Friday, July 18, 2014: In its biggest ever job cut, Microsoft has announced that it will cut its workforce by up to 18,000 by 2015. A large portion of the job cut will impact Nokia Devices and Services employees. As many as 12,500 employees from Nokia will be handed over the pink slip, comprising of both professional and factory workers.
Informing the employees about the move, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that this lay-off is a part of company’s ‘efforts to realign its workforce and move towards being a productivity and platform company.’
In an email to the employees, Nadella wrote, “We will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers.” However, he assured that the job cuts will take place in a thoughtful and transparent manner.
He assured that Microsoft “will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.”
In the process of this restructuring drive, Nadella emphasised on having “fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making and making support teams leaner.”
The job-cut drive also aims to “Simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster. As part of modernising our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change,” added Nadella.
“The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at different paces,” informed the Microsoft CEO.
