Microsoft employees are bracing for layoffs to be announced Thursday
Microsoft's CEO, Satya Nadella. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Word among employees at Microsoft is that the layoffs that have been rumored lately will begin Thursday.
Conference rooms are booked, and some employees are being scheduled for 15-minute meetings with their managers, according to several postings on the anonymous chat app Blind that were shared with Business Insider.
Business Insider does not have access to Blind. Only verified employees at a company can access communications on Blind for that company. The app is popular at Microsoft; some 25,000 of the software giant's employees use it, according to Blind.
Microsoft has not confirmed the layoff, but the company did send an email to employees on Monday saying it planned to make wide-ranging changes to its sales organization, GeekWire reported.
The employees who commented on Blind did not know how many total jobs would be cut. Not everyone with a meeting scheduled Thursday expects to be laid off. Some think they will be transferred to new roles within Microsoft.
TechCrunch reported last week that Microsoft was planning to lay off "thousands" of workersworldwide.
Even so, it's possible the cuts will amount to a small percentage of the company's workforce. As of March, Microsoft employed 121,567 people worldwide with about 52,000 employees in its global sales, marketing, and worldwide business units.
July has become the classic month for Microsoft to announce layoffs, coming right after its fiscal year ends June 30. Last year the company announced it would cut 2,850 positions. Those layoffs were dragged out over a period of months, with the final 700 cut in January.
Although layoffs can be painful for the people who lose their jobs, not everyone thinks this reorg would be a bad idea. The changes would be intended to make it easier for Microsoft to sell subscriptions to its all-important cloud computing services.
In the current sales structure, too many deals have to go through the hands of too many different sales and marketing people, employees say. CEO Satya Nadella is systematically getting rid of layers of management and reducing bureaucracy, one former Microsoft employee told us.
For all the changes, Nadella has a 95% approval rating on Glassdoor, one of the highest in 2017 for a tech CEO.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Get the latest Microsoft stock price here.
No comments:
Post a Comment