Microsoft plans to do a major overhaul of its staff in the near future.
The company announced yesterday that it would be going through a major reorganisation that will include a series of layoffs, mainly affecting sales employees. According to Microsoft, up to three thousand jobs will be cut. The major job cut will amount to less than ten percent of the company’s total sales force with 75 percent of them being outside of the United States. Microsoft also stated that the company’s goal isn’t to cut costs but instead bring a change in how Microsoft handles sales. The company plans to use employees who are more knowledgeable about specific products in order to better sell larger packages.
“Microsoft is implementing changes to better serve our customers and partners. Today, we are taking steps to notify some employees that their jobs are under consideration or that their positions will be eliminated. Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time-to-time, re-deployment in others.” a Microsoft spokesperson said when speaking to CNBC.
There was speculation that Microsoft would be cutting jobs in order for the company to focus on selling its new clod-based services product, Azure. Microsoft Azure is a growing collection of could services that allow developers and IT professionals build, deploy and manage applications. Since launching in 2010, Microsoft Azure currently holds over six hundred services across its network.
As of this year, Microsoft has over 70 thousand employees in the United States alone. Globally, the company is powered by over 120 thousand workers around the world. With that many employees, it’s likely that even with Microsoft’s plans to cut jobs, the size of its entire workforce will remain just as strong as before.
