        23 January, 2018 - 12:08 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#239706"><em>In reply to maethorechannen:</em></a></blockquote><p>I see it more as the OS in the cloud is irrelevant. </p>

      • Hassan Timité

        23 January, 2018 - 1:04 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#239706"><em>In reply to maethorechannen:</em></a></blockquote><p>Not in terms of users confidence.</p><p>Microsoft has given up of too many platforms supossedly important for them, to afford to give up on Windows. Because if they do give up a platform as important as windows for them, i do not see a lot of people which would trust them in the future, consumers or not !</p>

    • Emmanuel Rannaud

      23 January, 2018 - 9:21 am

      <blockquote><a href="#239703"><em>In reply to Hassan_Timite:</em></a></blockquote><p>Windows is not essential to the long term survival of the company. It's becoming a legacy business in relation to the other lines of business and is not expected to deliver significant revenue growth as opposed to cloud services, AI and other ventures.</p>

      • Hassan Timité

        23 January, 2018 - 1:01 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#239713"><em>In reply to erannaud:</em></a></blockquote><p>Assuming that Microsoft has pissed off,and is still pissing off, a lot of people with both Windows Phone and Windows, i think that the survival of Windows is very important for the survival of the company.</p><p>Because i personnaly won't trust a company which would have been unable to put enough effort to keep alive something as important for them as WIndows, especially for mobile platforms. </p><p>Isn't the mantra of Satya Nadella, cloud first, mobile first.</p><p>Where is the dedication of Microsoft to mobile, again ?</p>

      • Daniel D

        23 January, 2018 - 2:39 pm

        <blockquote><em>It is important as far as mind share and thus critical to Microsoft's success. It is a weakness of American companies that they think everyone cares about the numbers like they do and thus they destroy their own heritage and public image. </em><a href="#239713"><em>In reply to erannaud:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p>

  • maethorechannen

    Premium Member
    23 January, 2018 - 8:23 am

    <p>I'm wondering if MS has stealthily reintroduced stack ranking.</p>

  • 2ilent8cho

    23 January, 2018 - 9:15 am

    <p>If anything they need more staff to sort out this horrific mess called Office 365 which gives me nothing but daily stress and aggravation supporting, so maybe instead of laying them off move them onto the Office 365 team, especially if the future for Microsoft is cloud. OneDrive is a dirty word here now and a very hard sell to end users due to Microsofts inconsistent approach to the product. </p>

    • evox81

      Premium Member
      23 January, 2018 - 9:43 am

      <blockquote><a href="#239711"><em>In reply to 2ilent8cho:</em></a></blockquote><p>This is exactly the opposite experience I've had supporting Office 365 in a SMB. It's literally something I never have to think about. It just works every day.</p><p><br></p><p>And OneDrive? All of our users use it, don't really know they're using it, and it's worked flawlessly. </p>

      • starkover

        23 January, 2018 - 10:25 am

        <blockquote><a href="#239715"><em>In reply to evox81:</em></a></blockquote><p>My experience exactly. It just works.</p>

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