Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees
The company confirmed the offer to TechCrunch. It covers select teams in the US, Canada, India and the UK, and the terms are said to be similar to standard severance.
Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees, according to TechCrunch, which said the company confirmed the move on Monday. This story rests on that single report.
Microsoft's chief people officer, Amy Coleman, sent employees a note about the buyouts. TechCrunch said the note was also published on the company's website. According to the note, employees at the vice president level and below on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom are eligible.
TechCrunch, citing Bloomberg, reported that divisions including Xbox, Windows, Copilot and Finance are taking part. Some employees are excluded, including those who work in data centers, sales and marketing. TechCrunch said Business Insider was first to report the news.
Eligible employees were to receive an email on Monday with a link to the details of their Voluntary Exit Offer, the company said. According to TechCrunch, the terms will be similar to Microsoft's standard severance.
“"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support."”Note to Microsoft employees from Amy Coleman, chief people officer
The note also called the offer a first for the company. "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us," it reads. "We'll learn from it."
TechCrunch described the move as Microsoft's latest effort to cut costs and rework its workforce for the AI age. The outlet said a buyout lets the company shrink its workforce without turning to mass layoffs, which it called a more disruptive approach.
The scale is large. TechCrunch reported that Microsoft had 223,000 employees as of the end of June, which means roughly a quarter of the workforce could receive the offer. This is not the company's first buyout this year. Earlier in the year, Microsoft offered buyouts to retirement-age employees, and more than 30% of the roughly 8,750 eligible workers accepted, according to TechCrunch.
Several questions remain open. The report does not say how many employees Microsoft expects to accept, how long they have to decide, or what the payments will be beyond being similar to standard severance. Apart from the divisions Bloomberg named, it does not list every team included. It also does not say whether the company plans further workforce changes if fewer people than expected take the offer.
The note itself said there is "no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee," and that the company will keep helping people build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new roles inside Microsoft.
