Microsoft is reportedly set to cut thousands of jobs worldwide, becoming the latest tech giant after Amazon, Meta and Twitter to announce mass layoffs in recent months.
Sky News reports, citing sources, that Microsoft plans to cut around 5% of its global workforce, or around 11,000 jobs. The cuts would equate to around 175 jobs losses in Ireland, where the company employs around 3,500 people.
Bloomberg has reported that the firm plans to cut jobs in a number of engineering divisions on Wednesday, while Insider has said Microsoft could cut recruiting staff by a much as a third.
The group has around 221,000 full-time employees worldwide, and its Irish staff are based in areas including operations, sales, engineering and product development.
It remains unclear whether LinkedIn, the professional social networking site owned by Microsoft, will be affected by the reported layoffs.
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The news follows decisions by Amazon to cut 18,000 staff worldwide, by Facebook owner Meta to layoff 11,000 staff, and Elon Musk's decision to make redundant around half of Twitter's 7,500 staff.
The likes of Irish-founded payments firm Stripe, and Irish-based tech multinationals such as Salesforce, Zendesk and Intercom have also announced mass layoffs, citing an expected economic slowdown and overhiring during the pandemic.
Of the 221,000 Microsoft staff worldwide as of last June, 122,000 were based in the US and a further 99,000 were based internationally.
Some 85,000 worked in operations, including manufacturing, distribution, product support, and consulting services, while 73,000 were in product research and development, 47,000 in sales and marketing, and 16,000 in general and administration.
For the 12 months to end of last June, Microsoft reported revenues of $198.3bn and comprehensive income of $66.2bn, up from $168.1bn and $59.9bn a year earlier, respectively. The company had stockholder equity of $166.5bn.
Microsoft has come under pressure to maintain growth in its Azure cloud computing unit after several slow quarters in the personal computer market hurt sales of Windows computers and other devices.
Microsoft declined to comment on the reports. Shares of Microsoft, which is set to report quarterly results on 24 January, were marginally higher in late afternoon trading.
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