In May 2016, Microsoft announced 1,850 company officials would lose their jobs. Now, Microsoft is again laying off more employees.
In a July 28 10-K filing, Microsoft admitted it was planning to slash off more positions in the 2017 fiscal year that commenced on 1 July 2016. The 10-K filing stated that “Aside from the 1,850 job eliminations announced in May 2016, by the closing of the 2017 fiscal year, Microsoft will cut off 2,850 more job positions.” According to the 10-K filing, the job cuts are an extension of company’s initial job cut plan.
According to the filing, the MS Windows maker had 114,000 employees, 63,000 of which were in the US as of June 30. Microsoft, through one of its spokesperson, said it was not ready to give more information beyond what the filing stated. Also, the company is not willing to disclose how many employees it had already laid off.
The uncertainty of jobs in Microsoft employees started in 2015 when the company announced slashing 7,400 job positions by the end of the fiscal year 2016. Most of these employees were in the phones’ hardware division. Back then, Microsoft cited the $7.6 billion Nokia acquisition and the additional restructuring worth $850 million as the reasons for the job cuts.
The company hoped to complete most of the job cuts by the end of the calendar year 2015 and complete the job cuts by the end of the fiscal year 2016. Therefore, the 7,400 job cuts are complete.
Additionally, February 2016 saw the reduction of more jobs related to the company’s phone hardware department. The positioned slashed in February were not part of the 7,400 job cuts. As mentioned earlier, in May 2016, the company announced an additional 1,850 job cut. The 1,850 positions are not part of the 4,500 employees who are no longer at the company after the company sold its feature phone business to FIH Mobile.
Reports suggest that Microsoft notified the 2,850 employees who are going to lose their jobs in the 2017 fiscal year about their fate. (00 of those people received notifications early this month. The job cuts are part of Microsoft’s plan to restructure the sales department.
Meanwhile, Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner, will be leaving the company for a new position. Microsoft is to distribute his responsibilities among its chief executives. Microsoft is reorganising its sales department to speed up the change of focus to the cloud business.
