Microsoft has fired 15,000 employees in what we have been for the year, a figure that adds to 10,000 of 2023 and 3,500 of 2024. It has done it when its price exceeds 500 dollars for the first time in its history, and Between income and benefits records.
Why is it important. Satya Nadella, the CEO, has tried to explain this contradiction in a Memo internal in which he admits the “apparent incongruity” of saying goodbye while the company Prospera.
His words speak of an industry that no longer works with the rules of before.
The context. The current Microsoft lives in a duality:
- Recurring job cuts.
- Massive and growing investments in AI infrastructure.
In addition, its total template remains stable because it is hiring specialized talent in AI, so that, in figures, it compensates for the layoffs of other profiles.
Among its most outstanding hiring are The 24 engineers from Google Deepmind In the last semester.
The current situation. “This is the enigma of success in an industry without franchise value,” Nadella wrote to his employees. The CEO admits that these decisions “weigh a lot” and that they affect “colleagues, companions and friends.”
The company has to maintain its usual businesses while invents new categories and models. This is what Nadella calls “unlearn and learn” at the same time.
Between the lines. Nadella’s note is pure internal damage control. Employees and former employees are throwing pests on the deterioration of the work environment that CEO himself had created for a decade. Tom Warren, who has been covering Microsoft for two decades, published An extensive report in The Verge in which he talked about this.
The brutal investment in data centers and ia chips Forces Microsoft to cut operating expenses. The account is easy: more capital investment means less money for salaries. It is the equation that marks the race to master the AI economy. And the result goes through Less bosses and more code lines.
At stake. Microsoft is changing its identity: of “software factory” to “intelligence motor”. It is no longer about creating tools for specific jobs as until now, but getting anyone to make their own tools.
Nadella imagines a world where “8,000 million people can invoke a researcher, an analyst or a programmer.” It is the vision that justifies this transformation.
- Losers: Employees who do not fit in that new strategy.
- Winners: Possible signings of the AI field that arrive from companies such as Google or Meta.
The result is a template similar in number, but that is changing profiles.
New era. The technology industry, until recently synonymous with full employment, has almost 100,000 layoffs in what we have been. Microsoft leads that ranking.
But the phenomenon goes beyond Microsoft. Technology are discovering that triumphing in the AI era does not guarantee work tranquility. On the contrary: it requires constantly reinventing itself, much more than before, and makes the new normality disruption.
Deepen. Nadella has compared the current moment with the PC revolution in the 90s. It promises its employees that they will remember this time as “when I learned the most, when I had the most impact, when I was part of something that changed everything.”
History will tell if this transformation is worth it for human cost. At the moment, Microsoft is proof that even success can hurt when the rules change.
Outstanding image | Xataka, Microsoft
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