Microsoft will lay off several thousand additional people after a first wave in May, the group told AFP on Wednesday, in particular by reducing certain hierarchical levels.
“The total impact represents less than 4% of the workforce,” according to a spokesperson, or up to around 9,000 employees, based on a total workforce of 228,000 people, according to the latest annual report.
“We continue to make organizational changes necessary for the favorable positioning of the company and its teams in a changing market context,” explained the spokesperson.
In mid-May, the Redmond (Washington State) group had already unveiled a social plan covering “less than 3%” of staff, or around 6,000 people.
“We gain in agility by reducing the hierarchical levels,” said Microsoft which, according to several media, had already separated around 2,000 employees since the start of the year before these two series of job cuts.
Many make the link between this weight loss cure and the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) within the company, among the most advanced in this field.
At the end of April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that 20 to 30% of internal programming code was now written by AI.
Asked about the impact of artificial intelligence on its workforce, the group did not immediately respond.
Microsoft simply talks about “minimizing duplication by refining (its) processes, (its) products, (its) procedures and (its) functions”.
“We will enable employees to spend more time on meaningful tasks through the deployment of new technologies and features,” Microsoft described Wednesday.
