Microsoft lays off 150 cloud sales specialists: report

The latest round impacted about 150 employees from a team responsible of convincing medium-size companies to adopt cloud services such as Azure server rentals and Microsoft 365 productivity apps, as per the report.

Microsoft’s LinkedIn has also initiated layoffs and employees in the recruiting department were impacted.

Earlier, Microsoft had cut jobs in its hardware divisions including HoloLens, Surface and Xbox teams. The tech firm sacked 617 of its employees working in the Seattle office, according to a Bloomberg report.

Also read | Layoffs in 2023: Full list of companies that have cut jobs amid economic turmoil

Last week, GitHub, a software collaboration platform owned by Microsoft, announced it is laying off up to 10% of its workforce and closing all of its offices, including its headquarters in San Francisco.

Discover the stories of your interest

The company, which has about 3,000 employees, said it will also continue its hiring freeze and make a number of other internal changes to “protect the short-term health” of its business.The latest layoffs are part of Microsoft’s broader plan to eliminate 5% of its total workforce. The Windows maker added that it would continue to invest in strategic areas and allocate both “capital and talent to areas of secular growth.”

CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a blog post that organisations in every industry and geography are now “exercising caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one”.

Also read: Layoffs in 2023: a list of Indian startups & tech companies that have cut jobs

However, Nadella also said that Microsoft would continue to hire in “key strategic areas”.

Microsoft had in July last year said that a small number of roles had been eliminated, while news site Axios in October reported that the company had laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions.

Microsoft is among growing list of companies, including Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Salesforce, Intel, that have announced layoffs in the past few months.