Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 staff as it spends heavily on AI

CNBC reports Microsoft announced a voluntary exit offer on 26 October for certain workers in the US, Canada, India and the United Kingdom at experience level 70 or below. About 60,000 people are eligible, about 27% of its 223,000 staff, according to a person familiar with the matter. Staff must decide in early December and those who accept leave on 31 December. It follows a voluntary retirement programme in April and a layoff of 4,800 in July, as Microsoft's capital spending on data centres is set to exceed $50 billion for the September quarter.

• If you hire, more experienced people from large tech firms may be looking for work from January, and think about which of your jobs an experienced person with AI skills could do.
• If your own job could be affected by AI, note which parts of it only you can do and which are repeat tasks an AI tool already handles, and learn that tool first.

Source: CNBC. This is our short summary of their reporting. The paragraphs marked "Our read" and the things to do are SeedFoundry's opinion. The summary is drafted with AI tools. Image: Microsoft, from its own announcement. How we source and credit