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The latest job cuts come just months after the global software giant announced less significant layoffs in October amid ongoing economic headwinds.
Microsoft is set to cut thousands of jobs with an announcement expected to be made as soon as today (18 January).
The US software giant joins a growing list of global tech companies responding to ongoing economic uncertainty with layoffs and other spending cuts. Earlier this month, major tech companies including Amazon, Salesforce and Citrix announced significant job cuts.
The Microsoft announcement was first reported by Sky News yesterday, when it said that it had learnt the company was planning to lay off roughly 5pc of its global workforce – around 11,000 people.
Microsoft employs around 220,000 people globally with more than 3,500 in Ireland – excluding those who work for LinkedIn, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2016 for $26bn.
The latest cuts mark Microsoft’s second such announcement in less than six months. The company announced in October last year that it was cutting fewer than 1,000 jobs because of “unfavourable foreign exchange rate movement” and extended production shutdowns in China.
That announcement came less than three months after Microsoft reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth since 2020.
“Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly,” Microsoft told Axios at the time. “We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead.”
According to Bloomberg, the latest Microsoft job cuts will affect several engineering teams in the company as it prepares for a prolonged slump in demand for its software services.
In a recent interview with CNBC, CEO Satya Nadella admitted Microsoft wasn’t “immune to the global changes” and spoke of the need for tech companies to be efficient.
“The next two years are probably going to be the most challenging,” said Nadella.
“We did have a lot of acceleration during the pandemic, and there’s some amount of normalisation of that demand. And on top of it, there is a real recession in some parts of the world.”
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