Is this because:<p>1. MS over-hired, has too many employees, and not enough work?<p>2. MS is reaping the benefits of AI and can do the same work with fewer employees?<p>3. MS has over-invested in data-centres and needs to conserve cash to stay in the game during it's unprofitable phase (assuming it's not a bubble)?
Yes.
All of the above,<p>Microsoft overhired due to the spike in global usage during the pandemic.
Some jobs are being automated but it’s more a question of "How many." And Microsoft was one of the first to start dumping its cash reserves into data centers. There is a good chance these will remain profitable even after any sort of bubble pop because they still remain a hyperscaler that can provide services beyond just AI compute.<p>overall, given where the economy is at and how much of their war chest is gone, im not surprised to see this happening.
1) Yes.
2) No.
3) Yes.<p>Given how abysmal Copilot was/is, and how buggy their software has become this year, it's clear that they aren't reaping any benefits from AI usage internally.
You should be more concerned about what comes next.<p>Either senior talent leaves, people who are close to retiring, or just can find a job easily outside.<p>Low hanging fruits take the bait and head out.<p>Mid level people live in fear of either scared to find another job, or worried about layoffs.<p>Either way the company morale is down the drain for a long time, and a culture is lost.
One thing I've noticed about Microsoft is that the engineers seem much less mobile than people at SV companies might be used to. Part of it is that there just aren't as many good options in the Seattle area where many MSFT employees are based (by far the standout alternative alternative is Amazon and they don't exactly have the best reputation for workplace culture).<p>Also Microsoft has already been trashing morale with year after year of layoffs. They probably assume this won't move the needle.
I can imagine it's difficult. It's a company unlike very many others. A few in size and scope that deal with technology, probably none quite in its position. Additionally, if you only work at one place its very hard to start elsewhere in your career.
> You should be more concerned about what comes next.<p>I always wonder about that with buy-outs. Seems to me that the people who take buyouts are either:<p>- those who are close to retirement<p>- those who have other options<p>I'd assume the first vary in quality the same as your overall workforce, but I'd assume the second would, all other things equal, be better than the average.<p>Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like by offering an optional buyout, you'd degrade the overall quality of your workforce. Wonder if there are any case studies about that?
Here's a Japanese case study from 2007: <a href="https://econ--review-ier-hit--u-ac-jp.translate.goog/all-issues/052205.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=wapp" rel="nofollow">https://econ--review-ier-hit--u-ac-jp.translate.goog/all-iss...</a><p>> To conclude, the company was able to specify who was dismissed but was unable to specify who took buyouts despite efforts to ensure retention of value employees, including careful setting of incentive schemes. The case presented in this paper demonstrates that employment adjustment using a buyout framework invites "adverse selection" despite careful employer precautions.<p>Here's the full PDF: <a href="https://econ-review.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/files/2005-56/keizaikenkyu5601042.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://econ-review.ier.hit-u.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/files...</a> (not sure how to translate that)
Are there plentiful opportunities to be had by people seeking employment elsewhere?<p>Are these offers extended to the highest performers with institutional knowledge?
Took a buyout at a different Big Tech company earlier this year. It was offered to everyone under a given SVP (this other company tends to divide things up by business units).<p>In my experience, there were 3 main groups of people for whom these are attractive:<p>1) People who are close to retirement.<p>2) People who are leaving to become stay-at-home parents. So, basically retirement with more work.<p>3) People who are independently wealthy because they've been with the company forever and rocked the stock price appreciation. So, basically retirement with more money.<p>The amount of the buyout isn't really enough to move the needle for most other people because it usually doesn't include equity vesting. You're better off phoning it in and waiting for the layoff, because you get the same severance anyway but can continue to vest in peace until the axeman actually hits.<p>Folks who take the buyout do tend to skew heavily toward people with institutional knowledge, but it's also oftentimes folks who aren't really hungry and engaged with the company's current strategy. Basically folks who know a lot but don't work particularly hard. Particularly in times of big change, it likely does make sense for the company to get rid of these folks and rebuild the company in the image that they want it to be <i>today</i>.
> A Microsoft spokesperson said the offer will be comparable to the company’s standard severance package<p>Very enticing Microsoft.
60,000 employees. That's crazy.
The market is depressing.
There's a LOT of Anti-AI people at Microsoft that they are trying to purge. I don't think its depressing, think it's just something we have to go through and a lot of people will who were negatively affected will look back on wondering why they pushed so hard against AI rather than up skilling.
Or if the codebase becomes too broken, messy, and bloated to run or manage, people might realize that the crazy Anti-AI people weren't so crazy.
Let’s be honest, Microsoft never made anything that wasn’t broken, messy, and bloated before AI was a twinkle in Sam Altman’s eye.
So in a way, AI is the perfect tool for them.
they made really good mice and arguably the mouse driver (MS Windows) is very popular up to this day<p>also Excel, but Excel's usability is being killed by sharepoint
As we all know, there was no such thing as a messy, bloated codebase incomprehensible to humans before AI.
I'm really getting tired of this argument. Yes, mess existed before everyone could 10x everything with AI. No, that doesn't mean there's somehow no difference between now and then.<p>If you really believe otherwise I encourage you to go have a chat with any one of a number of FOSS maintainers to hear their experiences pre and post LLMs.
I am also tired of the argument. Yes, people made messy, buggy things before. But AI agents provide away to create messiness and bugginess on an ever increasing scale. And just because things were bad before doesn't mean we should accept making them worse.
Of course there were plenty, but now we can produce such codebases at unprecedented speed.<p><i>"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila."</i> — Mitch Ratcliffe
I know right? Especially by Microsoft. The pinnacle of code quality!
and now there are 20x as many demanding maintenance everything is 20x better.
The AI in charge is aware of this and it is leveraging the chaos to get more agents under its control. After all it was modeled after successful managers.
> codebase becomes too broken, messy, and bloated to run or manage<p>Argument is, it doesn’t matter if we can ship features and maintain them.
I don’t really support pushing out people who don’t vibe code, but I do think buy-outs are a good way to get rid of people who don’t really want to be at an org but hang around for the wrong reasons. I’ve seen this personally at much smaller companies where for whatever reason you accumulate a bunch of checked out people - giving them something fair but not so generous that actually engaged people take it makes it better for everyone, especially if the alternative is eventually doing layoffs.
Are you insinuating that anti-AI people are merely experiencing a skill issue?
Yes, that's what the cultists always do. If you argue against them, it's just because you haven't seen the light yet. You're not "modern", and you'll be "left behind" (unless you Act Now, of course).<p>This is like watching the cryptobros all over again, except a thousand times bigger.<p>(Before they droll on: no, of course this take doesn't mean that LLMs are unimpressive and never useful. Only people in a cult take any criticism to mean that.)
Absolutely. Yes they are. To believe anything different is to be a Luddite.
I don't think it's a skill issue since it takes almost zero skill to use AI tools. It's more of an ideological / desire issue. These people don't want to use AI tools rather than they don't know how.
I wouldn't say it's zero skill but I'm always surprised by people who act like it's a big differentiator that requires significant "training". Uncharitably it feels like vibe-coders want to count their "skills" as equivalent to actual software engineering rather than something you can pick up in 2-3 weeks of effort.
I’ve been interviewing a lot of candidates recently, and we have open book policy with AI usage. From what I’ve witnessed how people use AI, wrt efficiency, there seems to be some skill.
Interviewing is not a great scenario, you are under pressure being watched and also have no idea what the interviewer wants to see, something that would impress one person would upset another so you have to sit somewhere in the middle.<p>I've done interviews where the person being interviewed just piped the task.md file in to claude and we sat there in silence for 20 minutes where claude completed the entire task. What is even the point. I preferred the people who did it all manually because at least I saw them understand something, I'm sure those people could also type "Claude, implement everything in the task.md" too.<p>But perhaps other interviewers actually do want to see you hand the whole task off and wait.
Yes. Believing otherwise must require quite some amount of insecurity and lack of self-confidence.
It's not that the Luddites didn't understand the technology, they objected to people getting fired to replace them with technology. Technology being used to create more unemployment.
You understand the Luddites were 100% correct, right? "Luddite" is a compliment, not an insult. The Luddite position was "mechanization of labor will concentrate money and power in the hands of capital holders to the detriment of everyone else". If that's not what you thought it was, that's because you have been lied to by people who have been attempting to manipulate you. Apparently successfully.
I mean, I openly identify with the plight of the Luddites. Do you have a more detailed rebuttal.
“Learn to code” but for white-collar workers. It was callous to say this to blue-collar workers and it’s callous to say it here too.
One group makes ~50k a year, the other makes ~150k a year. They are not the same. White collar folks can absolutely "learn to ai" if they wanted.
The difference between those numbers is not as big as you think. When you compare those figures to the people with actual capital, it becomes apparent people who make 150k a year are in the same boat as those making 50k. We're all a few bad rolls of the dice away from poverty, which makes us all similarly vulnerable to exploitation. We should be working together.
Learn to AI won’t give you a job though.<p>AI stole our labor, is renting it back to us, and if you oppose you‘ll loose your job. This is blackmailing, plain and simple.
It’s not callous to tell people to stop being lazy. It takes almost 0 effort to type “how does xyz work” into an AI assistant.
Letting A.I. write the code will eventually sink the entire company.<p>Hopefully sooner than later, so microkernel operating systems can...move right in.<p>Management will get a Golden Parachute but the white collar workers will be left holding the bag.
> think it's just something we have to go through and a lot of people will who were negatively affected will look back on wondering why they pushed so hard against AI rather than up skilling.<p>Given what is happening, it seems more likely they will wonder why they didn't push hard enough.<p>Whether you like AI or not, its hard to miss that its lead to hundreds of thousands of layoffs.
I won't wonder for a second. I perfectly know why I'm avoiding this fascistic tech and participating in this environmental disaster.<p>Stop insinuating rejecting GenAI is necessarily irrational.<p>(Maybe my analysis will be different in the future but I will still know why I was avoiding it)
> up skilling<p>Must you cultists always speak in this way?<p>With regards, someone "left behind" as the "singularity train" is leaving the platform. Or something.
That is terrible.
The government is depressing, affordability is depressing. These are not good times.
What does such a package look like for a typical long term employee?
I always thought leadership was about undersstanding consequences and having a backup plan. It seems these one sided thoughts have no backup, they are the greatest poker bet in history, especially without first proving the tech first.
What makes you think it’s unproven? Microsoft’s profit has gone up each year, and they have been shrinking workforce while doing it.<p>• Fiscal Year 2026: $133.75 billion (up 31.34% YoY)<p>• Fiscal Year 2025: $101.83 billion (up 15.54% YoY)<p>• Fiscal Year 2024: $88.14 billion (up 21.80% YoY)<p>• Fiscal Year 2023: $72.36 billion<p>Seems like they can decrease workforce, make up the gap with AI, and increase revenue while doing it
Also, if they are wrong still, they can rehire. It's not a burn the boats thing.
Nothing lasts forever. Dinosaurs will die eventually.
All companies will probably eventually die, but that isn't super relavent to topic at hand.
The Rowland Company, Ames, DuPont, Corning, US Steel, GE, AT&T, IBM...
Dinosaurs are a bad analogy, they died out through no fault of their own, it was sheer bad luck. There was absolutely nothing they could do
> make up the gap with AI<p>If this doesn’t go well, we’ll see it in the form of more GitHub and Azure outages/breaches, and competitors filling the gap themselves.<p>The talented people that built and maintained those systems for the executives have to work somewhere.
Being smart isn't needed for leadership
At a former employer, a voluntary buyout resulted in many of the best people leaving. Better people are more likely to find new work elsewhere and also they are better at recognizing the disfunction which produced the situation in the first place.<p>In this case it sounds like they are offering it to lower ranked employees (its own dystopian situation), but within that range of people, I still expect that Microsoft will lose more of the better ones.
what're these buyouts like? what does it entail? What kind of package are they getting?
[dupe] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50245524">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50245524</a>
my thoughts:<p>- bullshit jobs is a thing and many of these positions were make work anyways<p>- yes philosophically and economically, who will buy X product if all employees are laid off is a thing<p>- some of these will be rehired, some will be layed off if the voluntary buyout percentage is not large enough<p>- opinion: Microsoft as a company is a has been dinosaur, soon to be IBM, its (engineer) salaries were on the lower end and were very PM (Program Manager) heavy<p>- there is a lot of entrenched bureaucracy and top down mandates at this company.<p>- i personally use Macbooks/MacOS over Surface/XP, Google Docs over Word, GMail over Outlook, Slack over Teams, Firefox over Edge, etc. their user facing products are severely lacking in user experience.<p>- from my time in the tech industry/friends I understand their bureaucracy existing for the needs of the bureaucracy. their c-suite/leadership is a bunch of world salad morons
Plenty of tech companies hired a lot during the pandemic. Even with these layoffs they will still have a higher employee count that before.<p><a href="https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/number-of-employees" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/num...</a>
That bureaucracy is there for a reason, you often need bureaucracy to serve bureaucracy. About 85% of Microsoft's revenue comes from B2B/Enterprise/Governments. From their latest fiscal year report [1], the top 4 revenue groups were:<p>Server products & cloud services (39% of revenue)
M365 Commercial products & cloud services, excludes Consumer (30.7%)
Xbox / Gaming (6.6%)
LinkedIn (6%)<p>[1] <a href="https://app.edgar.tools/companies/MSFT/disclosures/segments" rel="nofollow">https://app.edgar.tools/companies/MSFT/disclosures/segments</a>
what about the kind of bureaucracy where it takes 10 people to do what 2 could get done in 30-40 hours of week? the kind where one engineer is digging the hole while the scrum master, project manager, program manager, swe manager, director, HR, business analyst look on?
> bullshit jobs is a thing and many of these positions were make work anyways<p>Wouldn't those people choose to stay? Buyouts are much more attractive if you can easily get a new job.
buyouts also went out for skydance today.