Microsoft said to announce 700 layoffs alongside quarterly earnings next week

While the last year seems to have been a positive one overall for Microsoft, with the company debuting interesting new hardware, such as the Surface Studio, alongside the growth of its software, including Windows 10. However, it appears Microsoft still has plans to follow through with last summer’s promise to slash almost 3,000 jobs, with 700 layoffs said to be announced next week alongside the company’s quarterly earnings report on January 26th.

These latest job cuts were reported by Business Insider, which cites an unnamed source familiar with the matter. Back in June 2016, Microsoft said it would eliminate 2,850 jobs from its 113,000 workforce by the end of June 2017. While most of those layoffs have already been issued, this additional 700 is still part of that total.

The source notes that the layoffs won’t come from any specific department of the company, but rather be applied to a number of units, including sales, human resources, marketing, finance, and engineering, and more.

Interestingly, Microsoft currently has over 1,600 job openings posted on LinkedIn. It’s believed that these latest layoffs aren’t an attempt to reduce costs or shrink the workforce, but are about updating the company’s skills across various departments.

SOURCE Business Insider