The layoffs, far larger than cuts by Microsoft last year, pile on to tens of thousands of job cuts across the tech sector.

The layoffs, announced on Wednesday and far larger than cuts by Microsoft last year, piled on to tens of thousands of job cuts across the technology sector that is long past its ceaseless growth during the pandemic.

The news was particularly dramatic coming from Microsoft, a software maker heavily invested in generative artificial intelligence that represents an industry bright spot.

However, Microsoft will cut far fewer jobs than it had added during the COVID-19 pandemic as it responded to a boom in demand for its workplace software and cloud computing services with so many people working and studying from home.

Microsoft’s workforce expanded by about 36 percent in the two fiscal years following the emergence of the pandemic, growing from 163,000 workers at the end of June 2020, to 221,000 in June 2022.

In a note to employees, chief executive Satya Nadella said the layoffs, affecting less than 5 percent of the workforce, would conclude by the end of March, with notifications beginning on Wednesday.

The timing corresponded with the date its rival Amazon.com Inc said more employees will be notified in its own 18,000-person layoffs.

Nadella said customers wanted to “optimize their digital spend to do more with less” and “exercise caution as some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one”.

Another company serving enterprises, Palantir Technologies Inc, said this week that reducing cloud spending was a top-10 priority of its customers.

‘Rip the band-aid off’

In addition to severance costs, Microsoft would take a billion-dollar charge from changes to its lineup of hardware products and from consolidating leases “as we create higher density across our workspaces”, Nadella said.

The charge in the second quarter of fiscal 2023 represented a negative impact of 12 cents per share profit, Microsoft said.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said, “This is a rip the band-aid off moment to preserve margins and cut costs in a softer macro, a strategy the Street will continue to applaud.”

Microsoft shares were up less than 1 percent.

Nadella said the company would continue to invest capital and talent in strategic areas, like AI and a service offering OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a futuristic chatbot that has captivated Silicon Valley.

“The next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI, as we’re turning the world’s most advanced models into a new computing platform,” he said.

Microsoft said in July last year that a small number of roles had been eliminated, while news site Axios in October reported that the company had laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across several divisions.

The company has also grappled with a slump in the personal computer market after a pandemic boom fizzled out, leaving little demand for its Windows and accompanying software.