I don't get it. Microsoft owns OpenAI 200% increase in stock price in 5 years AI funneling into every product Office productivity product eats up Notion and the like Amazing balance sheet Great marketing Good recent UIs Stable cash flow via b2b products I wouldnt be surprised even if they hired 50,000 more people
Investor mindset is different
No investor asked Microsoft to fire people and Microsoft is not a puppet to do the ask..
Financial discipline is key. That attracts more investors. Apple had one of best financial discipline among fang and so stock never traded below intrinsic value. Msft is mixed bag when it comes to financial discipline. So they are doing layoffs to cut costs and improve balance sheet. I must say, even though azure is growing there are too many teams that do nothing or just copying projects from other org. Azure global is prime example. So there are many such teams that don’t bring in revenue but do fake work. Mgrs bully ic and pip them to keep their jobs. Such model needs to change and such teams need to be cut.
Too much of fat that needs to be trimmed
For the record, Microsoft doesn't own OpenAI. It may be considered as one of theirs lead investors(although it may get a lion share of their profits), alongside others and so may have some control. But, it doesn't own OpenAI
Because board wants more money
because there are tons of coasters and useless engineer at MSFT. the hiring practice is ridiculous basic compared to FANG. using this chance to trim fat will not incur the public wrath
Naive
Never waste a good crisis
276 is a rounding error
That's only WA, layoffs today were global, in the thousands
1k is 0.5%.
Two words… Amy. Hood.
Thanks to Amy, I never get to have proper offsite event when I was in Azure for nearly 4 years, while those people in MSR Bing Webxt keep having fancy parties and dinners. We were told investors really care about numbers in Azure so we need to save cost. Hate Amy since then.
She still got to keep her work, her stocks, and she’s the one to blame yeah.