Microsoft offers voluntary exit to 60,000 employees for first time

Microsoft has offered a voluntary exit to 60,000 employees. By the company’s own account, it is using this format for the first time. “This is new for us. We will learn from it,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said in a Monday statement on the company blog.

Earlier this year, Microsoft already ran a voluntary retirement program. The company describes the new offer as one more way to adjust its workforce to the changing needs of individual divisions.

The offer comes at a time when Microsoft is under pressure to cut operating costs amid enormous investments in data centers and infrastructure for artificial intelligence, the U.S. site GeekWire notes.

In July of this year alone, the company laid off about 4,800 people, and last year more than 15,000. “We need to adapt to change,” company president Brad Smith said back during the July layoffs. At the time, Microsoft stressed that it was not directly replacing the eliminated positions with artificial intelligence, even though AI is changing the nature of work.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz