MOUNTAIN VIEW — Microsoft has launched a wrenching round of job cuts that include the loss of dozens of Silicon Valley positions in the early stages of the tech titan’s huge staffing reductions, a state filing shows.
The Windows creator has decided to eliminate 46 jobs at locations in Mountain View and Santa Clara, according to a WARN letter sent to the state Employment Development Department. Microsoft operates a big Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View.
“Microsoft has decided to reorganize and restructure operations … at Microsoft facilities in the Silicon Valley region,” DeLee Shoemaker, Microsoft’s general manager for U.S. state and local government affairs, wrote in the WARN letter, which was dated Jan. 18.
In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Redmond, Wa.-based Microsoft stated that multiple factors had fueled the layoffs.
“Microsoft Corp. announced to its employees a series of actions it is taking in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities,” the company said in the SEC filing.
The actions include the elimination of thousands of jobs, a product revamp and a scaling back of its office space requirements, Microsoft told the federal regulators.
“These actions include workforce reductions of approximately 10,000 employees by the end of the third fiscal quarter of 2023, changes to our hardware portfolio, and lease consolidation to create higher density across our workspaces,” Microsoft stated.
The Mountain View and Santa Clara job cuts were slated to occur by March 23 of this year, the company stated in the letter to the EDD, known as a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification.
During the coronavirus outbreak and resulting business lockdowns, companies, government agencies and consumers raced to grab software, Internet and hardware products and services to help them cope with remote activities.
Now that the economic effects of the deadly bug have begun to fade, people are scaling back their dependence on tech, Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive officer, wrote in a blog post sent to company workers on Wednesday.
“As we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimize their digital spend to do more with less,” Nadella said in the blog post.
Plus, the company’s customers have begun to retrench as they brace for an economic downturn both in the United States and worldwide.
“We’re also seeing organizations in every industry and geography exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one,” Nadella wrote in the post.
The Seattle area, where Microsoft has its world headquarters, is being particularly hard hit by the first wave of Microsoft layoffs.
Microsoft notified Washington state officials that it had decided to eliminate 878 jobs in the Washington state cities of Redmond, Bellevue and Issaquah.
The job cuts in Silicon Valley are slated to occur at 1045 and 1090 La Avenida Street in Mountain View, 1288 Pear Avenue in Mountain View and 2220 De La Cruz Boulevard in Santa Clara.
“Microsoft’s decision to eliminate the 46 positions located at the above-referenced locations is final and is expected to be permanent,” the company stated in the WARN notice regarding the Bay Area job cuts.
The employees affected by the Mountain View and Santa Clara job cuts don’t have bumping rights, which allow senior workers to displace junior employees.
“The Silicon Valley region facilities are not being closed as a result of this decision,” Microsoft stated in the WARN letter.
Source: www.mercurynews.com