Microsoft is cutting more workers in another major round of layoffs at the company this year.
The company said it is making cuts affecting less than 4% of its total workforce. That would be around 9,000 employees based on its head count of around 220,000 employees.
Multiple employees confirmed to Business Insider that the layoffs have begun. One affected employee said they have until July 8 to sign a severance agreement, after which they'll receive 60 days of paid leave.
"We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company and teams for success in a dynamic marketplace," a Microsoft spokesperson told BI in a statement.
The spokesperson said the company is focused on reducing layers with fewer managers and streamlining processes, products, procedures, and roles to become more efficient.
A current employee told BI that cuts to the sales organization were expected after the company said it would consolidate sales "solutions areas." BI previously reported on the internal slides that detail those changes.
The latest cuts come months after Microsoft in May announced layoffs affecting about 6,000 workers.
Executives previously told BI that those layoffs were intended to reduce the number of middle managers and increase the ratio of coders to non-coders on projects as Microsoft aimed to grow its "span of control," or the number of employees who report to each manager. But those cuts also ended up including many individual-contributor-level engineers. A spokesperson told BI at the time that those cuts were not performance-driven.
It's not just Microsoft. Many of its Big Tech peers are making similar cuts to flatten management levels and become leaner in the name of efficiency.
Google recently cut vice president and manager roles by 10%. Amazon has been working on increasing the ratio of individual contributors to managers.
Besides managers, Microsoft and Meta have also recently cracked down on workers they deemed "low performers."
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