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Microsoft has joined the group of tech giants conducting significant layoffs. The company announced Wednesday that it plans to cut 10,000 jobs, amounting to 5% of its workforce, over the coming months, with some happening immediately. That follows Salesforce and Amazon’s mass layoffs earlier this month, and Meta’s in November.
While the cuts aren’t a huge surprise and have been anticipated by employees and Wall Street, it’s the latest sign that likely none of the tech giants will be immune from the market downturn.
Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, and others have seen years of enormous growth and hired tens of thousands of new employees during the last three years. Now they seem to be hitting a wall, analysts said. As Salesforce, Microsoft, and other business-oriented tech companies see their customers cut IT budgets, they anticipate shrinking revenue, cost cutting, and perhaps another round of layoffs.
“We are seeing the clock strike midnight for the tech sector after a decade of hyper growth and now major layoffs are being seen at MSFT, Salesforce, Meta, Amazon, among many others across the Valley,” wrote Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, in a note to clients. He called it a “rip the band-aid off moment to preserve margins and cut costs” in the face of inflation and rising interest rates.
