Microsoft plans 10,000 job cuts, will take $1.2bn charge

Microsoft said it plans to cut 10,000 jobs, or about 5 per cent of its workforce this year, taking steps to cope with an increasingly bleak outlook that has now bruised many of the technology industry’s biggest companies.

The company will take a $1.2bn charge in the second quarter related to the move, it said in a blog post Wednesday. The layoffs come as the software giant said it’s seeing customers exercise caution, with some parts of the world in recession. Microsoft is scheduled to report fiscal second-quarter earnings on January 24.

Chief executive officer Satya Nadella said the company is seeing “customers optimise their digital spend to do more with less.”

While peers such as Amazon.com, Meta Platforms and Salesforce have announced cuts by the thousands in the past few months, Microsoft had so far taken smaller steps to try to reckon with the shaky global economic outlook and the potential for a protracted slowdown in demand for software and services.

The company, based in Redmond, Washington, has eliminated open positions and paused hiring, even in priority businesses like security software and cloud computing. It most recently shrank its workforce of 221,000 by less than 1 per cent each time in October and July.

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