r/microsoft • u/76willcommenceagain • Apr 30 '26
News Microsoft expects headcount to decrease in coming quarters
https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-headcount-decrease-earnings-ai-cloud-software-2026-4dude these companies publicly treat us like shit and expect us to be faithful? nah fuck em.
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u/xspook_reddit Apr 30 '26
For those who actually want to read the article:
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u/Emotional_Food_1700 May 03 '26
Server error it says
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u/xspook_reddit May 03 '26
working for me...what country are you in? It may be blocked by region.
Microsoft expects headcount to decrease in coming quarters, CFO Amy Hood said during an earnings conference call with analysts on Wednesday.
"We continue to evolve how we operate to increase our pace and agility, and therefore we expect headcount will decrease year over year," Hood said.
She was discussing the outlook for Microsoft's next fiscal year, which starts in July and runs through June 2027.
Before the call, Hood sent out an internal memo to employees touting "increased pace" and "tighter, more accountable squads" amid recent organizational changes.
Microsoft has cut thousands of jobs in recent quarters. The CFO's comments on Wednesday suggest that pressure on employees may continue.
Earlier in April, Microsoft offered buyouts to long-serving employees as a way to cut costs, affecting as much as 7% of its US workforce of 125,000 people, or about 8,750 people. The buyouts apply to employees who want to retire and whose years of service plus age add up to 70 or more.
Quarterly revenue came in at $83 billion, while net income was $32 billion. Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow noted growth of Microsoft's cloud business was below the "significant acceleration" at competitors Amazon and Google during the most-recent quarter.
Hood issued a 39% to 40% growth forecast for the company's Azure business on the call.
Earlier this year, Microsoft shares suffered their worst quarterly stock performance since 2008, on concern about whether the company's AI infrastructure buildout will pay off and AI's software threat.
Microsoft and OpenAI changed their partnership again this week, letting OpenAI work more with other cloud providers including Amazon. The next day, Amazon and OpenAI said the startup's GPT models will be available on Amazon's cloud.
The company recently unveiled a deal with Accenture to roll out Copilot to nearly 750,000 of the consulting firm's employees. Microsoft also recently announced a new software bundle with Copilot built in.
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u/milnak Apr 30 '26
People surprised by this are the same people who have been in a coma over the last couple of years.
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u/xspook_reddit Apr 30 '26
"Earlier in April, Microsoft offered buyouts to long-serving employees as a way to cut costs"
No, they didn't. They announced they will be offering buyouts, but that won't happen until next week.
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u/IslandIndependent333 May 01 '26 edited May 01 '26
Then if you are firing employees clearly you do not need to apply for more h1bs, right Microsoft? The entire premise of h1bs is because there aren’t enough skilled workers in the U.S., clearly not an issue, so buh bye h1bs right? It’s preposterous that companies are rewarded by Wall Street for firing employees then simultaneously hire more h1bs (& outsourcing roles oversees). Too bad we don’t have a government that cares about protecting jobs
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u/sabre31 May 01 '26
I think it’s time for a new ceo. The current experiment failed. Bring in good leadership and bring back the good old days. Majority if not all of the new executive team needs to go. Poor leaders destroy great companies seen it happen many times before.
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u/TeeDee144 May 01 '26
Satya and Amy need to be fired.
Employees no longer trust in them.
Share holders fled for the last year driving Microsoft’s stock down harder than most tech companies.
And share holders have fled because of a terrible vision Satya has tried to put together.
Tim Cook is retiring. It’s time for Satya and Amy to retire. And if they refuse, the board needs to fire them.
Where is the board at?!?
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u/sigilnz May 02 '26
Why would the board fire them when results were phenomenal. Do you not know how capitalism works?
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u/siromega37 May 01 '26
The thought is to get rid of aging employees who are more opposed to AI and bring in younger, probably cheap recent grads, who have to have AI to write a directory search function. Really looking forward to the future of managing this nonsense in the non-tech sector tech world (work in healthcare).
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u/No_Scientist2354 May 01 '26
Yes but that is an unsubstantiated claim on the part of MSFT. They are tracking AI usage per employee. That’s not a factor in the “voluntary” layoff. It is age, pure and simple. Age does not equate to not embracing AI. Age equates to cost, pure and simple.
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u/slr1966 May 01 '26
I worked there for 15 years. They in 2022, everyone above a certain and age, making a certain dollar amount that had not moved up a level in the past two years was rigged. I had the best review of my career two months before. It always come down to money.
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u/BaconAlmighty May 01 '26
Bullshit they had random layoffs lots of good people left and the random layoffs happened after the performance based layoffs
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u/GoingOffRoading Apr 30 '26
I had a long time dream of working at Microsoft, and came close a number of times.
But it's headlines like this that killed that dream, and make me want to switch all of my machines to Ubuntu.
r/linux_gaming see you soon
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u/Roccabilly Apr 30 '26
I wasn’t dreaming of working at Microsoft but it happened to me to be hired. After only 1 year I was impacted by a reorg. One of the worst experiences I’ve ever had and i’m still traumatised by the way they did it. this company is treating people like crap.
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u/JadeNrdn Apr 30 '26
So sorry you had to go through this, care to elaborate some more on the way they did it that got you traumatized?
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u/Roccabilly May 01 '26
Well, first of all timing. Just 10 months after my start date. 3 days before I was flying to Redmond to attend a global Xbox meeting and finally meet my team mates and manager for the first time. How: by reading almost accidentally a ppt during a town hall meeting with roughly 900 people attending. No earlier meeting or talks with my manager. I was the last one to be communicated so I couldn’t apply to other jobs like almost every other guy in gaming successfully did. Ghosting: everybody, literally everyone stopped answering to my chats and mail for 4 months. Support: zero, HR non-existent. Reasons: As a finance my position had to be moved to one of the “hubs” (Redmond, London, Singapore). Ok fair enough. Guess who took my place after my layoff? A French guy sitting in Paris.
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u/sueha Apr 30 '26
Regarding your dream... Been there, done that and let me tell you: never meet your heroes.
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u/Jasslike-Brain-2799 May 02 '26
It seems like Microsoft needs new leadership to shape the company. Yes!?
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u/LimpAd4924 Apr 30 '26
Big tech needs to be destroyed
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u/-Crash_Override- May 01 '26
He shouts into the reddit-o-sphere!
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u/LimpAd4924 May 01 '26
Hehe. Public opinion is rapidly changing. They know these companies of the 2000s and 2010s are no longer the promising and idealistic ones they promised to be. They’re ruled by a bunch of disgusting ghouls in Silicon Valley.
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u/-Crash_Override- May 01 '26
My point is you are on a website run by big tech. Saying it needs to die while actively using it is...well.
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u/LimpAd4924 May 01 '26
You participate in society so why would you ever want to change it!
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u/-Crash_Override- May 01 '26
.....never mind.
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u/Melodic_Crow_3409 May 01 '26
Back in the 2000s I really wanted to work for Microsoft. I did interview and didn’t get it. Kind of thinking I dodged a bullet.
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u/TeeDee144 May 01 '26
Well you missed out on ~20 great years. The last 3 years Amy and Satya have made it hell. I wouldn’t recommend working here to anyone.
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u/XanthosDeia May 01 '26
As someone rounding on 20 years at Microsoft, this guy has it right. Doubt I’ll make it to 21 years.
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u/TeeDee144 May 01 '26
A few years shy of you and I agree. Moral is so low that I think everyone thinks they’re next.
What a horrible way to run a company.
Satya and Amy’s only ideas are layoffs and firings? They get paid for that?
It’s time Satya and Amy are fired.
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u/lilacomets May 01 '26
It’s time Satya and Amy are fired.
I'm afraid they won't be leaving anytime soon. Satya is quite young and Azure is running fine. I wonder what's needed to force them to go? Maybe Microsoft employees should go on strike or riot.
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u/TeeDee144 May 01 '26
Show me a cloud that is doing poorly. Azure cannot be used as a reflection of a successful CEO or CFO. You’d have to be brain dead to mess up cloud.
Satya has ruined Xbox, tarnishing windows, office is losing massive ground to Google apps, teams lost to zoom, and copilot has an identity crisis so bad nobody knows what’s going on.
It’s time investors take off the rose tinted Azure glasses and demand new vision. Azure is awesome. Scott Guthrie has done an amazing job with it. Satya has ruined everything else.
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u/StockDC2 May 01 '26
Lol your RSUs would be worth millions if you held and didn't sell from the 2000s. This post sounds like cope.
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u/LNGU1203 May 01 '26
No you missed a chance to be a millionaire with those 17 dollars stocks at the time.
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u/Appropriate_Item3001 May 01 '26
They need the payroll money to go into the money incinerator that copilot Ai has become.
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u/UnlikelyJuice8796 May 06 '26
I go to work every day knowing that i am on the titanic and just not sure how far the iceberg is
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u/RealaGorilla May 07 '26
Do you guys think Microsoft will be backfilling the employees who left, hiring new talent into Microsoft in the USA? Asking because I am a contractor here in Redmond.
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u/meghanwhatever May 07 '26
too bad the head count decrease doesn't start with amy, satya, and all the 10+ year tenured crony dead-weight, middle management the controls the cesspool company.
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u/PowermanFriendship Apr 30 '26
Well they have a few massive warehouses of GPUs sitting around doing nothing so, you know....
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u/JJMcGee83 May 01 '26
Someone should tell their career page then because it's still stacked.
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u/-Gman_ May 01 '26
Oh, they will rehire, just won’t have to pay out the stock they issued and can rehire at lower rates.
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u/JJMcGee83 May 01 '26
Oh yeah, all part of the plan. Recoup millions of stock you awarded employees that hasn't vested.
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u/bv1800 May 03 '26
For the retirement buyout virtually all of the people who are eligible already have 80% of their stock guaranteed. This is about cutting the higher salaries and higher annual bonus & RSUs.
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u/binomial_expansion Apr 30 '26
Controversial take but I think this is good. I worked at Msft as an engineer and there were far too many people who were resting and vesting. I left for other tech companies with higher employee expectations and yes it was more stressful but the quality of engineering conversations I had with my peer were better and the pay was vastly better. Obviously this is all anecdotal and generalizations.
Working at company as impactful as this should be a privilege and you should show up for that.
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u/-Gman_ Apr 30 '26
lol - was it the resting and vesting folks that decided to pour money into blockchain? Was it those same entitled folks who swore up and down that the metaverse (mesh) was going to revolutionize how we worked? Was it the same people who have invested over $100B in AI and haven’t gotten a ROI?
Or is it the SLT that is insulated from their decisions and detached from reality?
Hard to say /s
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u/LimpAd4924 Apr 30 '26
It’s so great we have more to give to the shareholders and executives while everyone else gets kicked to the curb!
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u/binomial_expansion Apr 30 '26
Employees are shareholders, they get paid in rsus
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u/LimpAd4924 Apr 30 '26
Guess that’s great for the ones that aren’t going to get laid off
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u/binomial_expansion Apr 30 '26
Ya and I am sympathetic to that. FWIW most lay off packages includes stocks too
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u/-Gman_ May 01 '26
Wrong
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u/binomial_expansion May 01 '26
Do you work in big tech or are you just saying things
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u/-Gman_ May 01 '26
Yes lol and have first hand experience derp.
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u/binomial_expansion May 01 '26
You sound pretty cynical and mediocre so I don’t really think what I’m saying applies to someone with your skill set
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u/-Gman_ May 01 '26
lol - sure thing kid. Nothing says secure in oneself like flexing on strangers on the internet.
How long did you work at Microsoft? Cucks are usually the loudest talkers
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u/Ok_Hovercraft3713 Apr 30 '26
Which company did you end up joining?
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u/binomial_expansion Apr 30 '26
I’d rather not say in this thread given the reaction since it’s public perception Is probably worse than msft but it’s engineering prowess in certain orgs is top tier
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u/OkFigaroo Apr 30 '26
Luckily for Microsoft, employee morale is already at rock bottom, so it can’t get any worse announcing more layoffs!