Microsoft Added 40K Jobs in 2022. Now, an About-Face

Add Microsoft to the ever-growing list of tech companies announcing 4- and 5-figure layoffs. The company on Wednesday said it would lay off 10,000 employees, or roughly 5% of its 221,000-person workforce, by the quarter ending March 31, with layoffs beginning this week, reports CNBC. CEO Satya Nadella said in a memo the move was being taken to "[align] our cost structure with our revenue and where we see customer demand." He said the company will take a $1.2B charge in Q2 tied to associated severance costs as well as "changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces." More:

• Geekwire (which has Nadella's memo in full) reports it's the second-biggest cut Microsoft has made, following the 14,000 employees who were let go in 2014 shortly after Nadella took the reins. But the company has sharply increased its size since, adding 40,000 workers in fiscal year 2022 alone.
• The New York Times reports that while Microsoft's revenue was up 58% over the past three years, it reported its slowest growth in five years in the quarter that ended in October, which suggested more of the same could follow.
• Axios places the Microsoft move amid the bigger picture, writing, "Each of these big tech workforce reductions, themselves a response to a softening economy, puts further pressure on the rest of the industry to cut costs."
• A standout line from Nadella: "These are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts."

(More Microsoft stories.)