Microsoft layoffs hit its Silicon Valley workforce
Microsoft is slashing its Silicon Valley workforce.
The tech giant, which is based in Washington but also has Bay Area offices, is cutting 122 positions in Silicon Valley, according to a layoff notice sent to the California Employment Development Department this week.
Microsoft cited a reorganization and restructuring within the company as the reason for the job cuts.
Bay Area Microsoft employees, who will lose their jobs in July, were working remotely or out of offices in Mountain View and Santa Clara, Calif. Microsoft also owns LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, that is based in Sunnyvale.
The layoffs in California make up a fraction of the 6,000 workers the Redmond-based tech company is cutting. Microsoft said Tuesday that it's shedding roughly 3% of its global workforce, making it one of the company's largest job cuts in two years. It's the latest in a series of layoffs that continue to rattle the tech industry since 2022.
Read more: Bay Area tech workers thought their jobs were safe. Then the 'golden handcuffs' came off
The job cuts come as the rise of artificial intelligence, which can also generate code, is raising questions about how technology will impact software engineers and other workers.
Software engineering roles made up 53% of Microsoft's job cuts in Silicon Valley, according to data provided to the EDD. Positions in product management, applied sciences, electrical engineering and other fields were also eliminated.
In April, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said that as much as 30% of the company's code is written by AI during a conversation with Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg at the social network's AI developer conference.
Zuckerberg has also said that he thinks AI will be able to write code like a mid-level engineer in 2025.
As Microsoft competes with other major tech companies such as Google and Meta to release more popular AI-powered tools, the company said it's trying to increase how fast it moves by reducing the number of managers.
'We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace," Jeff Jones, a Microsoft spokesperson, said in a statement.
The company also said it's trying to reduce redundancies while also empowering employees to spend time on more meaningful work by leveraging technology.
As of June, Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers and more than half of those workers were in the United States, the company's annual report said.
Microsoft reported revenue of $70 billion for the third quarter of its fiscal year ending in March, a 13% increase compared to the same period last year. The company's net income was $26 billion, up 16% year over year.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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