Microsoft is laying off around 3% of its global workforce, which means several thousand employees are losing their jobs. The company explainied this wave will affect workers across all levels and in every region. It’s still unclear how much this will impact the Xbox or gaming teams.

Like usual, this is covered as a necessary optimization of business process. The company says this isn’t about poor performance—just shifting strategies in a fast-changing tech world.

As of June 2024, Microsoft had about 228,000 employees globally. That means these cuts are the largest in the two years. In early 2023, the company let go of 10,000 workers. There was also a smaller wave of layoffs in January 2025, but those mainly hit underperforming staff.

This time, even high-performing employees are being let go. It shows how even the biggest tech companies are being cautious and trying to stay lean. Interestingly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently said AI now writes 20–30% of the code in the company’s repositories. Some entire projects, he added, might be written by AI alone. That raises big questions about how tech jobs are changing—especially in development.

Main image: unsplash.com

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