Onlookers have expressed a mixture of surprise, sadness and scorn at Microsoft’s reported move to offer voluntary redundancy to 60,000 staff globally.
In a blog post yesterday, Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman confirmed the vendor is making a new ‘Voluntary Exit Officer’ to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, the UK and US at “level 70 and below”.
According to a CNBC report, around 60,000 employees – or roughly 27% of Microsoft’s total 223,000 workforce – are eligible.
The move comes after Microsoft in July reported operating income of $155.2bn on revenues that rose 18% to $331.8bn for its fiscal 2026, and as the giant ramps up investment in AI spending.
Over 30% of US staff offered a voluntary retirement plan by Microsoft in April took it.
In a LinkedIn post, Sean O’Shea, a former Microsoft sales manager and founder of Craft Your Culture, said he “can’t get my head round” the news, questioning who will pick up the slack as potentially thousands of Microsoft employees leave the building.
“When I see how people are working at Microsoft today they are manic, overwhelmed with the workload and pushing as hard as they can,” he wrote.
“The people that stay must be concerned at where this extra workload is going to go, as I don’t see CoPilot doing it any time soon…”
Microsoft’s latest move means “anyone still insisting AI won’t lead to job cuts needs to give their head a wobble”, digital sustainability and GreenOps advocate Mark Butcher claimed, meanwhile.
“So people are being offered money to leave to help pay for the tech that’s supposedly going to make everyone’s working lives better,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Yesterday saw a double blow for critics worried by the potential impact of AI on jobs as the world’s fastest-growing company ever, Anthropic, unveiled its plans for an IPO.
“It is quite symbolic and coincidental that Anthropic (a company whose CEO had pointed to doomsday scenarios in the jobs markets) files its S-1 on the same day Microsoft offers voluntary exit packages to over a quarter of its workforce,” Futurum Group analyst Alex Smith wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Microsoft’s Coleman said eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their offer details “within the next few hours”.
Employees must reportedly decide whether to take the offer in early December, with those participating leaving on 31 December.
