The tech industry has had a turbulent day, with a total of around 28,000 jobs at Amazon and Microsoft being laid off on Wednesday. More than 10,000 employees fall back on the Windows group alone and developer studios such as Bethesda, Xbox or 343 Industries are said to be affected.
Microsoft CEO confirms thousands of layoffs
in one Newsletter to the staff Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the 10,000 layoffs would occur from Jan. 18 through the end of the third quarter of fiscal 2023. The CEO put the cost of severance pay and the like at around $1.2 billion.
Nadella justified the job cuts with the adjustments Microsoft made in response to the pandemic, a looming recession and advances in AI technology.
Since 2019, Microsoft around 75,000 new employees were hiredin order to be able to serve the increased demand for online services and cloud computing caused by the corona pandemic.
Game developers also affected by layoffs
Nadella himself does not provide any details in his newsletter as to which departments within Microsoft are affected. According to industry insider Jason Schreier, various developer studios such as Xbox and Bethesda should also be included.
In particular, Halo developer 343 Industries is said to be there badly hit
as Schreier announced on Twitter:
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Microsoft won’t give exact numbers, but several employees have told me that 343 Industries has been badly affected. This is the result of a prolonged hiring freeze and a large number of contractor departures.
343’s Halo Infinite campaign team seems to have been hit hard. In an email to staff, studio head Pierre Hintze wrote that “we have made the difficult decision to restructure parts of our team, which means some roles will be axed”.
link to Podcast Content
This large wave of layoffs is currently not the only major problem at Microsoft: The planned takeover of the publisher Activision-Blizzard, which is expected to cost almost 70 billion dollars, is certainly not going as planned.
Regulatory authorities from the USA and Great Britain had expressed major antitrust concerns, and the EU is also said to have issued a warning. In the podcast we explain why the deal for Microsoft would be a gamble anyway – just click the play button above to listen!
