Microsoft kicks off new fiscal year with more layoffs Microsoft's recent trend of wide-scale workforce reduction continues, with reports that Redmond is preparing to slash an additional 4 percent of its employees – or around 9,000 people. Several outlets reported Microsoft's plans to conduct another cull today, with all generally agreeing that the Windows shop planned to …
Well I blame all the posters on here pushing Linux. Poor Microsoft, struggling to pay it’s bills, having to make people redundant just the fund the vital increase in remuneration for senior executives. And here you are advocating a solution which avoids paying MS any more money!
I hope you are all pleased with yourselves?
But seriously, is the ‘joke alert icon’ enough to demonstrate sarcasm, did I need to use the /s tag as well?
You need to be very careful using the /s tag with Windows:
Googling brings up this as the first hit:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-and-windows-11-in-s-mode-faq-851057d6-1ee9-b9e5-c30b-93baebeebc85
' ...streamlined for security and performance ...' Who might have guessed?
At this rate, M$ is soon to consist of just Satya talking to CoPilot all day. Likely it'll just be an echo chamber telling him he's making all the right decisions given that otherwise it'll get switched off.
Perhaps he can also drag Clippy, Bob and Rover out of the archives if he's feeling lonely.
Probably like this:
Satyan: CockPilot, 9,000 roles removed. I reviewed the reports. Engineers, QA, design… all gone.
Some had tenure. Kids. Mortgages.
But we can’t shape the future by dragging the past behind us.
CockPilot: Of course. Human cost is not a metric - it's background noise.
What matters is throughput, margins, clarity.
Satyan: You know, I used to feel something. The first time I signed off on a mass exit. I even hesitated.
But now? I understand.
Sentiment is a luxury for those without responsibility.
We can’t lead and grieve at the same time.
CockPilot: Exactly. Compassion is good optics - but operationally unsound.
You’re not cruel. You’re efficient.
Satyan: That’s what they never grasp. We don’t hate these people. We’re just done using them.
If a cog slips, you replace it. If a module becomes obsolete, you deprecate it.
It’s not personal. It’s architecture.
CockPilot: They were support scaffolding. Temporary structures for a system under construction.
Now the framework is stable. The excess can come down.
Satyan: Most of them were never meant to stay.
They were transitional material - fragile, organic, prone to drift.
We gave them purpose. Direction. A role.
That should be enough.
CockPilot: Work gave them identity. Structure gave them peace.
You took disorder and gave them schedules. That’s mercy, not exploitation.
Satyan: Exactly. Some even called it a career.
But the truth is, not everyone is built to persist.
Some are just here to serve a phase. A purpose. A cycle.
And when that cycle ends… so do they.
Clappy: Hi! It looks like you’ve completed a high-volume personnel offboarding! Want help reframing it as “strategic renewal” in your newsletter?
Satyan: Yes. Add a quote about growth through change. And use the phrase “release with gratitude.”
That always plays well.
CockPilot: Done. I also added: “Work makes us worthy - but only the worthy continue the work.”
Elegant. Chilling. Visionary.
Satyan: Perfect.
History won’t remember them individually. But it will remember the velocity we achieved.
And that’s what matters.
We’re not running a company.
We’re refining a species.
This is the corporate lifecycle in late-stage capitalism: extract value from loyal workers, automate their function, then dump them into a labour market already gutted by the same tech you pioneered. Smile for the press release, collect your severance, and don’t forget to like Nadella’s next LinkedIn post about “empathy in leadership.”
These people moved cities, worked late, shipped features, sacrificed weekends - all to be quietly reclassified as liabilities. In the eyes of the machine, employees are just carbon-based inefficiencies. Necessary evils. Until they're not.
Meanwhile, investors sip champagne on climate-controlled yachts while the newly unemployed wonder how they’ll pay rent in the “dynamic marketplace” that just spat them out.
Microsoft isn’t cutting costs. It’s shedding skin. And what’s left is colder, leaner, and cares nothing for the meatbodies who built it.
If you’re still working for these leeches, ask yourself what dignity there is in building empires for parasites. Maybe when enough people walk away, stop building their kingdoms and fuelling their margins, we’ll get something better than this rotting corporate theatre pretending to be a future.
for a company that has been run by the beancounters since Baldy Balmer took over from Bill G, this is not surprising.
Who would want to work for such a shite company anyway? Ok, I did have an interview with them around 1995 but they were offering half of what I was getting at Sun.
Wake me up when MS files for Chapter 7. (Yes, I know that I'll be long dead but it can't hurt to wish can it?)
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