Microsoft said on Monday it is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees under a new Voluntary Exit Offer for certain workers in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom at experience level 70 or below, which reaches the vice president level, CNBC reported. Some marketing, sales and engineering teams have decided not to participate, and Microsoft has no target for how many employees take the offer, according to the person familiar with the matter cited by CNBC. Employees must decide in December, and those who participate will leave on December 31.
Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in a memo to employees that the offer is part of how Microsoft is evolving its approach to change, creating greater flexibility and more ways for employees to shape their next chapter, building on an earlier voluntary retirement program in which more than 30 percent of eligible employees took part. TechCrunch reported that employees who accept will receive benefits similar to a standard severance package. CNBC framed the move as balancing the company’s artificial intelligence infrastructure buildout with capital efficiency, as data centre spending to serve customers including Anthropic and OpenAI strains its finances.