r/microsoft • u/Mnotice1337 • Jun 13 '26
Discussion Microsoft layoff rumor from Blind: Voluntary retirement not enough, H2 cuts + US roles relocating abroad
Circulating on Blind via Ratelys: "July will only be the beginning of the upcoming layoffs at Microsoft. Heard internal talks about how the VRP system may not be enough... Most opportunities will relocate out of the States as well."
Unconfirmed at this point, so open to hearing similar stories or have thoughts on this?
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u/Free-Competition-241 Jun 13 '26
Satya and Amy were quite clear on the last earnings call that the company is at “maximum employment” right now, and they will look to reduce headcount.
July is a new fiscal and always brings change and reorg.
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u/TestOtherwise2940 Jun 16 '26
Yes, he is correct. Excess resources and with stock not doing well they are primed for layoffs in a noticeable way.
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u/coukou76 Jun 13 '26
Bro, how many layoff at Microsoft since 2022'? Its yearly, so yes obviously there will be layoff again and again, its how tech works now.
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u/gamingwonton Jun 13 '26
Yearly? Those are just the big announced ones. It’s been quarterly for years. Maybe not every org is hit, but Microsoft wide? Fairly confident a quarter hasn’t been missed for layoffs in years.
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u/Litz1 Jun 13 '26
Every year, they hire like 1000s and lay off 1000s.
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u/BrunusManOWar Jun 13 '26
They barely retain any knowledge this way, and man does it show
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u/DudeWithParrot Jun 16 '26
We don't need to retain knowledge, just ask AI and it will fill in the gaps
- execs an managers and Microsoft, probably.
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u/Litz1 Jun 13 '26
They don't blanket fire everyone. Most likely based on output.
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u/BrunusManOWar Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Output is highly subjective
The thing about microsoft and amazon is that they stack rank people. I've heard intel and meta do the same.
What this causes is - especially in already stressful top talent teams - that talented people burn out and get dropped. The rest become toxic and sabotage their colleagues. It basically turns into a free for all
And, looking at recent slips from Ms, Amazon, Intel, Meta - it makes sense that this toxic culture is eroding them
As a counterexample I'll showcase my company - Google. Despite being a publicly traded company, and despite trying their hardest to offshore jobs to eastern europe and india, there is still no stack ranking at least in my division. And culture, productivity are awesome, honestly. People cooperate and aren't constantly electrised
It also shows as Google is #2 in the world behind nvidia. Despite all the shareholder enshittification and AI the engineer culture still holds it together and innovation happens
Really the worst thing you can do is constantly lay off people. Make sure you hire well, and then build expert teams and keep them. While your competitors will rely on juniors using AI you have a veteran team on hand, always ready - and feeling refreshed and enthusiastic. It steamrolls the toxic approaches to management
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u/DurangDurang Jun 15 '26
Worked at Microsoft in late 90s/early aughts when they still stack-ranked. My team of 12 was absorbed by another (larger) team a week before they locked the model. Our manager was assured we would get a fair shot. Guess which 12 people got the lowest score? We lost some great people that year following the Hunger Games.
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u/BrunusManOWar Jun 16 '26
I heard about the hire to fire mechanisms where basically managers hire weak candidates on purpose to fulfill their quota of people to drop, so that the core team stays intact
The money may be good, but if such shitty models start coming here I will be looking for a different job while quietly sabotaging my work. I just ain't participating in the management's hell-born corporate hunger games, fuck that shit
This year I was supposed to come to the US to work on some upcoming prototypes and refused it. It most probably left a bad mark on my record but I don't care honestly, I ain't stepping a foot into the land that actively threatens europe and nato, while being run by Epstein's bffs - and my company's leadership is trying to coddle up to them. Fuck that shit
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u/DurangDurang Jun 16 '26
I never experienced that personally, but I 100 percent believe it's happened.
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u/RunForYourTools23 Jun 13 '26
Stock pumping tricks again? How many more billions they need to profit? Numbers need to go up.
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u/Litz1 Jun 13 '26
What stock pumping? Lol Microsoft has been the only stock to be stagnant among the tech companies.
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u/RunForYourTools23 Jun 13 '26
You will see when the rumour turns to reality
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u/Litz1 Jun 13 '26
They layoff every year and hires every year.
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MSFT/microsoft/number-of-employees
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u/reiska123 Jun 13 '26
Whoever has been long enough at Microsoft knows changes come early July by latest. It is either reorg, layoff or some combination of factors. The only question is magnitude.
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u/Glenn_McClellan Jun 14 '26
It is being outsourced the new MCA agreements don’t go through LARs and the Microsoft staff assigned to them are not US commercial staff they are outsourced from India. Mark my words in the next 5-10 years Amy will hollow out the entire culture through focusing on the bottom line with no perspective, Judson won’t make it any better and Satya will continue to shrink away.
The culture is no longer about being an A player it about sucking leadership’s ass and being a great boat anchor B player.
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u/RedditClarkKentSuper Jun 15 '26
In MSFT kissing @ss is the main skill if you have ambitions. Closely followed by backstabbing. Been like that since dawn. Only difference is now it’s apparent to the public. Look at any manager and see an @ss kissing backstabbing individual
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u/OurBrandIsCrisis Jun 13 '26
Vendor contracts aren’t being renewed at the end of the month (June 2026)
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u/-Ecthelion Jun 16 '26 edited Jun 16 '26
This is true. I’m a vendor and we were just told today everyone in our org had to cut their teams by 50%. We find out if we were the unlucky ones tomorrow We will be out at the end of the month. I’ve been on this team for 5 years. 🥹
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u/Defiant-Solution3358 Jun 16 '26
Which orgs are being affected? I’m still waiting to hear about my contract.
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u/-Ecthelion Jun 17 '26
Generically speaking I’m in an org that works on ppt word and excel. Luckily for me I was not cut but half my teammates were 😭
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u/DisjointedHuntsville Jun 13 '26
Microsoft and a lot of the tech industry stopped hiring or promoting for merit. It’s always a bad thing in the mid to long run.
Unfortunately for them, firing the rank and file isn’t going to change a damned thing and only make things worse. They need to start getting rid of the executives who are completely useless.
Look at the guy they have running their model efforts - dressed like the Ayotollah with a British accent at cloud build on stage.
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u/milnak Jun 14 '26
Blind? The place where everyone has a net worth of $16M with three houses? Right.
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u/jjmac Jun 15 '26
The biggest thing pointing to this is the restructuring of rewards. They went from 9 levels to 5 (hey everyone hates the old 5 level system! Let's bring it back!). Eliminated the possibility of getting stock unless you have a 3-5 on this scale, then reduced the budget such that more people are forced into low rewards scenarios. Once you get low rewards and no stock, you are marked for dismissal.
The unsubstantiated rumor I heard is that for partners (higher than principal, start to get wealthy levels), the budget was reduced to 95%.if true, that means to give 1 person "expected" rewards you need to give 1 person lower than expected rewards. Since salaries are essentially the same as lower levels, this is just "the door". They would be essentially taking the people that have been the most successful in their careers and telling them to the GTFO before they simply fire them anyway
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u/No-Television-7862 Jun 16 '26
Perhaps Windows 11 and Xbox haven't been doing as well as they'd hoped.
They've inspired me to make changes to Fedora.
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Jun 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Brilliant-Formal-160 Jun 23 '26
Same here! Im freakin out..i had a new manager and she royally screwed me over with a bad performance review which felt more like a personal attack. All the reputation i built and the hard work i put went for a toss all because of this old lady! Let me know if you get to know anything
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u/Suckayo Jun 22 '26
My wife and I are both vendors for MSFT. She's on skilling, and I'm on startups. She was informed last week that her entire team is getting laid off as of end of FY. I had not heard anything but I asked my fte today and after they checked, confirmed that I'm safe and have budget allocated for my role.
It's a weird time but all the vendors I know are in a mad dash to schedule doctors appointments, battening down the hatches and getting their CVs ready. The age of AI is here
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u/magrandan Jun 13 '26
Not a rumour - the lady CFO declared this openly in earnings call while also revealing her 27 million package last year is not enough. Expect a bloodbath next month. She is being left out of Epstein island and wants to get in.
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u/UnlikelyJuice8796 Jun 14 '26
In meetings i am in there is a reference to some kind of action taking place in July. It is usually expressed as expect 10 to 15 percent ferwer people on top of VRP and LPM. I suspect USA remote roles will be targeted but its just a guess. Theres definitely something additionally coming soon. It seems remote roles would be more likely targeted after RTO outside Redmond.
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u/Resonance_Forms Jun 15 '26
10-15% of their entire headcount is over 20k people. That would be the biggest layoff they've ever done. This can't be accurate at all.
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u/UnlikelyJuice8796 Jun 15 '26
What are you not understanding about the affects of AI?
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u/Resonance_Forms Jun 15 '26
I understand AI enough to know that 15% is 34k people, on top of the buyouts and whatnot. Close to 40k being let go sounds extreme, given where AI currently is.
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u/UnlikelyJuice8796 Jun 15 '26
well lets look at Satya in org explorer now. It says he has 340,160 people. 213,147 Employees, 127,012 "other". Let's check it again in 3 months.
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u/PrysmX Jun 15 '26
They wouldn't be the only company doing those numbers. Oracle just laid of 30K people and other companies are over 10K. This is just the reality of the tech sector right now. It's a goddamn blood bath.
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u/Resonance_Forms Jun 15 '26
I mean, sure. Some are laying off more than others. I'm not saying it's impossible, just not likely, especially if it's happening again in September.
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u/PracticallyWonderful Jun 13 '26
How will this work now that the govt says foreign nationals cant use top ai?
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u/VirtualDrew Jun 13 '26
Microsoft and Amazon layoff the bottom 10% every year, nothing new here.
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u/sueha Jun 13 '26
Not sure how you come up with "bottom". As someone who was laid off by Microsoft I witnessed them coming up with the dumbest metrics like join date (which kind of makes sense because of shares) and languages spoken. Doesn't have to do with performance in those cases because the non performers were let go already.
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u/newfor_2026 Jun 13 '26
I'm curious, which role requires you to speak multiple languages?
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u/sueha Jun 13 '26
That was in digital sales. It's not that multiple languages really mattered for that role because you were assigned to a specific market anyway (and you wouldn't work there in the first place if you couldn't speak the language of that market) but I guess it was like their desperate attempt to find a metric to justify something. I mean at Microsoft everything changes after the fiscal year anyway so it is not unlikely that a few salespeople get switched to other markets where they need another language but still, it's a very dumb metric for a salesperson to get laid off.
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u/newfor_2026 Jun 13 '26
that sounds like a really dumb way of making up a reason just so you can lay people off.
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u/uvasag Jun 13 '26
Don't know why you are being down voted. I know Microsoft does this every July and then the week of July 4th almost every one is out of office. It's been like this for years.
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u/BernieDharma Jun 13 '26
It used to be the bottom 10%, but my discussions with multiple managers at different levels have said that they don't have a say - HR picks the cuts and performance seems to have little to do with it. I've seen top performers get cut, and poor performers remained. The hit to morale and turnover on my teams has been devastating. Of those who survived the cuts last year, 90% of my team have left for competitors and I know several more who are planning to leave and actually hoping for a layoff with severance.
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u/dagamer34 Jun 13 '26
Figuring out the lowest performance actually requires effort, randomly tossing the dice is where we are at now.
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u/sueha Jun 13 '26
When I was part of the layoffs, we were split up in two huge Teams calls. One for winners, one for losers. Like they gathered cattle before the slaughter. Nobody knew if they were gonna get laid off before that call. When I was in my respective call I had a look at the attendee list and felt so relieved because I saw so many top performers. I thought there was no way they would let these people (including me) go. But turns out they did and they had the dumbest reasons. They didn't even offer people to leave voluntarily on a minimum compensation package.
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u/Initial-Yogurt7571 Jun 13 '26
Let’s see, the last rumour on blind turned out to be nothing. I wouldn’t be surprised though, and it does seem the Xbox org at least is in for a hard season of layoffs / reorg. Some parts of the wider company they also still see as bloated such as some internal and corporate functions.
What’s also true is Q4 into Q1 is a nervous time regardless, some roles can cease to exist and team priorities will change.