Microsoft recently laid off around 6,000 employees, which is about 3% of its global workforce. Now, CEO Satya Nadella has explained the reason behind this decision.
He said the layoffs were not because of poor employee performance but due to a company reorganization.
Speaking at a company-wide town hall, Nadella said the layoffs happened as part of internal restructuring to better focus on Microsoft’s priorities, especially its push into artificial intelligence (AI). The job cuts were about aligning teams, not individual work performance.
$80 Billion Investment in AI Infrastructure
Microsoft plans to spend roughly $80 billion on AI infrastructure in this fiscal year. The company is speeding up the rollout of its Copilot AI assistants across many customer groups.
This shift means some existing roles in product development and engineering are being phased out or restructured to make space for new roles that fit Microsoft’s AI strategy.
“Traditional Coders Can Become Software Operators,” Says Microsoft CPO
Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada has pushed back against the idea that AI will make coding skills useless.
“Many people think, ‘Don’t bother studying computer science or coding is over.’ I completely disagree,” she said in a recent podcast.
Although Chennapragada agrees that AI is automating parts of software development — Microsoft reports AI writes up to 30% of code in some internal projects — she believes this is just the next step in how technology evolves.
She suggested that engineers will shift from traditional coding to more of a “software operator” role in the future.
