Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Update: Microsoft denies plans to cut tens of thousands of jobs in its engineering and human resources departments. A Microsoft spokesman denied the claim in an email to tech blog Gizmodo, saying reports that the company was about to lay off workers were "rumors". "like all companies, we regularly evaluate our business priorities and make structural adjustments accordingly," the spokesman said. "

According to a number of media reports, software giant Microsoft is preparing thousands of layoffs on January 18, Beijing time. This is the latest layoff measure taken by the global technology giant in the face of the global economic slowdown.

Microsoft is likely to announce plans to cut a large number of jobs around the world in the next few days, according to Sky News. Microsoft has more than 220000 employees, including 6000 in the UK. Microsoft is said to be considering layoffs of about 5%, which, if accurate, would be equivalent to about 11000 jobs. As of Tuesday night local time, Sky News could not confirm the layoffs. One analyst said Wall Street would be surprised if the number of layoffs was not higher than that.

According to other media reports, people familiar with the matter revealed that Microsoft plans to lay off staff in several engineering departments on Wednesday. The exact scale of the layoffs is unclear, but it will far exceed Microsoft's other layoffs over the past year. The previous layoffs affected less than 1% of Microsoft's more than 200,000 employees.

Recently, Microsoft made layoffs in July and October last year, cancelled job openings in several departments and suspended recruitment. While technology peers such as Amazon, Facebook's parent Meta platform and Salesforce have announced thousands of job cuts in the past few months, Microsoft has so far taken smaller steps to deal with the deteriorating global economic outlook and the possibility of a long-term slowdown in demand for software and services.

Microsoft will release its third-quarter results next week. If Microsoft's layoff plan is finalized, it may be announced before Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Satya Nadella) informs investors of the company's financial results on January 24. Microsoft's third-quarter sales are expected to grow by 2%, the slowest revenue growth since fiscal year 2017. Microsoft's cloud computing business has driven a recovery in growth since fiscal year 2017, but even that business has begun to slow over the past year.

Microsoft declined to comment. Microsoft shares were up 0.47% as of Tuesday's close and have fallen 23% over the past year.

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