Microsoft is the latest tech firm to lay off employees across multiple divisions. According to Axios, while the company did not give an exact number of the laid off employees, sources said that its less than 1000.
Xbox Employees Are Affected by the Layoff
This latest job cut was made amid the economic downturn and the upcoming recession.
"Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities on a regular basis, and make structural adjustments accordingly," a spokesperson of Microsoft said.
It is unclear whether the recent job cut in the tech firm is part of the structural adjustment that the company is talking about.
"We will continue to invest in our business and hire in key growth areas in the year ahead," the spokesperson added.
While the company did not say which departments were affected, report from Video Games Chronicle noted that the lay off have affected staff from the Xbox division.
Moreover, employees from the Microsoft Strategic Missions and Technology organization were also impacted by the job cut.
Studio Alpha is said to be among the departments being closed down entirely. It was put up as a "serious gaming initiative." The department is created to make cloud-based wargame simulations for military and commercial customers.
Likewise, the Mission Engineering team, which studied space technology, is also one of the affected departments.
Microsoft Has Laid Off Employees in July
The tech giant also laid off 1% of its 180,000 employees in July, and removed open job listings for its Azure cloud and security groups afterwards, according to Engadget.
It decided to slow down hiring for Windows, Office and Teams as it expressed the need to operate with a leaner workforce this year.
In Q3, Microsoft reported strong earnings. The company recorded a 26% year-over-year increase in cloud revenue. In addition, it has an overall revenue of $49.4 billion.
However, citing the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations, the company revised its Q4 revenue and earnings guidance downward in early June.
Microsoft is not the only tech firm employing layoffs to cut cost amid the economic downturn. In the past months, other tech companies have made similar moves.
For instance, Google also slowed its hiring. According to CEO Sundar Pichai, this move was due to "uncertain global economic outlook."
On the other hand, in order to cut costs, Meta made the same move of implementing job cuts. Likewise, the company started reorganizing teams. According to its CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the company was facing "serious times."
In July, Twitter also has to let go a third of its recruiting team, while Tesla has been employing job cuts over the past month.
Nvidia, Lyft, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel, and Salesforce are also among the other publicly traded tech companies that slowed its hiring.
Because investors are fearful of a possible recession, they pull back from investing and companies have to cut cost. This accelerated layoffs within the tech sector over the past few months.
