Latest news with #Nadella
India.com
a day ago
- Business
- India.com
Microsoft sacks 6000 workers; CEO Satya Nadella explains reason, says...
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the layoffs were not about job performance. (File) Microsoft Layoffs: Microsoft recently cut nearly 3 percent of its global workforce, sacking nearly 6,000 employees worldwide, and now the tech giant's CEO Satya Nadella has come forward to explain the reasons behind the latest round of Microsoft layoffs. Addressing a company-wide townhall, Nadella asserted that the layoffs were driven by an internal reorganisation by the company, not employee performance. Job cuts about AI push, not performance 'This was about reorganisation rather than performance,' the CEO told Microsoft employees, while stating that the tech titan is working on realigning its priorities to focus more heavily on artificial intelligence (AI), where it believes the future lies. Speaking at the company town hall meet, Microsoft Chief Product Officer (CPO) Aparna Chennapragada said she disagrees with the notion that studying coding or computer science is becoming obsolete with the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI). 'I fundamentally disagree with the notion that people should not study computer science or that coding is dead,' she stated. Notably, Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest a staggering $80 billion in 2025 to develop more AI infrastructure, aimed at expanding the company's AI capabilities and rolling out its Copilot AI assistants across various platforms and services. However, this shift in priorities is threatening various roles within the company, especially in product development and engineering, which are being restructured or gradually phased out. Microsoft layoffs Earlier this month, reports emerged that Microsoft, the world's most valuable company with a market cap of $3.41 trillion, had laid off about 6,000 workers globally, which is nearly 3% of its global workforce. The latest round of Microsoft layoffs is the company's largest after it sacked more than 10,000 workers last year. However, while the earlier jobs cuts were driven by employee performance, the latest layoffs are a result of Microsoft's shifting focus towards AI, which involves cutting jobs in several areas which have become redundant with the rise of AI automation, especially in coding and program maintenance.
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Microsoft layoffs: What CEO Satya Nadella told employees in town hall on layoffs that left 6,000 jobless
Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella has spoken out for the first time following the company's recent decision to cut approximately 6,000 jobs — about three per cent of its global workforce — emphasising that the move was part of a broader internal restructuring and not a reflection of employee performance. Addressing staff during a companywide town hall meeting, Nadella said the layoffs were necessary to realign teams in accordance with Microsoft's evolving priorities, particularly its growing focus on artificial intelligence. He acknowledged the emotional toll of the decision but underscored that it was driven by strategic shifts, not shortcomings in productivity or talent. You may be interested in The job cuts have disproportionately affected engineering roles — a notable development given the traditional perception of these positions as secure. The move highlights a shift in the tech industry, where even product development teams are being reshaped amid the accelerating integration of AI technologies. During the same internal event, executives highlighted Microsoft's significant momentum in selling AI tools to enterprise customers. Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff revealed that British banking giant Barclays has committed to purchasing 100,000 licences for Microsoft Copilot — the company's flagship AI assistant. Althoff also noted that several major global firms, including Accenture, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Siemens, now each have over 100,000 users of Copilot within their organisations. Nadella stressed the importance of tracking how deeply Copilot is embedded across client operations, with Microsoft paying close attention to the proportion of users actively engaging with the tool. At a list price of $30 per user per month, the scale of these contracts suggests annual revenues in the tens of millions of dollars — although actual figures are likely reduced by bulk pricing agreements. The developments reflect Microsoft's pivot toward enterprise AI as a key growth area, even as the company trims its workforce to maintain efficiency and focus.
Mint
a day ago
- Business
- Mint
Microsoft layoffs: What CEO Satya Nadella told employees in town hall
Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella has spoken out for the first time following the company's recent decision to cut approximately 6,000 jobs — about three per cent of its global workforce — emphasising that the move was part of a broader internal restructuring and not a reflection of employee performance. Addressing staff during a companywide town hall meeting, Nadella said the layoffs were necessary to realign teams in accordance with Microsoft's evolving priorities, particularly its growing focus on artificial intelligence. He acknowledged the emotional toll of the decision but underscored that it was driven by strategic shifts, not shortcomings in productivity or talent. You may be interested in The job cuts have disproportionately affected engineering roles — a notable development given the traditional perception of these positions as secure. The move highlights a shift in the tech industry, where even product development teams are being reshaped amid the accelerating integration of AI technologies. During the same internal event, executives highlighted Microsoft's significant momentum in selling AI tools to enterprise customers. Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff revealed that British banking giant Barclays has committed to purchasing 100,000 licences for Microsoft Copilot — the company's flagship AI assistant. Althoff also noted that several major global firms, including Accenture, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Siemens, now each have over 100,000 users of Copilot within their organisations. Nadella stressed the importance of tracking how deeply Copilot is embedded across client operations, with Microsoft paying close attention to the proportion of users actively engaging with the tool. At a list price of $30 per user per month, the scale of these contracts suggests annual revenues in the tens of millions of dollars — although actual figures are likely reduced by bulk pricing agreements. The developments reflect Microsoft's pivot toward enterprise AI as a key growth area, even as the company trims its workforce to maintain efficiency and focus. (With inputs from Bloomberg)
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Is AI leading to reduced jobs? What it means for software engineers
The debate over whether the use of artificial intelligence tools is leading to fewer roles for software engineers and coders has been ongoing for over a year. While some initially argued that AI would augment the average worker's efficiency rather than replace them, it seems the latter is becoming a reality—at least in big tech. The latest company to join this trend is Salesforce, which now says its internal use of AI tools has enabled it to hire fewer employees, particularly engineers and customer service workers. This appears to be becoming the norm among large tech firms, offering a clearer indication of the impact AI could have on jobs for software developers, coders, and engineers. Chief Financial and Operations Officer Robin Washington told Bloomberg in an interview that the company is hiring fewer software engineers due to productivity gains from artificial intelligence. 'We view these as assistants, but they are going to allow us to hire fewer people and, hopefully, make our existing team more productive,' she said. As millions of students around the world, particularly in India, prepare to become software engineers—and many even consider studying abroad for their master's degrees—their chances of landing a job at the world's biggest tech companies are beginning to look slimmer, all thanks to AI. Initially, AI tools from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Salesforce, which have been rolled out over the past few months, were seen as a way to boost productivity and improve efficiency. But now, it seems that those in the tech industry may be among the most vulnerable to displacement by AI. 'Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption,' LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. 'Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder.' Hiring hasn't come to a complete halt, but there's growing chatter that getting a first job in tech—especially fresh out of college—is becoming increasingly difficult. Leaders at tech companies all indicated in recent months that AI is indeed taking over jobs. With Salesforce now openly admitting that its hiring has been reduced due to AI, it's becoming clear that more tech companies are beginning to rely on artificial intelligence over human labor for certain tasks. At Microsoft, engineers are using AI to write 20% to 30% of code for company projects, CEO Satya Nadella said last month at Meta's LlamaCon conference. In a conversation with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nadella noted that the exact percentage of AI-generated code varies by programming language. He said AI writes 'fantastic' Python code, though its C++ capabilities are 'not that great.' Nadella also shared that Microsoft is increasingly relying on more advanced AI agents—software programs that perform complex tasks without human assistance—to review code. As for Meta, Zuckerberg said he isn't sure exactly how much code AI is currently writing, but the company plans to use AI for half of its software development within the next year. 'That will just kind of increase from there,' he said. On a podcast with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg stated that Meta is developing AI that can write code at the level of a mid-level engineer. He added that the company plans to have 'a lot' of its code 'built by AI engineers instead of people engineers' this year. At Google, CEO Sundar Pichai said on an earnings call last month that the company was using AI to write 'well over 30%' of new code—up from 25% in October. He also noted that employees are increasingly accepting AI-suggested code. 'I still see it as early days, and there's going to be a lot more to do,' Pichai said. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also acknowledged that AI is already writing code. In just 12 months, 'we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,' he said during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year. In fact, Amodei predicted that in just three to six months, AI could be writing 90% of all new code. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn is another executive embracing the shift, noting that the company will replace many of its human contract workers with AI. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot were initially seen as tools for basic tasks such as rephrasing sentences or fixing grammar. But as these LLMs grow more powerful, they are increasingly being used to write full code. OpenAI recently released Codex, an AI coding engine within ChatGPT, powered by its codex-1 model—an optimized version of its o3 AI reasoning model designed specifically for software engineering tasks. Similarly, Google has introduced Gemini Code Assist, a code-review agent that automatically identifies bugs and offers suggestions within GitHub. Code Assist allows developers to interact with a Google AI model in natural language to access and edit their codebase—much like GitHub's popular Copilot tool. The impact of AI is real—particularly on entry-level tech jobs. SignalFire, a venture capital firm that analyses job movements across over 650 million employees and 80 million companies on LinkedIn, reported last week that major tech companies—including Meta, Microsoft, and Google—recruited fewer recent graduates in 2024 compared to previous years. New graduates accounted for just 7% of new hires in 2024, down 25% from 2023 and over 50% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. At startups, the rate of new graduate hiring dropped from 30% in 2019 to under 6% in 2024. While big tech companies are spending billions of dollars to build AI infrastructure, layoffs continue. So far this year, more than 62,114 tech workers have been laid off from both large and small tech firms, according to the independent tracker Anuj Bhatia is a personal technology writer at who has been covering smartphones, personal computers, gaming, apps, and lifestyle tech actively since 2011. He specialises in writing longer-form feature articles and explainers on trending tech topics. His unique interests encompass delving into vintage tech, retro gaming and composing in-depth narratives on the intersection of history, technology, and popular culture. He covers major international tech conferences and product launches from the world's biggest and most valuable tech brands including Apple, Google and others. At the same time, he also extensively covers indie, home-grown tech startups. Prior to joining The Indian Express in late 2016, he served as a senior tech writer at My Mobile magazine and previously held roles as a reviewer and tech writer at Gizbot. Anuj holds a postgraduate degree from Banaras Hindu University. You can find Anuj on Linkedin. Email: ... Read More
Indian Express
3 days ago
- Business
- Indian Express
Salesforce joins other large tech companies in citing AI as reason for fewer engineering hires.
The debate over whether the use of artificial intelligence tools is leading to fewer roles for software engineers and coders has been ongoing for over a year. While some initially argued that AI would augment the average worker's efficiency rather than replace them, it seems the latter is becoming a reality—at least in big tech. The latest company to join this trend is Salesforce, which now says its internal use of AI tools has enabled it to hire fewer employees, particularly engineers and customer service workers. This appears to be becoming the norm among large tech firms, offering a clearer indication of the impact AI could have on jobs for software developers, coders, and engineers. Chief Financial and Operations Officer Robin Washington told Bloomberg in an interview that the company is hiring fewer software engineers due to productivity gains from artificial intelligence. 'We view these as assistants, but they are going to allow us to hire fewer people and, hopefully, make our existing team more productive,' she said. As millions of students around the world, particularly in India, prepare to become software engineers—and many even consider studying abroad for their master's degrees—their chances of landing a job at the world's biggest tech companies are beginning to look slimmer, all thanks to AI. Initially, AI tools from companies like OpenAI, Google, and Salesforce, which have been rolled out over the past few months, were seen as a way to boost productivity and improve efficiency. But now, it seems that those in the tech industry may be among the most vulnerable to displacement by AI. 'Now it is our office workers who are staring down the same kind of technological and economic disruption,' LinkedIn's chief economic opportunity officer, Aneesh Raman, wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. 'Breaking first is the bottom rung of the career ladder.' Hiring hasn't come to a complete halt, but there's growing chatter that getting a first job in tech—especially fresh out of college—is becoming increasingly difficult. Leaders at tech companies all indicated in recent months that AI is indeed taking over jobs. With Salesforce now openly admitting that its hiring has been reduced due to AI, it's becoming clear that more tech companies are beginning to rely on artificial intelligence over human labor for certain tasks. At Microsoft, engineers are using AI to write 20% to 30% of code for company projects, CEO Satya Nadella said last month at Meta's LlamaCon conference. In a conversation with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Nadella noted that the exact percentage of AI-generated code varies by programming language. He said AI writes 'fantastic' Python code, though its C++ capabilities are 'not that great.' Nadella also shared that Microsoft is increasingly relying on more advanced AI agents—software programs that perform complex tasks without human assistance—to review code. As for Meta, Zuckerberg said he isn't sure exactly how much code AI is currently writing, but the company plans to use AI for half of its software development within the next year. 'That will just kind of increase from there,' he said. On a podcast with Joe Rogan in January, Zuckerberg stated that Meta is developing AI that can write code at the level of a mid-level engineer. He added that the company plans to have 'a lot' of its code 'built by AI engineers instead of people engineers' this year. At Google, CEO Sundar Pichai said on an earnings call last month that the company was using AI to write 'well over 30%' of new code—up from 25% in October. He also noted that employees are increasingly accepting AI-suggested code. 'I still see it as early days, and there's going to be a lot more to do,' Pichai said. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also acknowledged that AI is already writing code. In just 12 months, 'we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,' he said during a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations earlier this year. In fact, Amodei predicted that in just three to six months, AI could be writing 90% of all new code. Duolingo CEO Luis von Ahn is another executive embracing the shift, noting that the company will replace many of its human contract workers with AI. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot were initially seen as tools for basic tasks such as rephrasing sentences or fixing grammar. But as these LLMs grow more powerful, they are increasingly being used to write full code. OpenAI recently released Codex, an AI coding engine within ChatGPT, powered by its codex-1 model—an optimized version of its o3 AI reasoning model designed specifically for software engineering tasks. Similarly, Google has introduced Gemini Code Assist, a code-review agent that automatically identifies bugs and offers suggestions within GitHub. Code Assist allows developers to interact with a Google AI model in natural language to access and edit their codebase—much like GitHub's popular Copilot tool. The impact of AI is real—particularly on entry-level tech jobs. SignalFire, a venture capital firm that analyses job movements across over 650 million employees and 80 million companies on LinkedIn, reported last week that major tech companies—including Meta, Microsoft, and Google—recruited fewer recent graduates in 2024 compared to previous years. New graduates accounted for just 7% of new hires in 2024, down 25% from 2023 and over 50% from pre-pandemic levels in 2019. At startups, the rate of new graduate hiring dropped from 30% in 2019 to under 6% in 2024. While big tech companies are spending billions of dollars to build AI infrastructure, layoffs continue. So far this year, more than 62,114 tech workers have been laid off from both large and small tech firms, according to the independent tracker Anuj Bhatia is a personal technology writer at who has been covering smartphones, personal computers, gaming, apps, and lifestyle tech actively since 2011. He specialises in writing longer-form feature articles and explainers on trending tech topics. His unique interests encompass delving into vintage tech, retro gaming and composing in-depth narratives on the intersection of history, technology, and popular culture. He covers major international tech conferences and product launches from the world's biggest and most valuable tech brands including Apple, Google and others. At the same time, he also extensively covers indie, home-grown tech startups. Prior to joining The Indian Express in late 2016, he served as a senior tech writer at My Mobile magazine and previously held roles as a reviewer and tech writer at Gizbot. Anuj holds a postgraduate degree from Banaras Hindu University. You can find Anuj on Linkedin. Email: ... Read More
