Microsoft is laying off ‘thousands’ of staff
Microsoft is laying off ‘thousands’ of staff in a major
global sales reorganization
Posted Jul 2, 2017 by Jon Russell (@jonrussell)
Microsoft is poised to layoff thousands of employees
worldwide in a move to reorganize its salesforce.
A source with knowledge of the planned downsizing told
TechCrunch that the U.S. firm would lay off “thousands” of staff across the
world. The restructuring is set to include an organizational merger that
involves its enterprise customer unit and one or more of its SME-focused
divisions. The changes are set to be announced this coming week, we understand.
Microsoft declined to comment.
Earlier this weekend, the Puget Sound Business Journal,
Bloomberg and The Seattle Times all reported ‘major’ layoffs related to a move
to increase the emphasis on cloud services within Microsoft’s sales teams
worldwide. Bloomberg said the redundancies would be “some of the most
significant in the sales force in years.”
The reorganization looks to be a result of a change of leadership
this past year. Executives Judson Althoff and Jean-Philippe Courtois took
charge of Microsoft’s sales and marketing divisions following the exit of
long-serving COO Kevin Turner last summer. Althoff, for one, has been public in
his criticism of previous sales approaches, and he is keen to make Azure a
central part of the focus.
At any rate, the time is right for change, historically.
The end of Microsoft’s fiscal year typically falls in July, and it recent years
it has been a time when the firm has announced headcount reductions.
Last year, Microsoft announced that it would cut 2,850
jobs — including at least 900 from its sales group, according to The Seattle
Times — having two months earlier said it would let go of 1,850 staff related
to its smartphone business. In July 2015, it made 7,800 job cuts and wrote down
$7.6 billion of its Nokia acquisition.
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