Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 employees

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees across the US, UK, Canada, and India. In a message to employees, Microsoft chief people officer Amy Coleman writes that this gives staff members “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources” as the company looks to trim staff without another round of layoffs.

Sources familiar with the situation tell The Verge that staffers across Microsoft are eligible for the voluntary exit offers, including those in its AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance, and human resources teams. Microsoft’s cloud + AI, MicrosoftAI teams, and corporate, external, and legal affairs are partially participating, the sources say. Meanwhile, employees on Microsoft’s marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security teams aren’t participating.

The voluntary exit offers come just months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 employees, a move that primarily impacted its Xbox and commercial sales teams. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is also planning new rounds of layoffs, according to a report from Fortune.

This voluntary exit offer doesn’t target Microsoft’s commercial sales teams, and it’s also very different to the previous voluntary retirement program that the company offered long-serving employees earlier this year. That previous offer was only available to around 9,000 employees, for US employees at a certain employee level whose combined years of service added to their age totaled 70 or more.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman writes in a memo to employees. “We’ll learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.”

In a note posted to Microsoft’s internal HRweb site, seen by The Verge, the company says today’s offer isn’t based on age, length of service, or performance. Microsoft also says it may consider a future voluntary exit offer “where there is a business and workforce need.”