Microsoft’s Azure division appears to be the latest part of the company hit with layoffs, with 150 personnel impacted.
Microsoft announced in January that it planned to lay off 10,000 employees but did not provide details about which divisions would experience cuts. The company’s plans have only become apparent as layoffs have occurred. Yesterday news broke that LinkedIn was the latest division to experience downsizing, following similar action across the HoloLens, Surface, and Xbox teams.
According to The Information, Microsoft’s Azure division now joins the list. A source told the outlet that approximately 150 individuals in the company’s digital cloud acquisition team had been let go. The team is responsible for “convincing medium-size companies to adopt cloud services such as Azure server rentals and Microsoft 365 productivity apps.”
Interestingly, the impact on the Azure team goes beyond just sales personnel. Azure test engineers, systems administrators, and product managers have posted on LinkedIn within the last few days, revealing they had been laid off.
Gaurang Deshmukh, Software Test Engineer at Microsoft, was one such individual:
With an extremely heavy heart, I have to announce that I was one of the employee impacted by #Microsoft layoffs. Despite this setback, I’m extremely grateful for my experience at Microsoft as Software Test Engineer in Azure for Operators #A4O org for over 3 years.
Christopher Teahan, Azure Cloud Administrator, was another:
I was laid off from #Microsoft this week, it was a great experience working for a start up like Affirmed Networks for 4 years and then transitioning to a larger company as part of the Microsoft acquisition back in 2020. I was at Microsoft for almost 3 years and learned a lot being part of the IT and BIS teams and working on the migrations of our legacy IT systems and tools to the Microsoft’s. Working on #Azure projects and transiting legacy systems to the cloud has been amazing and I am thankful for all I’ve learned at Microsoft. I will miss being part of the Azure for Operators organization and everyone I have worked with over the past 6-7 years, but it’s time for a new challenge and journey!
During the economic downturn, the cloud segment has been one of the more resilient elements of the tech industry. While tech layoffs have become an almost daily occurrence, it is odd that the Azure team has been this heavily impacted.