They are raking in billions while desperately trying to create a monopoly around AI and their Office suite of tools as well as Teams, now Microsoft is slashing 50+ Australian workers, in the latest round of redundancies which have already seen 10,000 jobs slashed as the tech giant moves to more cloud-based services.
In Australia the business that recently dumped Ogilvy PR as their agency has around 2500 employees with close to 220 axed as the business moves to rake in more profits from their Australian operation.
Microsoft CEO
A Microsoft spokesman confirmed the cuts in a statement to The Australian but did not detail which positions or organisational areas would be impacted.
The $48 billion dollar Company is currently deploying new offerings based around AI to support their huge AI investments.
As for the reason “Organisational and workforce adjustments are a necessary and regular part of managing our business,” a Microsoft spokesman said.
“We will continue to prioritise and invest in strategic growth areas for our future and in support of our customers and partners.”
Back in January Microsoft cut 10,000 workers – about 5 per cent of its global workforce because of what they are describing as “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities”.
It appears job cuts are good for shareholders and senior executives whose salaries are based on performance.
Credit: Microsoft
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft boss Satya Nadella has raked in more than A$1.49 billion in compensation at the company – a personal fortune bolstered by the tech giant’s prescient investment in OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool.
Bloomberg calculated Nadella’s windfall by tallying his salary, bonuses, stock dividends and equity grants that were disclosed in Microsoft’s public regulatory filings.
He earned nearly $55 million in 2022 alone.
In January, as they were cutting jobs, they were also investing US$10 billion in OpenAI, whose ChatGPT tool has exploded in popularity due to its ability to generate human-like response to a wide variety of user prompts.
The Australian claims that rising interest rates, high inflation and concerns of an economic slowdown have forced tech companies to pivot towards slashing thousands.
Analysts believe that Microsoft is still a growth stock as they benefit from AI investments and massive staff culls.
Recently Microsoft moved to try and boost their Bing Search engine and their struggling Edge browser which only has 5% share of the global market using ChatGPT, which it has also integrated into Microsoft Office tools spanning Word and Excel.
Its shares are up 32.8 per cent over the past 12 months.
