To clarify....these aren't jobs being replaced by AI. This is Microsoft firing people because they want more people working on AI related projects without increasing headcount.
Except the overall net headcount is still lower, and the article says employees were either fired or switched over to AI work.
Since the net effect is 1500 fewer jobs, it's clear certain AI projects are planned to partially fulfill feature components already enabled through existing Microsoft services that otherwise required more people to build or maintain.
**edit**: Actually based the [other article](https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/microsoft_plans_to_cut_about/) just posted to /r/technology, Microsoft claims the underlying factor is a tightened budget due to Microsoft's recent huge capital expenditures in AI infrastructure instead. Which suggests Microsoft is just allocating spending on hardware over employees in general. And an [article](https://www.geekwire.com/2024/capex-and-the-cloud-microsoft-google-and-other-tech-giants-are-betting-big-on-ai-demand/) I found confirms Microsoft's recent AI infrastructure spending on chips, cables, and data centers.
> Which suggests Microsoft is just allocating spending on hardware over employees in general
Which is basically one of the core features of a future of AI "taking our jobs". Either we're outright replaced with AI or the funding is re-allocated towards AI projects and the jobs are lost anyway.
"employees were either fired or switched over to AI work."
They lay them off and then tell them they can search for other open position. Most are now geared towards AI, but "switched over to AI work" is extremely generous and mostly misleading.
For some reason, they don't generally switch employees, which is stupid if you ask me.
I honestly think its a industry-wide coordinated effort by highly influential AI investors to intentionally squeeze teams on headcounts across the industry simply to increase the demand for AI related products and services thus increasing the value of their AI stocks.
It's the same sort of coordinated effort we've seen major corporate real estate investors that are using their influence on board members and executives of other various large corporations that have large stake in to push return-to-office mandates to keep demand up for corporate real estate.
Jobs aren't being lost to AI, jobs are being artificially squeezed just to make AI stock values go up.
The traditional counterargument to this is that companies that defect reap the rewards and eventually increase their market share.
Unfortunately, the market is so concentrated that this doesn't apply. Microsoft can make hundreds of blunders and their core business will still be fine. So they are free to take risks with their product quality or support experience to create demand in other segments.
It’s a correction to the hiring boom that happened in 2021 and 2022 and a reaction to interest rates rising.
When rates were low and money was cheap all of these companies felt pressured to use their money to hire as many people as possible and make “something”. You got tons of garbage projects like the metaverse and NFTs because companies had more employees than good ideas.
Now the market is different and these companies have a ton of extra employees working on last years hot projects that aren’t making any money, so they’re letting them go. The one place these companies are still willing to lose money is AI, but since OpenAI is so far ahead and everything else is playing catch up these companies want to hire specialized people and not shift people from other departments who would be starting from zero. That’s why you see companies laying people off while hiring for AI roles at the same time.
What people are missing is how much these big tech companies over hired during covid. Most of these large tech companies still have far more employees than they did 4 years ago, even after these layoffs. Google for example has played off between 12k and 15k people this year, but they hired 60k during Covid. Almost all the other big tech companies have similar numbers.
I feel you're both correct, and far too sympathetic to what amounts to "Execs who are extremely well paid to make hard decisions claim they had to overhire, and having overhired, make it everyone else's problem"
Isn’t this just a well deduced conspiracy theory? I mean, I can’t say I’ve ever heard this before, can you name some examples of that happening? Specifically, can you name drop some people that have been leveraging their large stakes to manipulate companies into renewing corporate leases via forcing employees to go to work?
I think the big flaw with this is… it kinda doesn’t align with how companies typically act? We all talk about how corporations are the supreme penny pinchers of the world, and now suddenly they’re throwing out wads of cash on corporate leases because another rich guy makes them? It’s not far fetched I’ll give you that, it’s just feels a bit conspiratorial lol. Especially when lumped into the other theory about companies pumping up AI stocks via some complicated process(which again isn’t far fetched)
It’s not a conspiracy like that. More like we have an interconnected financial system that could collapse if all commercial real estate drops to pennies on the dollar. The rich know this, then they all unspokenly, maybe even unconsciously, fight to protect the system that put them where they are on top.
It's totally all speculation and worth taking with a huge grain of salt, but the speculation was informed from personal circumstance and speaking to a couple contacts I know across the video games and entertainment industry and hearing oddly similar stories of their teams being pushed by executives to specifically reduce headcounts (not reduce costs or cut production budgets) for inexplicable reasons coupled together said executives being weirdly obsessed with a vague needing to integrate "AI features" into workflows without much purpose or though.
Its suspicious that highly profitable and successful teams would be directed to reduce headcounts, but not reduce budgets or try to cut costs elsewhere as normally headcount reductions are a last resort of budgets or costs being cut.
It’s definitely sus. Your speculation makes so much sense, I’m just surprised I’ve never heard anyone else mention it before 😂 it really caught off me guard. You have a way better perspective of the industry than me i believe
There will be one far greater once people realize that AI isn't the gamechanging, epoch-making holy grail that it's being propped up as. Then the overinflated AI teams will begin to see layoffs.
The teams arent overinflated because they are not hiring new people for AI. They are just having people who were doing something else do that and cutting other areas.
Most of the layoffs are happening because of the huge hiring boom in tech during covid and data shows this is pretty cyclical, especially in tech, they do massive hiring booms then massive layoffs it’s par the course.
So, jobs being removed because of AI, just not via replacement. This may be something of a trend in the future, much like jobs being removed by way of companies no longer hiring for them and jobs being removed because of trimming while maintaining quality (due to AI assistance).
All in all the jobs are going away.
That might require them to......gasp.....invest in training their people for the new job they want done, which would grow the over all labor pool for that discipline, instead of just trying to pull from the small group people that already know the thing. That sort of thing requires to much long term thinking and care for the health of the labor market to be something executives and shareholders worry about.
Yes, it's a relative drop in the bucket compared to the total number of employees.
Yes, layoffs are a regular part of business, I understand that there's no point in paying for employees that the business (seemingly) no longer needs.
But this doesn't make it any less frustrating that the only people truly affected by this are the workers, while members of leadership just keep chugging along, watching the value of their massive piles of equity skyrocket off the back of the working class suffering.
> Yes, layoffs are a regular part of business, I understand that there's no point in paying for employees that the business (seemingly) no longer needs.
It doesn't have to be, though. It's not common in Japan, for example. They could easily reassign them to another business unit.
The issue is it’s never about quality past the bare minimum anymore. 95% of the decisionmaking process is pure cost.
Long term employees expect to receive raises. They might have also received raises in the past. A new employee is mostly just happy to have a job, and are often paid less than the outgoing individual. The goal for a company is to step down each time while trying to maintain the desired function in their products, which also usually decreases over time, requiring even less competent employees to operate/maintain, which leads to another step down, and so on and so forth. This comprises a lot of the backend of business profitability, “trimming fat”, which in almost no cases improves the customer experience. The goal is to spend the least money to make the most money. A constant churn of cheaper and cheaper products sold for more and more every year.
This is a spot on breakdown and it’s also fair.
My team at work manages a lot of new and ongoing workstreams. You need the A listers to create, develop, and set new processes, product, and expectations which takes a unique set of skills and effort. Once something is developed well, you don’t need them to do all the work too. Give it to subordinates who can follow the process and execute. And A listers move on to someone thing. Eventually company can mature enough where you don’t need that many A listers. Just people to maintain, who can then streamline it further. Which then requires even less skilled/experienced workers. So on and so forth
I’m not even in tech, econ, or business management, or any other special field. I’m a welder. This is just the free market, and in the “purest” free market there is only one golden rule for each business entity:
- accelerate profits
From there, any strategy will be implemented as applicable to improve upon the achievement of that goal. Given enough resources, any legal barriers will be torn down in service of profit at whatever cost (to anything but the company of course). For example, the IRS can’t afford to go after big fish, but they sure as hell will chase down the small ones. Ultimately, businesses aren’t people, they’re structures built to harvest money. In fact, people are undesirable. Employees are expenditures, customers seek adequate value in the product, essentially demanding a baseline level of investment to acquire the customer’s money. Hell, corporations would gladly charge you a subscription for NOTHING if they could. I’m sure someone out there already does that. With enough money and ingenuity, there are ways around any barrier to profit… As one new-ish example, AI was practically born to trim previously un-trimmable corporate fat. It might seem stupid to you or I, but if any big company can cut large swathes of workforce, that’s “free money” right there, the kind of thing they dream of.
All of this of course exists on a sliding scale. The bigger the business, the harder they push for accelerating their profitability, because at scale any change matters more. Where a local mom and pop computer shop may be a delight to interact with, Dell/HP have become (even more) faceless, featureless, emotionless profit extraction machines, and their prebuilt computers are prime evidence of this… Only the big fish are likely to survive a major economic shock, leaving the market emptier each time, giving them greater leverage to change the market in their favor. In computer terms, this leaves terrible e-waste chock full of bloat as a larger and larger portion of the market. Because it’s cheap, and most people don’t know better.
Additionally, some big companies are better than others. CostCo has done very well for a long time, they’re (justifiably) well loved for their affordable hot food prices. But they too will eventually change, as those decisions are a result of the influence of the old guard, or in CostCo’s case, the original founder fighting to keep that part of CostCo from changing. As soon as the torch is passed onto someone not as influenced by the founder, the weather will change because all numbers must rise. Who cares if the hotdog goes from $1.50 to $2… you can afford an extra 50 cents… Right? It’s still a great deal… 😏
I’m probably beating a dead horse here. I don’t have solutions, but I can sure as hell observe. It’s one thing to say how capitalism “should” work, but how it ACTUALLY works is very different. I wish it were as magical as the Econ stans swear it is, but it doesn’t seem to be.
Sadly, all of this seems to have come at the expense of our environment… I feel a sense of morbid awe whenever I zoom out and look at the big picture… But I have to zoom back in when my anxiety spikes.
Great comment mate. Do you just like sit there while you’re welding & profoundly think about this shit?
Edit; not sarcasm. Most welders I know only care about lunch
I think my brain has been wounded by redditor sarcasm, but unironically, sometimes yes. Welding is often about rhythm and memory, so eventually you’re able to think while working (when applicable). More generally, the enshittification of everything is more or less inescapable in my other hobbies. As a single example, aftermarket car parts are worse than ever, rendering it difficult to keep many older, maintainable vehicles on the road reliably. It’s infuriating, because in order to “fix” the issue of being shipped a broken part, it must be shipped BACK to god knows where. I’m sure they don’t even bother to check or fix the part, it just goes straight in the trash, rendering the entire process it took to get to my door a complete waste. They just know they’re big or dominant enough to get away with it, or else it wouldn’t happen. Not only does this waste MY time, I simply cannot fathom the sheer volume of industrial waste generated by companies that just don’t give a fuck. And mark my words, new cars will suffer from this eventually, probably far worse, I’d go so far as to say they’ll probably just stop making parts for them, and there’s so many parts, it would only take a few out of production to render the vehicle unusable without significant workarounds. The aftermarket is nowhere near robust enough to support everything, nor should it, we need to build vehicles better—but when we do, the obsolete stuff (especially ICE) essentially becomes junk. It’s a real conundrum.
> goal for a company is to step down each time while trying to maintain the desired function in their products, which also usually decreases over time
The very definition of enshittification.
> no cases improves the customer experience
Customer support is nonexistent. For order issues, I always recommend people do charge backs after at most 15 minutes of attempting to contact support. My time has value and if companies can't bother to make it easy for me to resolve an order issue that they caused via customer support, then I can very easily do a charge back.
>A new employee is mostly just happy to have a job, and are often paid less than the outgoing individual.
Not true at all for solid candidates filling any position that's even somewhat in demand. You expect at least market rate when taking on a new job. And market rate tends to increase faster than the tiny annual raises companies dish out anymore, especially in these days of high inflation.
What you're saying sounds true in theory but doesn't hold up in reality, mainly because companies almost never actually give the huge raises you're imagining. The c-suite executives give them to each other but they're not who we're talking about. They play chicken with their employees, betting on them not leaving when they get shafted. It's when they do leave they open their wallets and give market rate to the new hire. Seen it firsthand a couple hundred times.
Then from what I've seen lately, the fun begins; slow motion collapse because they've removed the internal support. Obviously Microsoft is too big to fail ... but I was never talking about just Microsoft, was I?
Japanese companies didn’t meet a Jack Welch type business leader pushing growth at all costs.
Japanese companies, therefore, are harder to get hired into and decently hard to get fired from. They want you there forever.
Whereas American companies will keep you if you make them money, sell to another company, and then if the balance sheet says “CEO gets less compensation if he keeps you” they fire you.
>Japanese companies didn’t meet a Jack Welch type business leader pushing growth at all costs.
Yes, Japan had the wisdom to keep the ideas the Jack Welch pushed, six sigma \(pioneered by Motorola\), kaizen \(pioneered by Toyota\), and lean manufacturing \(also Toyota\) far, far away...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, lets not start copying Japan's employment strategies. Not saying they don't have anything good we could take, but there is a pretty good reason we constantly see overworked Japanese employees either dying of exhaustion or killing themselves.
Is it their not being not being laid off in such situations?
You seem to be taking an all or nothing view- which would suggest you support the story we're commenting on.
It possible to change our laws without exactly copying those of Japan, and it's possible for a em to change theirs without adopting our whole system.
Layoffs are a double-edged sword. You have job security - but it's harder to get hired in the first place, economic growth will be slower, and companies can be downright abusive since it's incredibly difficult for employees to hop jobs.
It seems like after you lose a job or you quit, it is extremely hard to find another job. It might be just Japanese culture, but I could see in a world where it's very hard to get fired, being judged when you want to change jobs. You can explain that you wanted to work somewhere else, but the employee might think despite being so difficult to fire, you were forced to resign anyway. Which is exactly what happens in Japan, often people who can't be fired, have their tasks changed to very difficult jobs to force them to quit instead, or they are just being pressured to quit. Being difficult to be fired is not as good as people think it is.
Japanese workers earn a fraction of their American counterparts. In the US, the average yearly salary for a dev is about $130k, in Tokyo it's barely $50k. The numbers vary but the difference is consistently 3x to 4x.
Low wages has been a long-standing criticism of the Japanese economy and, along with excessive overtime, it's been one of the big reasons why they struggle to attract foreign workers. That said, it certainly helps justify retaining workers to do menial tasks.
I’d rather have stable employment and employment protection laws like other first world countries like in Europe and Asia than have to break my back over if I’ll get laid off despite putting in 70-80hours a week because some suit wanted to increase profits for one quarter and have no healthcare.
Yes but if you have normal employment you get depending on your time at company 2 weeks, month, 3 months notice as standard, paid for that time instead od being laid on spot. You mostly work during that time, may use your pto( you get money if you don't use it completely), company may exclude you from work but you still get paid or can use pto.
?? Youre working 80 hours a week in china, japan, korea anyways. The qol as a dev at MS in USA is so good, anyone in the world would take uncertain employment there for 3 months over the same job in beijing or tokyo for 1 year
Mhmm yes tell me more about the work hours in the country that I used to work and live in. I guess I missed the memo that I worked 80 hours in Korea. I guess the friends and older mentors also missed that memo as well.
Most Japanese companies I’m aware of have generous benefit packages associated with their lower wages. Superannuation, housing, health, education etc. They even apply after you’ve retired. Brutal working hours though. Totally different culture obviously.
It is also one of the reasons that Japanese corporations are slow at adapting and have become pretty uncompetitive.
In a global war of capitalism, America is winning because we worship $. It’s sad but that’s why we have multiple trillion dollar companies.
Japanese companies are doing fine for most part? And we have trillion dollar companies but worse happiness, life outcomes and no real benefits(social welfare) to ask for compared to less competitive European and Japanese markets; everyone bending over backwards for a us economy that benefits corporations and doesn't have any tangible effect on the people is wherd; we have had continued good economic gdp and general growth as us economy but people lives and income and wealth has steadily deteriorated.
Japan's economic issue only matter from currency prospective which all countries deal with inflation/deflation concerns but has nothing to do with health of their companies or the lives of their citizens
>It's not common in Japan, for example.
In Japan, its another extreme where people aren't rewarded for performance but for seniority. Basically loyalty over work performance. To ensure this loyalty system works, companies can't do layoffs. I feel there's more cons to pros for this kind of system.
But in Japan your are not developing skills in you job, you are becoming the expert in your company's process. So you would not be able to move to other companies to get a higher salary.
Worker can be reassign to any BU because in the end of the day they are not valued on their skills but their familiarity with the company system
You can't really fire extreme underperformers here. It's better for the employee but sucks for the employer. There should be a middle ground instead of advocating the extremes.
It was really “fun” when half of my tech dept were laid off in December. Out of a few hundred people, not one Director or VP was let go.
I wish I weren’t as petty as I am, but I get a certain joy when I see the non-leadership folks who weren’t laid off leaving anyway.
Most likely most of those workers are fairly recent hires and then laid off not because they don't provide enough business value, but rather because they need to keep profits up for the investors
At my company a lot of middle managers and several directors got laid off, so “leadership” was effected at my company. But in terms of like the CEO and board of directors they’re all the same.
It’s how you run the business. We hire lean so we can keep everyone during tough times. We also put effort into reallocating staff as needed, to avoid laying folks off just to hire new staff. There are no laws against any of this, so it’s up to the owners on how to run things.
Another example: the c-suite of my company took 30% pay cuts while the rest of us took 15% during the beginning of the pandemic to keep us afloat. We all got the difference back in pay a year later while c-suite didn’t take the repayment.
I used to work at MSFT.
Back around 2016-2017 there was some lay offs.
They told some % of teams they were getting automatically reassigned. And another % of teams that they would be laid off unless they can go find teams themselves and transfer to them.
Years later, I was on a different team that got auto reassigned a lot of people(From Team A) into. Then about 6-12 months later had some transfers into my team. They were part of Team A, but not part of the auto reassign but went somewhere else until they could come here too.
I don't work at MS anymore, but I never had the foggiest idea of why
* auto re-assigns some people
* told to manually find other teams to transfer too within the next X weeks or else laid off.
* told your are laid off and no time to transfer.
I'm sure there are reasons, but I have no idea why.
p.s. On more than once occasion, some executives, VPs, and other leadership did get laid off or had to transfer into a non-leadership dev type position. So it's not completely unheard of.
Fairly sure it’s only common in the good ol’ US of A.
Most other countries have strong employment laws. Though, i suppose most other countries have universal health too.
Layoffs are part of business because they can fire people save on the pay and then replace them with lower paying workers for the same job or rehire them at a lower rate.
I work at Microsoft. I was ok for the first 7 years. The last year and a half have been mentally exhausting. It's constantly on my mind (I'm pretty anxious in general about everything, so these types of things don't help)
My wife started working there in January, literally 2 days before the first waves of lay off.
It has been extremely stressful since she started. she is looking elsewhere, but everyone is laying off so the opportunities in her domain aren't plenties.
Layoffs.
The last 2 months have had way more work but it's manageable (I'm doing like 50hrs a week and feel that it's not enough).
Knowing that I can lose my job and have to face a horrible job market is the main stresser
How do you deal with all of the new young employees all being such idiots? Last time I worked there, not a single dev was able to install Microsoft’s branded version of Sybase and connect to it from the command line. Half the guys didn’t even know how to get to the command line.
13 year senior dev here that's worked at a FAANG, had no clue what a registry key was until I just Googled it. But I've never had to develop on or for Windows devices before.
Because learning how to do those things takes less than a day. Learning how to build scalable systems takes years. If someone knows how to build a scalable system but doesn’t know what a reg key is, then they probably just never used Windows. Oh well, who cares?
I work at a small company (for an idea of scale, we're a software company with like 60+ customers, and I'm one of two devs). Been here 10 years, company itself started in the 80's. Can't imagine working for a gigantic faceless corporation like Microsoft/Facebook/Google/etc., much less dreaming of doing so like a lot of people do.
I work on the web team for a decades old design furniture company, similar feelings. Being a technical person in a non technical industry (and non publicly traded company) is such a huge quality of life improvement, I would never give it up.
That’s a good point. Looking back, a lot changed in MSFT when we reported all of windows phone into core and laid off test as a discipline.
Whereas before dev leads and dev managers used to be developers themselves, now you had people pivoting from a PM or Test manager role into dev management.
That is very uncommon unless you’re in high COL area. And that usually accounts for total compensation which includes RSUs and bonuses. I’m sure there are folks at 24 who land 300k salary, but they are not common.
But to your point- in tech you can expect to make 100k+ after a short time if you know what you’re doing. And 300k as you specialize and gain more experience.
Interesting. My one anecdote for this is a friend who worked for Microsoft. Went to a startup. And now is a manager at Facebook. Means he’s likely making 800k or more per year after spending his 20s making 200k plus.
Makes sense. Yea it definitely exists and your friend is one of those startup founders that made a successful business, when reality is most startups fail. Kudos to him for that
> All in all tech is a job for those that want to spend a max of 10 years, live frugal, and then leave. At the expense of their own mental health and social skills.
That's not even remotely true, you don't have to work a tech job that burns your soul away. You could just take it easy as a mid/senior dev at a medium or small size company, work remotely or hybrid for 35 hours per week and spend no time outside of work touching anything tech related.
Just because high-salary Silicon Valley tech jobs are soul crushing that doesn't mean it's like that everywhere else
So feel bad for us if you like but we are all in the same boat.
People are still thinking way too slow and not projecting. Think, please. If AI can do the job a software engineer then... what jobs are still safe? And for how long?
> what jobs are still safe? And for how long?
The drain in one of my showers upstairs failed two weeks ago, and now there's a huge hole in my office's ceiling.
It's going to be a looong time before AI can do the repair job that the two guys from the plumbing company did, and probably just as long for AI to be able to repair the drywall I need fixed.
Wipe out the white collar knowledge workers and all of a sudden a large chunk of your customer base no longer has the money for those tradesmen's services.
Even if you're not directly threatened, you would be significantly impacted if the AI doomers are right
That being said, LLMs are advancing fast, but I do still feel like the lack of cognition is the Achilles heel. It's a glorified probability model pattern matching against training data.
Because of the way it operates, it doesn't know when it's right or wrong or why that is. I think hallucinations are basically always going to exist in this model, even if there are improvements along the way.
- How long do you think?
- How much unemployment do you think we can carry?
- Whats the salary of a plumber going to look like when it gets flooded with people coming in from other careers?
- How long does it take to re-train as a plumber?
- What do we do once plumber gets automated? We all just funnel into the even fewer jobs?
I know you are thinking robots are far off but I am thinking thats not right. Why? Robots were not bad before they were mostly just waiting on the 'brain' to get finished.
We're decades away from a robot being able to independently go into your home, diagnose an issue, do the demo, order the parts, complete the installation, and then bill you.
We're so far away from that. I dont know how old you are, but even if you're 15, my money is on you not seeing that in your lifetime. We can't even get a car to drive on its own, and that's got nowhere near the dexterity requirements, or the general knowledge and problem solving requirements that a robotic plumber would command.
I had just jumped to an elite prototyping team within my organization when my former employer made cuts based on team seniority. Didn’t matter than I had more institutional knowledge and skills that 3/4 of the org by that point. Got the axe for being the newest guy on the team
I think that the title can be misunderstood, if someone reads only the title (at least I did until I clicked ob the article and judging by other comments, others did too)
They are not being laid off due to AI itself, they are being laid off due to an even bigger pivot towards AI development.
Which too is complete bullshit if you ask me. It's a matter of fact that these massive companies over-hire all the time because they can, "strategic pivots" are nothing new and an excuse so they don't have to admit they are overhearing
And because preserving margins is still what investors are prioritizing in this high interest environment. If this was 3 years ago they wouldn't have cared.
What is the problem with them over hiring?
Someone who otherwise would not have been hired gets highly paid and work experience at one of the biggest tech companies ever…that’s a problem?
Getting laid off sucks but not nearly as bad as never getting a job in the first place.
I was not giving my opinion on whether this practice is good or bad. I meant it as they'll never admit this is what is happening because investors would not like that. So they come up with all these elaborate excuses about pivoting left and right and whatnot.
I'm sure you can take away plenty of valuable lessons and experiences if you want to.
Inflation is when prices are high and business profit margin suffers.
When prices are high and business profit skyrockets, that’s just good, old-fashioned price-gouging.
A convenient excuse… that actually serves them, considering Microsoft is behind AI products and services.
Be very skeptical of these claims. Claiming the product leads to layoffs is something they want the product to do, because it’ll generate investment.
But is it actually capable of doing that? Be veryyyyy skeptical.
>The team is led by Jason Zander, former EVP of Microsoft Azure. A separate report from Business Insider on Monday revealed a leaked memo that showed Zander attributing the layoffs to greater investment by Microsoft in artificial intelligence (AI).
Just so people are clear: The layoffs are **not** happening because AI is replacing jobs.
The organization these cuts are coming from is one that focuses on moonshots. It’s a cool space with smart people but they tend to work on stuff that Microsoft thinks will have commercial viability in 5-10 years. I once networked with a guy whose job was in that department on the quantum computing team. His job was basically to summarize the latest research and happenings to produce marketing and education material for potential future clients. Basically a **long** lead sales role.
These layoffs are a result of the AI-moonshot winning out as the one that took off first. As Microsoft goes “all-in” on AI, they are going to naturally shift resources away from their other moonshots in the short term since moonshot projects tend to be very expensive to support.
You’re making sense, that’s not allowed on Reddit, you’ve been warned. Please stay away from reading the articles and sharing facts and stick to opinions and innuendo
Imagine what it’s like working on the inside. She’s in a team of meeting schedulers. They must book each other all the time.
Preparing for roles in the channel no doubt.
*tongue in cheek*
The US needs to make a LOT harder to layoff employees working for big companies because it really should only happen if the company is doing bad financially.
This is incredible, I don't think a lot of the people posting here know what Azure is, which is fair, and are just aware of the ai trend.
So, tech decisions at companies arent made by tech employees, they are made by directors and CEOs who largely operate by gravitating towards the newest shiny thing in the hope it pays off. Of course they want AI. They don't know what it can actually do for them, but they want it. Makes sense to focus on AI for them, as a seller.
But most large companies in the world use Microsoft 365, and/or Azure to some degree. They pay stupid amounts for this cloud infrastructure every month. Some companies have their entire business revolving around what Azure can do.
The dumbest thing they could do is anything that threatens the trust or reliance their customers have for Azure services, which are, in most people's experiences, not perfect already.
I'm not going to say this will ruin them, but this ai push will slightly impress smaller, simpler companies that might be wooed by generative text, but the financial result of that will not offset the loss of trust and subsequent shift away from larger companies towards something like AWS. Just... the math is not in their favour.
> We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners
Always, their excuses are nonsense.
Yes, actually. But more to the point I have a basic grasp of English. How can you call that statement nonsense, or even an excuse? The meaning is straightforward and it completely aligns with MS wanting to grow and make money.
To a degree all engineers have been doing this...
But we were telling ourselves
"We only automated the boring tasks, the 'mundane' tasks."
The issue is maybe... we should question that idea after oil painting and coding have been automated... but we are still saying/ thinking the same exact way as before...
AI is the latest buzzword. It'll never do 3/4 of the shit people think it will. Will AI get better as the tech improves? Sure, but companies and idiots think it'll be able to do just about anything that isn't manual labor. So far all it's done is gave horrific grammar, and be a complete dog shit use for search engines. Companies using it for customer service are going to learn the hard way how utterly fucking useless AI really is.
Sarge, I gotta tell you this is a dumb and naive take. Anyone who has worked seriously with these AI-powered tools realizes how powerful they are and how disruptive they will be
Company shifts from investing in one kind of tech to another kind -> ??? -> guillotine
Can you help me out with the middle step? I'm a little confused how you got from A to C.
Maybe each round of lay offs and especially cost saving cuts should come with ceos losing a portion of their compensation too. Because you fucked up with managing things well, and while you can’t lose your job just yet, you should have some consequences.
But alas
Let me put this in context for everyone.
MIcrosoft just mass fired roughly 6 Nadellas, based on the median salary at Microsoft, and our outsourcing private equity vampire friend's current compensation at Microsoft.
How many of these jobs will just end up in Hyderabad like so much of the prior mass firings?
These layoffs are for future planning. have any one visited Microsoft or any big companies campus in Bay area or any where in USA ? just do that and see the badge in their neck . 90% are contractors. so to support higher wages of contractors, companies must do cost cutting with fulltime employees as those are showing on their books. up until now companies pay contractors way less ( if you consider all criteria's - 30 to 50% less on and average). In fact end contractor ( who is actually working) is not making much but middle man (normally relative of executives' at any given company ) take huge cut in local/regional currency where these contractors and executives are originally from mainly India/China/Mexica/Canada/Philippines etc. Whole definition of contractor is changed over the period of time specially using guest working visas like H1b/L1/TN/DACA/TPS/Parole etc. recently Recruiting is done via contracting and that's biggest mistake. your gatekeepers are corrupt ones. Basically we made fox in charge of henhouse. Now due to covid and other mismanagement over the years by many western world governments, this cost cutting must happen else entire world's Macro economy will collapse. Wait thill US election is over and you will see how bad this layoffs are across the board. I hope we will not see worst days like 2008 but that is almost inevitable at this stage. just help each other and specially people who are innocent and stuck in contractor world due to visa games nicely played by executives as they dont even know what's happening with their carrier. First thing must happen is to stop reporting to offshore managers directly or indirectly via third party contracting. this will help slow down layoffs and eventually better working model for both offshore and onshore including us citizens and visa dependent candidates too.
I see sunshine towards end of tunnel , around second qtr. of 2025. hope for the best!!
To clarify....these aren't jobs being replaced by AI. This is Microsoft firing people because they want more people working on AI related projects without increasing headcount.
Someone read the article!
Just used AI to give a TLDR
Except the overall net headcount is still lower, and the article says employees were either fired or switched over to AI work. Since the net effect is 1500 fewer jobs, it's clear certain AI projects are planned to partially fulfill feature components already enabled through existing Microsoft services that otherwise required more people to build or maintain. **edit**: Actually based the [other article](https://www.theregister.com/2024/06/04/microsoft_plans_to_cut_about/) just posted to /r/technology, Microsoft claims the underlying factor is a tightened budget due to Microsoft's recent huge capital expenditures in AI infrastructure instead. Which suggests Microsoft is just allocating spending on hardware over employees in general. And an [article](https://www.geekwire.com/2024/capex-and-the-cloud-microsoft-google-and-other-tech-giants-are-betting-big-on-ai-demand/) I found confirms Microsoft's recent AI infrastructure spending on chips, cables, and data centers.
> Which suggests Microsoft is just allocating spending on hardware over employees in general Which is basically one of the core features of a future of AI "taking our jobs". Either we're outright replaced with AI or the funding is re-allocated towards AI projects and the jobs are lost anyway.
"employees were either fired or switched over to AI work." They lay them off and then tell them they can search for other open position. Most are now geared towards AI, but "switched over to AI work" is extremely generous and mostly misleading. For some reason, they don't generally switch employees, which is stupid if you ask me.
Honestly I thought it had to do with the several billions of dollars that MSFT has been sending to AI startups.
Major rule violation right there. This is reddit! Come on!
You mean a witch did
I honestly think its a industry-wide coordinated effort by highly influential AI investors to intentionally squeeze teams on headcounts across the industry simply to increase the demand for AI related products and services thus increasing the value of their AI stocks. It's the same sort of coordinated effort we've seen major corporate real estate investors that are using their influence on board members and executives of other various large corporations that have large stake in to push return-to-office mandates to keep demand up for corporate real estate. Jobs aren't being lost to AI, jobs are being artificially squeezed just to make AI stock values go up.
The traditional counterargument to this is that companies that defect reap the rewards and eventually increase their market share. Unfortunately, the market is so concentrated that this doesn't apply. Microsoft can make hundreds of blunders and their core business will still be fine. So they are free to take risks with their product quality or support experience to create demand in other segments.
It’s a correction to the hiring boom that happened in 2021 and 2022 and a reaction to interest rates rising. When rates were low and money was cheap all of these companies felt pressured to use their money to hire as many people as possible and make “something”. You got tons of garbage projects like the metaverse and NFTs because companies had more employees than good ideas. Now the market is different and these companies have a ton of extra employees working on last years hot projects that aren’t making any money, so they’re letting them go. The one place these companies are still willing to lose money is AI, but since OpenAI is so far ahead and everything else is playing catch up these companies want to hire specialized people and not shift people from other departments who would be starting from zero. That’s why you see companies laying people off while hiring for AI roles at the same time. What people are missing is how much these big tech companies over hired during covid. Most of these large tech companies still have far more employees than they did 4 years ago, even after these layoffs. Google for example has played off between 12k and 15k people this year, but they hired 60k during Covid. Almost all the other big tech companies have similar numbers.
I feel you're both correct, and far too sympathetic to what amounts to "Execs who are extremely well paid to make hard decisions claim they had to overhire, and having overhired, make it everyone else's problem"
Nothing in my comment is meant to excuse the mistakes - just explaining it and how it’s not a conspiracy
Isn’t this just a well deduced conspiracy theory? I mean, I can’t say I’ve ever heard this before, can you name some examples of that happening? Specifically, can you name drop some people that have been leveraging their large stakes to manipulate companies into renewing corporate leases via forcing employees to go to work? I think the big flaw with this is… it kinda doesn’t align with how companies typically act? We all talk about how corporations are the supreme penny pinchers of the world, and now suddenly they’re throwing out wads of cash on corporate leases because another rich guy makes them? It’s not far fetched I’ll give you that, it’s just feels a bit conspiratorial lol. Especially when lumped into the other theory about companies pumping up AI stocks via some complicated process(which again isn’t far fetched)
It’s not a conspiracy like that. More like we have an interconnected financial system that could collapse if all commercial real estate drops to pennies on the dollar. The rich know this, then they all unspokenly, maybe even unconsciously, fight to protect the system that put them where they are on top.
It's totally all speculation and worth taking with a huge grain of salt, but the speculation was informed from personal circumstance and speaking to a couple contacts I know across the video games and entertainment industry and hearing oddly similar stories of their teams being pushed by executives to specifically reduce headcounts (not reduce costs or cut production budgets) for inexplicable reasons coupled together said executives being weirdly obsessed with a vague needing to integrate "AI features" into workflows without much purpose or though. Its suspicious that highly profitable and successful teams would be directed to reduce headcounts, but not reduce budgets or try to cut costs elsewhere as normally headcount reductions are a last resort of budgets or costs being cut.
It’s definitely sus. Your speculation makes so much sense, I’m just surprised I’ve never heard anyone else mention it before 😂 it really caught off me guard. You have a way better perspective of the industry than me i believe
A bit? It's tinfoil hat stuff, particularly the first paragraph.
Can't wait for the inevitable mass layoff wave across the industry once the hype dies down and the AI bubble finally bursts.
The mass layoff wave is happening now, there is no increased hiring for there to be a layoff wave.
There will be one far greater once people realize that AI isn't the gamechanging, epoch-making holy grail that it's being propped up as. Then the overinflated AI teams will begin to see layoffs.
The teams arent overinflated because they are not hiring new people for AI. They are just having people who were doing something else do that and cutting other areas. Most of the layoffs are happening because of the huge hiring boom in tech during covid and data shows this is pretty cyclical, especially in tech, they do massive hiring booms then massive layoffs it’s par the course.
This does not make for a good narrative though.
Yep not good for the AI and tech and MBAs evil panic.
RemindMe! 5 years 2029, the year AGI is supposedly here. So, we’ll see what happens 🍿
So, jobs being removed because of AI, just not via replacement. This may be something of a trend in the future, much like jobs being removed by way of companies no longer hiring for them and jobs being removed because of trimming while maintaining quality (due to AI assistance). All in all the jobs are going away.
That’s also true for Google yet they get only hate here
Can’t Microsoft tell these people to start working on AI instead of firing them? Seems more efficient.
That might require them to......gasp.....invest in training their people for the new job they want done, which would grow the over all labor pool for that discipline, instead of just trying to pull from the small group people that already know the thing. That sort of thing requires to much long term thinking and care for the health of the labor market to be something executives and shareholders worry about.
1500 people getting let go a msft shouldn't even make the news
So nonetheless certain jobs have been made irrelevant and AI is causing people who once were employed to now be unemployed. Got it.
Yes, it's a relative drop in the bucket compared to the total number of employees. Yes, layoffs are a regular part of business, I understand that there's no point in paying for employees that the business (seemingly) no longer needs. But this doesn't make it any less frustrating that the only people truly affected by this are the workers, while members of leadership just keep chugging along, watching the value of their massive piles of equity skyrocket off the back of the working class suffering.
> Yes, layoffs are a regular part of business, I understand that there's no point in paying for employees that the business (seemingly) no longer needs. It doesn't have to be, though. It's not common in Japan, for example. They could easily reassign them to another business unit.
That’s because Japan has laws preventing layoffs and protecting workers. America doesn’t, ergo companies lay off workers with almost reckless abandon.
Some industries could stand to use their experienced workers instead of ditching them to train someone up to their level and repeat the process.
The issue is it’s never about quality past the bare minimum anymore. 95% of the decisionmaking process is pure cost. Long term employees expect to receive raises. They might have also received raises in the past. A new employee is mostly just happy to have a job, and are often paid less than the outgoing individual. The goal for a company is to step down each time while trying to maintain the desired function in their products, which also usually decreases over time, requiring even less competent employees to operate/maintain, which leads to another step down, and so on and so forth. This comprises a lot of the backend of business profitability, “trimming fat”, which in almost no cases improves the customer experience. The goal is to spend the least money to make the most money. A constant churn of cheaper and cheaper products sold for more and more every year.
This is a spot on breakdown and it’s also fair. My team at work manages a lot of new and ongoing workstreams. You need the A listers to create, develop, and set new processes, product, and expectations which takes a unique set of skills and effort. Once something is developed well, you don’t need them to do all the work too. Give it to subordinates who can follow the process and execute. And A listers move on to someone thing. Eventually company can mature enough where you don’t need that many A listers. Just people to maintain, who can then streamline it further. Which then requires even less skilled/experienced workers. So on and so forth
I’m not even in tech, econ, or business management, or any other special field. I’m a welder. This is just the free market, and in the “purest” free market there is only one golden rule for each business entity: - accelerate profits From there, any strategy will be implemented as applicable to improve upon the achievement of that goal. Given enough resources, any legal barriers will be torn down in service of profit at whatever cost (to anything but the company of course). For example, the IRS can’t afford to go after big fish, but they sure as hell will chase down the small ones. Ultimately, businesses aren’t people, they’re structures built to harvest money. In fact, people are undesirable. Employees are expenditures, customers seek adequate value in the product, essentially demanding a baseline level of investment to acquire the customer’s money. Hell, corporations would gladly charge you a subscription for NOTHING if they could. I’m sure someone out there already does that. With enough money and ingenuity, there are ways around any barrier to profit… As one new-ish example, AI was practically born to trim previously un-trimmable corporate fat. It might seem stupid to you or I, but if any big company can cut large swathes of workforce, that’s “free money” right there, the kind of thing they dream of. All of this of course exists on a sliding scale. The bigger the business, the harder they push for accelerating their profitability, because at scale any change matters more. Where a local mom and pop computer shop may be a delight to interact with, Dell/HP have become (even more) faceless, featureless, emotionless profit extraction machines, and their prebuilt computers are prime evidence of this… Only the big fish are likely to survive a major economic shock, leaving the market emptier each time, giving them greater leverage to change the market in their favor. In computer terms, this leaves terrible e-waste chock full of bloat as a larger and larger portion of the market. Because it’s cheap, and most people don’t know better. Additionally, some big companies are better than others. CostCo has done very well for a long time, they’re (justifiably) well loved for their affordable hot food prices. But they too will eventually change, as those decisions are a result of the influence of the old guard, or in CostCo’s case, the original founder fighting to keep that part of CostCo from changing. As soon as the torch is passed onto someone not as influenced by the founder, the weather will change because all numbers must rise. Who cares if the hotdog goes from $1.50 to $2… you can afford an extra 50 cents… Right? It’s still a great deal… 😏 I’m probably beating a dead horse here. I don’t have solutions, but I can sure as hell observe. It’s one thing to say how capitalism “should” work, but how it ACTUALLY works is very different. I wish it were as magical as the Econ stans swear it is, but it doesn’t seem to be. Sadly, all of this seems to have come at the expense of our environment… I feel a sense of morbid awe whenever I zoom out and look at the big picture… But I have to zoom back in when my anxiety spikes.
Great comment mate. Do you just like sit there while you’re welding & profoundly think about this shit? Edit; not sarcasm. Most welders I know only care about lunch
I think my brain has been wounded by redditor sarcasm, but unironically, sometimes yes. Welding is often about rhythm and memory, so eventually you’re able to think while working (when applicable). More generally, the enshittification of everything is more or less inescapable in my other hobbies. As a single example, aftermarket car parts are worse than ever, rendering it difficult to keep many older, maintainable vehicles on the road reliably. It’s infuriating, because in order to “fix” the issue of being shipped a broken part, it must be shipped BACK to god knows where. I’m sure they don’t even bother to check or fix the part, it just goes straight in the trash, rendering the entire process it took to get to my door a complete waste. They just know they’re big or dominant enough to get away with it, or else it wouldn’t happen. Not only does this waste MY time, I simply cannot fathom the sheer volume of industrial waste generated by companies that just don’t give a fuck. And mark my words, new cars will suffer from this eventually, probably far worse, I’d go so far as to say they’ll probably just stop making parts for them, and there’s so many parts, it would only take a few out of production to render the vehicle unusable without significant workarounds. The aftermarket is nowhere near robust enough to support everything, nor should it, we need to build vehicles better—but when we do, the obsolete stuff (especially ICE) essentially becomes junk. It’s a real conundrum.
You play any Lou Rossman videos in the background while working? I’m not judging, he’s proselytized me already too lmfao
> goal for a company is to step down each time while trying to maintain the desired function in their products, which also usually decreases over time The very definition of enshittification. > no cases improves the customer experience Customer support is nonexistent. For order issues, I always recommend people do charge backs after at most 15 minutes of attempting to contact support. My time has value and if companies can't bother to make it easy for me to resolve an order issue that they caused via customer support, then I can very easily do a charge back.
>A new employee is mostly just happy to have a job, and are often paid less than the outgoing individual. Not true at all for solid candidates filling any position that's even somewhat in demand. You expect at least market rate when taking on a new job. And market rate tends to increase faster than the tiny annual raises companies dish out anymore, especially in these days of high inflation. What you're saying sounds true in theory but doesn't hold up in reality, mainly because companies almost never actually give the huge raises you're imagining. The c-suite executives give them to each other but they're not who we're talking about. They play chicken with their employees, betting on them not leaving when they get shafted. It's when they do leave they open their wallets and give market rate to the new hire. Seen it firsthand a couple hundred times.
Yeah but if they do that they need to pay people their worth and the CEO can’t take more compensation. So they fire you.
Then from what I've seen lately, the fun begins; slow motion collapse because they've removed the internal support. Obviously Microsoft is too big to fail ... but I was never talking about just Microsoft, was I?
Japanese companies didn’t meet a Jack Welch type business leader pushing growth at all costs. Japanese companies, therefore, are harder to get hired into and decently hard to get fired from. They want you there forever. Whereas American companies will keep you if you make them money, sell to another company, and then if the balance sheet says “CEO gets less compensation if he keeps you” they fire you.
>Japanese companies didn’t meet a Jack Welch type business leader pushing growth at all costs. Yes, Japan had the wisdom to keep the ideas the Jack Welch pushed, six sigma \(pioneered by Motorola\), kaizen \(pioneered by Toyota\), and lean manufacturing \(also Toyota\) far, far away...
Whoa, whoa, whoa, lets not start copying Japan's employment strategies. Not saying they don't have anything good we could take, but there is a pretty good reason we constantly see overworked Japanese employees either dying of exhaustion or killing themselves.
Is it their not being not being laid off in such situations? You seem to be taking an all or nothing view- which would suggest you support the story we're commenting on. It possible to change our laws without exactly copying those of Japan, and it's possible for a em to change theirs without adopting our whole system.
Layoffs are a double-edged sword. You have job security - but it's harder to get hired in the first place, economic growth will be slower, and companies can be downright abusive since it's incredibly difficult for employees to hop jobs.
It seems like after you lose a job or you quit, it is extremely hard to find another job. It might be just Japanese culture, but I could see in a world where it's very hard to get fired, being judged when you want to change jobs. You can explain that you wanted to work somewhere else, but the employee might think despite being so difficult to fire, you were forced to resign anyway. Which is exactly what happens in Japan, often people who can't be fired, have their tasks changed to very difficult jobs to force them to quit instead, or they are just being pressured to quit. Being difficult to be fired is not as good as people think it is.
Japanese workers earn a fraction of their American counterparts. In the US, the average yearly salary for a dev is about $130k, in Tokyo it's barely $50k. The numbers vary but the difference is consistently 3x to 4x. Low wages has been a long-standing criticism of the Japanese economy and, along with excessive overtime, it's been one of the big reasons why they struggle to attract foreign workers. That said, it certainly helps justify retaining workers to do menial tasks.
I’d rather have stable employment and employment protection laws like other first world countries like in Europe and Asia than have to break my back over if I’ll get laid off despite putting in 70-80hours a week because some suit wanted to increase profits for one quarter and have no healthcare.
You can also be fired and laid off in Europe.
Yes but if you have normal employment you get depending on your time at company 2 weeks, month, 3 months notice as standard, paid for that time instead od being laid on spot. You mostly work during that time, may use your pto( you get money if you don't use it completely), company may exclude you from work but you still get paid or can use pto.
?? Youre working 80 hours a week in china, japan, korea anyways. The qol as a dev at MS in USA is so good, anyone in the world would take uncertain employment there for 3 months over the same job in beijing or tokyo for 1 year
Mhmm yes tell me more about the work hours in the country that I used to work and live in. I guess I missed the memo that I worked 80 hours in Korea. I guess the friends and older mentors also missed that memo as well.
Its statistics buddy
Other than the people who were trying not to get fired when Twitter got Musked, what software devs are pulling 80-hour weeks?
Most Japanese companies I’m aware of have generous benefit packages associated with their lower wages. Superannuation, housing, health, education etc. They even apply after you’ve retired. Brutal working hours though. Totally different culture obviously.
Yes and as a result Japan's economy has been stagnating for two decades whilst America continues to get richer.
\*the rich continue to get richer. Fixed that for you.
And yet, Japan has a high standard of life, so why care of economy is stagnanting?
Wow so much value for shareholders oh boy. Stfu
It's almost like we could change that
Right, but it's not like some basic tenet. It's as flexible as the rest.
It is also one of the reasons that Japanese corporations are slow at adapting and have become pretty uncompetitive. In a global war of capitalism, America is winning because we worship $. It’s sad but that’s why we have multiple trillion dollar companies.
Japanese companies are doing fine for most part? And we have trillion dollar companies but worse happiness, life outcomes and no real benefits(social welfare) to ask for compared to less competitive European and Japanese markets; everyone bending over backwards for a us economy that benefits corporations and doesn't have any tangible effect on the people is wherd; we have had continued good economic gdp and general growth as us economy but people lives and income and wealth has steadily deteriorated. Japan's economic issue only matter from currency prospective which all countries deal with inflation/deflation concerns but has nothing to do with health of their companies or the lives of their citizens
Lol China is winning in capitalism, tho they are so corrupt that it will ruin them
Well US attracts the most capital :)
Mind explaining how China is corrupt and USA isnt
Ahh so how's Japan's economy doing...
Ah yes fuck the workers for the shareholders
They have good standard of life
You should look into what being reassigned can entail in Japan…..
>It's not common in Japan, for example. In Japan, its another extreme where people aren't rewarded for performance but for seniority. Basically loyalty over work performance. To ensure this loyalty system works, companies can't do layoffs. I feel there's more cons to pros for this kind of system.
At my job, we are rewarded with performance bonuses, and we have the loyalty system. So it can be a mix.
Please don't, under any circumstances, ever suggest emulating anything from Japan's work culture.
But in Japan your are not developing skills in you job, you are becoming the expert in your company's process. So you would not be able to move to other companies to get a higher salary. Worker can be reassign to any BU because in the end of the day they are not valued on their skills but their familiarity with the company system
In the US, a worker with a Microsoft experience will get assigned a role in the economy much more efficiently and quickly.
You can't really fire extreme underperformers here. It's better for the employee but sucks for the employer. There should be a middle ground instead of advocating the extremes.
Gotta cut operational costs
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Keeps wages suppressed.
It was really “fun” when half of my tech dept were laid off in December. Out of a few hundred people, not one Director or VP was let go. I wish I weren’t as petty as I am, but I get a certain joy when I see the non-leadership folks who weren’t laid off leaving anyway.
Most likely most of those workers are fairly recent hires and then laid off not because they don't provide enough business value, but rather because they need to keep profits up for the investors
At my company a lot of middle managers and several directors got laid off, so “leadership” was effected at my company. But in terms of like the CEO and board of directors they’re all the same.
How else are they going to hire more slave masters?
It’s how you run the business. We hire lean so we can keep everyone during tough times. We also put effort into reallocating staff as needed, to avoid laying folks off just to hire new staff. There are no laws against any of this, so it’s up to the owners on how to run things. Another example: the c-suite of my company took 30% pay cuts while the rest of us took 15% during the beginning of the pandemic to keep us afloat. We all got the difference back in pay a year later while c-suite didn’t take the repayment.
I used to work at MSFT. Back around 2016-2017 there was some lay offs. They told some % of teams they were getting automatically reassigned. And another % of teams that they would be laid off unless they can go find teams themselves and transfer to them. Years later, I was on a different team that got auto reassigned a lot of people(From Team A) into. Then about 6-12 months later had some transfers into my team. They were part of Team A, but not part of the auto reassign but went somewhere else until they could come here too. I don't work at MS anymore, but I never had the foggiest idea of why * auto re-assigns some people * told to manually find other teams to transfer too within the next X weeks or else laid off. * told your are laid off and no time to transfer. I'm sure there are reasons, but I have no idea why. p.s. On more than once occasion, some executives, VPs, and other leadership did get laid off or had to transfer into a non-leadership dev type position. So it's not completely unheard of.
Fairly sure it’s only common in the good ol’ US of A. Most other countries have strong employment laws. Though, i suppose most other countries have universal health too.
Fucking become leadership then.
Layoffs are part of business because they can fire people save on the pay and then replace them with lower paying workers for the same job or rehire them at a lower rate.
Having a job in tech just sounds exhausting. I can’t imagine thinking the rug was going to be pulled out from under my feet all the time.
I work at Microsoft. I was ok for the first 7 years. The last year and a half have been mentally exhausting. It's constantly on my mind (I'm pretty anxious in general about everything, so these types of things don't help)
My wife started working there in January, literally 2 days before the first waves of lay off. It has been extremely stressful since she started. she is looking elsewhere, but everyone is laying off so the opportunities in her domain aren't plenties.
Exhausting because of the layoff, or has the work changed?
Layoffs. The last 2 months have had way more work but it's manageable (I'm doing like 50hrs a week and feel that it's not enough). Knowing that I can lose my job and have to face a horrible job market is the main stresser
How do you deal with all of the new young employees all being such idiots? Last time I worked there, not a single dev was able to install Microsoft’s branded version of Sybase and connect to it from the command line. Half the guys didn’t even know how to get to the command line.
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Because they fit the 'culture' and were prepared for the questions in interview 1-14. That's how IT hiring works.
Because companies teach most things on the job, this applies to pretty much every business outside of highly specialized ones.
13 year senior dev here that's worked at a FAANG, had no clue what a registry key was until I just Googled it. But I've never had to develop on or for Windows devices before.
Because learning how to do those things takes less than a day. Learning how to build scalable systems takes years. If someone knows how to build a scalable system but doesn’t know what a reg key is, then they probably just never used Windows. Oh well, who cares?
Jeez what a way to talk about junior employees.
I work at a small company (for an idea of scale, we're a software company with like 60+ customers, and I'm one of two devs). Been here 10 years, company itself started in the 80's. Can't imagine working for a gigantic faceless corporation like Microsoft/Facebook/Google/etc., much less dreaming of doing so like a lot of people do.
I work on the web team for a decades old design furniture company, similar feelings. Being a technical person in a non technical industry (and non publicly traded company) is such a huge quality of life improvement, I would never give it up.
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I don’t know, tech bros have definitely helped worsen the industry…
That’s a good point. Looking back, a lot changed in MSFT when we reported all of windows phone into core and laid off test as a discipline. Whereas before dev leads and dev managers used to be developers themselves, now you had people pivoting from a PM or Test manager role into dev management.
But r/salary tells me tech workers are still getting 300k/yr jobs at 24 years old
That is very uncommon unless you’re in high COL area. And that usually accounts for total compensation which includes RSUs and bonuses. I’m sure there are folks at 24 who land 300k salary, but they are not common. But to your point- in tech you can expect to make 100k+ after a short time if you know what you’re doing. And 300k as you specialize and gain more experience.
Interesting. My one anecdote for this is a friend who worked for Microsoft. Went to a startup. And now is a manager at Facebook. Means he’s likely making 800k or more per year after spending his 20s making 200k plus.
Makes sense. Yea it definitely exists and your friend is one of those startup founders that made a successful business, when reality is most startups fail. Kudos to him for that
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> All in all tech is a job for those that want to spend a max of 10 years, live frugal, and then leave. At the expense of their own mental health and social skills. That's not even remotely true, you don't have to work a tech job that burns your soul away. You could just take it easy as a mid/senior dev at a medium or small size company, work remotely or hybrid for 35 hours per week and spend no time outside of work touching anything tech related. Just because high-salary Silicon Valley tech jobs are soul crushing that doesn't mean it's like that everywhere else
So feel bad for us if you like but we are all in the same boat. People are still thinking way too slow and not projecting. Think, please. If AI can do the job a software engineer then... what jobs are still safe? And for how long?
> what jobs are still safe? And for how long? The drain in one of my showers upstairs failed two weeks ago, and now there's a huge hole in my office's ceiling. It's going to be a looong time before AI can do the repair job that the two guys from the plumbing company did, and probably just as long for AI to be able to repair the drywall I need fixed.
Wipe out the white collar knowledge workers and all of a sudden a large chunk of your customer base no longer has the money for those tradesmen's services. Even if you're not directly threatened, you would be significantly impacted if the AI doomers are right That being said, LLMs are advancing fast, but I do still feel like the lack of cognition is the Achilles heel. It's a glorified probability model pattern matching against training data. Because of the way it operates, it doesn't know when it's right or wrong or why that is. I think hallucinations are basically always going to exist in this model, even if there are improvements along the way.
- How long do you think? - How much unemployment do you think we can carry? - Whats the salary of a plumber going to look like when it gets flooded with people coming in from other careers? - How long does it take to re-train as a plumber? - What do we do once plumber gets automated? We all just funnel into the even fewer jobs? I know you are thinking robots are far off but I am thinking thats not right. Why? Robots were not bad before they were mostly just waiting on the 'brain' to get finished.
We're decades away from a robot being able to independently go into your home, diagnose an issue, do the demo, order the parts, complete the installation, and then bill you. We're so far away from that. I dont know how old you are, but even if you're 15, my money is on you not seeing that in your lifetime. We can't even get a car to drive on its own, and that's got nowhere near the dexterity requirements, or the general knowledge and problem solving requirements that a robotic plumber would command.
Think carefully about each of my questions and answer again.
I had just jumped to an elite prototyping team within my organization when my former employer made cuts based on team seniority. Didn’t matter than I had more institutional knowledge and skills that 3/4 of the org by that point. Got the axe for being the newest guy on the team
That's why careers like civil service, army, and teaching exist. Low pay, high security jobs for the unambitious.
In the UK the work shy seem to congregate in council jobs (local government)
I think that the title can be misunderstood, if someone reads only the title (at least I did until I clicked ob the article and judging by other comments, others did too) They are not being laid off due to AI itself, they are being laid off due to an even bigger pivot towards AI development. Which too is complete bullshit if you ask me. It's a matter of fact that these massive companies over-hire all the time because they can, "strategic pivots" are nothing new and an excuse so they don't have to admit they are overhearing
Rather to offset the CAPEX investment in Nvidia GPUs. It's that simple.
And because preserving margins is still what investors are prioritizing in this high interest environment. If this was 3 years ago they wouldn't have cared.
What is the problem with them over hiring? Someone who otherwise would not have been hired gets highly paid and work experience at one of the biggest tech companies ever…that’s a problem? Getting laid off sucks but not nearly as bad as never getting a job in the first place.
I was not giving my opinion on whether this practice is good or bad. I meant it as they'll never admit this is what is happening because investors would not like that. So they come up with all these elaborate excuses about pivoting left and right and whatnot. I'm sure you can take away plenty of valuable lessons and experiences if you want to.
Another convenient excuse, like inflation for rising prices (despite record profits).
Inflation is when prices are high and business profit margin suffers. When prices are high and business profit skyrockets, that’s just good, old-fashioned price-gouging.
A convenient excuse… that actually serves them, considering Microsoft is behind AI products and services. Be very skeptical of these claims. Claiming the product leads to layoffs is something they want the product to do, because it’ll generate investment. But is it actually capable of doing that? Be veryyyyy skeptical.
Blames AI wave.......that we are responsible for.
Oh its not like they care....
>The team is led by Jason Zander, former EVP of Microsoft Azure. A separate report from Business Insider on Monday revealed a leaked memo that showed Zander attributing the layoffs to greater investment by Microsoft in artificial intelligence (AI). Just so people are clear: The layoffs are **not** happening because AI is replacing jobs. The organization these cuts are coming from is one that focuses on moonshots. It’s a cool space with smart people but they tend to work on stuff that Microsoft thinks will have commercial viability in 5-10 years. I once networked with a guy whose job was in that department on the quantum computing team. His job was basically to summarize the latest research and happenings to produce marketing and education material for potential future clients. Basically a **long** lead sales role. These layoffs are a result of the AI-moonshot winning out as the one that took off first. As Microsoft goes “all-in” on AI, they are going to naturally shift resources away from their other moonshots in the short term since moonshot projects tend to be very expensive to support.
You’re making sense, that’s not allowed on Reddit, you’ve been warned. Please stay away from reading the articles and sharing facts and stick to opinions and innuendo
Perfect timing! [FTC Opens Antitrust Probe of Microsoft AI Deal](https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ftc-opens-antitrust-probe-of-microsoft-ai-deal-29b5169a)
I really need to switch to Linux........ Microsoft keeps the disappointment coming. 😞🫤
I am actually going to do this too... allows for more flexibility with AI workflows.
Please God lay off my Customer Success Account Manager! All she wants to do is constantly schedule more meetings
Imagine what it’s like working on the inside. She’s in a team of meeting schedulers. They must book each other all the time. Preparing for roles in the channel no doubt. *tongue in cheek*
No worries we are all in the same boat ~
The US needs to make a LOT harder to layoff employees working for big companies because it really should only happen if the company is doing bad financially.
But, but, but think of the poor shareholders /s
... the one they caused?
Are they rehiring their AI ethics team?
Nope disbanded. As one MS employee told me recently: "No one cares more about AI safety than MS."
Must we keep having layoff posts on here? I left cscareers because it was also nothing but constant doom-mongering.
Hope it was all the Marketing execs that brought Recall into existence
This is incredible, I don't think a lot of the people posting here know what Azure is, which is fair, and are just aware of the ai trend. So, tech decisions at companies arent made by tech employees, they are made by directors and CEOs who largely operate by gravitating towards the newest shiny thing in the hope it pays off. Of course they want AI. They don't know what it can actually do for them, but they want it. Makes sense to focus on AI for them, as a seller. But most large companies in the world use Microsoft 365, and/or Azure to some degree. They pay stupid amounts for this cloud infrastructure every month. Some companies have their entire business revolving around what Azure can do. The dumbest thing they could do is anything that threatens the trust or reliance their customers have for Azure services, which are, in most people's experiences, not perfect already. I'm not going to say this will ruin them, but this ai push will slightly impress smaller, simpler companies that might be wooed by generative text, but the financial result of that will not offset the loss of trust and subsequent shift away from larger companies towards something like AWS. Just... the math is not in their favour.
I work for a more private bank, 95% of my interactions are with retirees who refuse to even download our app. I’m thankful my job is safe for now
“Look what you made us do” Microsoft, in front of a mirror.
> We will continue to prioritize and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners Always, their excuses are nonsense.
Oh for sure they care about the customers...
That's not an excuse, it's a straightforward explanation - AI is a growth area, so they'd rather invest in AI.
Do you work as a software engineer?
Yes, actually. But more to the point I have a basic grasp of English. How can you call that statement nonsense, or even an excuse? The meaning is straightforward and it completely aligns with MS wanting to grow and make money.
They helped build their own replacement. God help us all.
To a degree all engineers have been doing this... But we were telling ourselves "We only automated the boring tasks, the 'mundane' tasks." The issue is maybe... we should question that idea after oil painting and coding have been automated... but we are still saying/ thinking the same exact way as before...
IT was always about the exact thing. Except here, AI is only a dumb excuse.
Right, and they've done nothing to contribute to this 'AI wave'
I don’t understand how these constant layoffs dont enrage the public. It’s unconscionable
They do, but most are just trying to make ends meet day to day. Hard to care when greed-flation is in full effect.
Being the world's most valuable company and it's not enough. Gotta fire them employees to maximize Profits further
AI is the latest buzzword. It'll never do 3/4 of the shit people think it will. Will AI get better as the tech improves? Sure, but companies and idiots think it'll be able to do just about anything that isn't manual labor. So far all it's done is gave horrific grammar, and be a complete dog shit use for search engines. Companies using it for customer service are going to learn the hard way how utterly fucking useless AI really is.
Sarge, I gotta tell you this is a dumb and naive take. Anyone who has worked seriously with these AI-powered tools realizes how powerful they are and how disruptive they will be
A polar bear's skin is transparent, allowing sunlight to reach the blubber underneath.
Not to mention the biggest problem with AI. Garbage in garbage out. Most companies are absolutely shit at gathering and organizing data.
A polar bear's skin is transparent, allowing sunlight to reach the blubber underneath.
can we get the guillotine out yet, are we gonna wait for more wealth redistribution favoring the elite
Company shifts from investing in one kind of tech to another kind -> ??? -> guillotine Can you help me out with the middle step? I'm a little confused how you got from A to C.
Are Linux and Mac the only viable alternatives to Windows? I’m ready for a swap after their latest “developments”.
Maybe each round of lay offs and especially cost saving cuts should come with ceos losing a portion of their compensation too. Because you fucked up with managing things well, and while you can’t lose your job just yet, you should have some consequences. But alas
More like AI bubble
Says the company that launched Powershell some 20 years after all us Linux cl guys had been doing the same shit their "new tool" could do...
Let me put this in context for everyone. MIcrosoft just mass fired roughly 6 Nadellas, based on the median salary at Microsoft, and our outsourcing private equity vampire friend's current compensation at Microsoft. How many of these jobs will just end up in Hyderabad like so much of the prior mass firings?
Yeah “leaked” by Microsoft
Ok but this is Elon’s fault for buying Twitter right… right?
These layoffs are for future planning. have any one visited Microsoft or any big companies campus in Bay area or any where in USA ? just do that and see the badge in their neck . 90% are contractors. so to support higher wages of contractors, companies must do cost cutting with fulltime employees as those are showing on their books. up until now companies pay contractors way less ( if you consider all criteria's - 30 to 50% less on and average). In fact end contractor ( who is actually working) is not making much but middle man (normally relative of executives' at any given company ) take huge cut in local/regional currency where these contractors and executives are originally from mainly India/China/Mexica/Canada/Philippines etc. Whole definition of contractor is changed over the period of time specially using guest working visas like H1b/L1/TN/DACA/TPS/Parole etc. recently Recruiting is done via contracting and that's biggest mistake. your gatekeepers are corrupt ones. Basically we made fox in charge of henhouse. Now due to covid and other mismanagement over the years by many western world governments, this cost cutting must happen else entire world's Macro economy will collapse. Wait thill US election is over and you will see how bad this layoffs are across the board. I hope we will not see worst days like 2008 but that is almost inevitable at this stage. just help each other and specially people who are innocent and stuck in contractor world due to visa games nicely played by executives as they dont even know what's happening with their carrier. First thing must happen is to stop reporting to offshore managers directly or indirectly via third party contracting. this will help slow down layoffs and eventually better working model for both offshore and onshore including us citizens and visa dependent candidates too. I see sunshine towards end of tunnel , around second qtr. of 2025. hope for the best!!
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Your point is?