Microsoft is spending big on AI, and it\u2019s also giving thousands of employees a decision to make about their future at the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Around 60,000 workers could qualify for a new voluntary buyout offer announced Monday. Eligible employees in participating teams in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom will have the option to leave with financial assistance and career planning support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That doesn\u2019t mean 60,000 people are losing their jobs. The offer is voluntary, and Microsoft reportedly hasn\u2019t set a target for how many employees it wants to accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The announcement comes as Microsoft continues building the data centers needed to power its expanding AI and cloud services. Keeping up with that demand takes enormous amounts of computing equipment, and the company is watching costs as those investments grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Microsoft tried a smaller voluntary retirement program earlier this year, with more than 30% of eligible workers taking the offer. This latest program reaches a much broader group, including some higher-ranking employees, although not every department is participating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to CNBC, workers who qualify will need to decide in December, with those accepting expected to leave on December 31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For employees already thinking about a career change, the package could give them a way to make that move. How many choose to take it remains to be seen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Microsoft is spending big on AI, and it\u2019s also giving thousands of employees a decision to make about their future at the company. Around 60,000 workers could qualify for a new voluntary buyout offer announced Monday. Eligible employees in participating teams in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom will have the option […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[15,13,14],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-microsoft","tag-ai","tag-employment","tag-microsoft"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions\/25"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cutegeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}