Update: VentureBeat reports: “We’ve learned that Massive, the company’s in-game advertising business, suffered something like 75 percent layoffs.”
Original Article: Back in January, Microsoft announced that the company would be shedding as many as 5,000 jobs over an 18-month period. At that point they cut about 1,400. Now they’re entering phase 2, which would include somewhere within the difference of those two numbers.
In a statement, Microsoft said, “As part of the plan we announced in January to reduce costs and increase efficiencies, today we are eliminating additional positions across several areas of the company. While job eliminations are always difficult, we are taking these necessary actions in response to the global economic downturn.”
The Microsoft Blog at SeattlePI.com shares an email from Steve Ballmer that was sent out to All Microsoft employees. Within the email, between the padding of explaining how difficult it is to let them go and the thanks for their contributions, Ballmer says:
Today’s action includes positions in the United States and in a number of countries around the world. In the U.S., affected employees will be notified directly by their managers today. In other countries, local leadership teams will provide more specific information about the impact to their organizations.
With this announcement, we are mostly but not all done with the planned 5,000 job eliminations by June 2010. We are moving quickly to reach this target in response to consistent feedback from our people and business groups that it’s important to make decisions and reduce uncertainty for employees as quickly as possible, and so that organizations can concentrate their efforts and resources on strategic objectives.
Sources say that Microsoft is still actively hiring between 2,000 and 3,000 workers this year, even as they continue the cuts they have planned. There’s no word on what branches of the company are being affected by the job cuts the most.
