"If Your Age and Years of Service Total Over 70, Please Retire"... MS Implements First-Ever Voluntary Retirement Program

Reducing Jobs to Boost AI Investment
Meta, Amazon, and Other Big Tech Firms Also Cut Workforce

Microsoft (MS) is implementing its first-ever large-scale voluntary retirement program since its founding.

On April 23 (local time), US business media outlets such as CNBC reported that MS had recently announced a "one-time retirement program" for its US employees through an internal memo. This retirement program targets senior employees whose combined age and years of service total at least 70 and who are at or below the senior director level. For instance, an employee who is 50 years old and has worked at MS for 20 years would be eligible. It has been reported that approximately 7% of MS's US workforce falls under this category. MS has a global headcount of about 228,000, with around 125,000 employees in the US as of June last year.

Amy Coleman, MS Chief People Officer (CPO), stated in the memo that the company would reduce its workforce before the start of the new fiscal year in July this year. She added, "Some of the employees eligible for this voluntary retirement program have worked here for several decades and helped build the company," and emphasized, "We want to give them the opportunity to choose their next steps with our full support."

Foreign media have pointed out that this measure starkly highlights MS's current dilemma. While MS has been leading the artificial intelligence (AI) boom since late 2022 through its collaboration with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, the adoption rate of its core paid product '365 Copilot' remains at only about 3% of its 450 million 'MS 365' subscription users. In addition, the growth rate of its key revenue source, the cloud business, has slowed.

This measure is intended to restructure the company's cost structure to sustain its AI infrastructure expansion plans. Despite MS's massive investment in AI infrastructure, the speed at which it is recouping profits has fallen short of market expectations. Furthermore, MS's high level of technological dependence on OpenAI has also become a concern. Reflecting these issues, MS's stock price dropped by about 24% during February and March this year, marking its largest quarterly decline since the 2008 financial crisis. Among major US big tech companies, MS's stock performance has been particularly poor this year.

Meanwhile, other big tech companies are showing similar trends. On the same day, Meta announced a restructuring plan that will cut 7,800 employees—about 10% of its global workforce—and eliminate 6,000 job positions. Meta also plans to halt hiring for about 6,000 positions that are currently open. Amazon, for its part, reduced its workforce by about 30,000 jobs from late last year into early this year.

According to the website Layoffs.fyi, which tracks layoffs at technology companies, about 124,000 people lost their jobs last year, and the number of layoffs so far this year has reached approximately 73,000.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.