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[Tom Warren] Microsoft lays off nearly 1,000 people across the company including Xbox division



Microsoft lays off nearly 1,000 people across the company.
A week after Microsoft announced new hardware and big moves in the VR and AR space it's reportedly laid off nearly 1,000 people across the company, including on the Xbox and Edge teams. Also affected was the MSMT division, which is focused on developing next gen tech.
From Business Insider:

Microsoft laid off employees in teams across the company, according to affected employees who spoke to Insider. This week's layoffs affect less than 1,000 employees, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The cuts appears widespread across the company: conversations with people close to the company and posts on social media sites like Blind and Twitter indicate that the cuts affected everything from the Xbox console gaming division to the cutting-edge Microsoft Strategic Missions and Technology organization. KC Lemson, a longtime Microsoft veteran and a product manager in the office of the Chief Technology Officer, tweeted on Monday night that she lost her job earlier in the day.

"Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead."

Microsoft in July said it planned to lay off less than 1% of its 180,000-person workforce and significantly slowed hiring as the risk of a recession looms. It's unclear whether this week's layoffs are included in the previous figure, but one person who told Insider they have been laid off said they were first hired about a month ago.

 
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jakinov

Member
Fuck laying people off to make investors happy.... Merger approval incoming....
Everyone is laying people off right now. Because shit was hot for a while and companies were hiring like crazy and taking a lot of risk on several different projects. Willing to take massive lists in efforts of growth. There’s a looming recession, ad spend is down, people are purportedly spending less, companies are taking less risk and cutting cost all around. Since times are bad companies are tightening their purse strings and slowing down or backtracking on initiatives from when times were bad. Part of it is to keep investors happy but the other part is that now is not the time to be taking lots of risk and burning money.
 
Everyone is laying people off right now. Because shit was hot for a while and companies were hiring like crazy and taking a lot of risk on several different projects. Willing to take massive lists in efforts of growth. There’s a looming recession, ad spend is down, people are purportedly spending less, companies are taking less risk and cutting cost all around. Since times are bad companies are tightening their purse strings and slowing down or backtracking on initiatives from when times were bad. Part of it is to keep investors happy but the other part is that now is not the time to be taking lots of risk and burning money.

This would make sense if ti weren’t juxtaposed with a 70 billion dollar acquisition lol
 

ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
I don't remember where (windows weekly) I believe. That thech companies are going to be laying off people.

Edit: I wonder if MS has/will have the power to layoff "redundancies" across Bethesda/Activision
 
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ChorizoPicozo

Gold Member
Amazing how a sad piece of news like this is immediately turned into fodder for the console warriors. Some of you are pathetic.
I hope everyone affected lands on their feet.
I bet there are people getting layoff every day around the world. Even worst; there are people that can't even find a job and live in the streets.

I think these people getting layoff by MS are going to be fine.
 

Ezekiel_

Banned
Amazing how a sad piece of news like this is immediately turned into fodder for the console warriors. Some of you are pathetic.
I hope everyone affected lands on their feet.
Jim Carrey What GIF
 
Everyone is laying people off right now. Because shit was hot for a while and companies were hiring like crazy and taking a lot of risk on several different projects. Willing to take massive lists in efforts of growth. There’s a looming recession, ad spend is down, people are purportedly spending less, companies are taking less risk and cutting cost all around. Since times are bad companies are tightening their purse strings and slowing down or backtracking on initiatives from when times were bad. Part of it is to keep investors happy but the other part is that now is not the time to be taking lots of risk and burning money.

That's not entirely true.

Many companies take a longer view of things and will hire talent through the recession with the focus on building things that will benefit them after the fact.

Layoffs in video gaming especially can be puzzling when there is a massive shortage of talent.

Surprised they haven't closed 343i but that is probably coming.
 

pqueue

Member
1. Layoffs suck.

BUT

2. Microsoft employs almost a quarter million people, and contracts probably 100,000 more.
1,00 people were let go. Not all were from gaming. In fact less than 20% of the layoffs were in the HUGE umbrella division that includes Xbox, and not all were xbox subdivision specific.

Goddamn, some of you jump to so many uninformed conclusions for the sake of your console warring.
 
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Neilg

Member
It's less than 1%, probably the smallest layoff we'll see before the recession hits.
Sucks for people caught in it but this isn't government work where you can post up and ride it until retirement. They're very, very well paid tech workers, most of which had stock as part of their compensation too. They'll be ok.
 
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Arachnid

Member
Step 1: Aquire 50 different studies
Step 2: Fire half of the employes
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Lose another gen

Kidding, I lean green myself (though I don't really believe in console wars).
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
Sounds like they are laying off in areas where they have overlap and redundancy. But what I don't get is in a company this size, why they aren't first trying to find them other positions in other areas.
 

jakinov

Member
This would make sense if ti weren’t juxtaposed with a 70 billion dollar acquisition lol
Why would they layoff people because of the acquistion? Microsoft is just joninng in on all the other tech companies in downsizing.

 

jakinov

Member
That's not entirely true.

Many companies take a longer view of things and will hire talent through the recession with the focus on building things that will benefit them after the fact.

Layoffs in video gaming especially can be puzzling when there is a massive shortage of talent.

Surprised they haven't closed 343i but that is probably coming.
A lot of tech companies have hiring freezes currently. It's not that they don't invest in long term investments, they are just less willing to and aren't as eager to take big bets. Betting on things like the Cloud is not so risky but betting on things such as mixed reality and gamepass is more risky. They'll keep people investing for post recession but like many tech companie sthey are goint o be conservative in spending.

These cuts related to gaming likely affect more xbox as a platform than the specific studios making the games.
 
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