Microsoft to Lay Off 10k People
Remember this next week.
Jason Schreier on Twitter (and Bloomberg):
Microsoft is laying off 10,000 people today, including in its gaming divisions such as Xbox and Bethesda. This mass layoff arrives exactly one year after Microsoft announced plans to purchase Activision Blizzard for $69 billion.
In exactly one week's time Microsoft is holding their first big gaming event of the year, The Xbox and Bethesda Developer_Direct. Their own blog post states the showcase will be "presented by the game creators themselves," which now feels morbid in the face of today's report.
Remember this news when the executives on stage talk about how they couldn't do it without their teams, and the money they took home last year despite knowing what was coming just a few weeks later:
I genuinely do not understand how it is legal for a company to fire 10,000 employees while awarding everyone in the C-suite millions of dollars in awards.
— Mitch Dyer (@MitchyD) January 18, 2023
Psychotic and embarrassing.
My heart goes out to those affected.