Reports that Microsoft layoffs will reach to over 1,000

Reports from The Seattle Times suggest that Microsoft have started laying off staff and that the total figure could reach in to the thousands.

The losses are company wide, with most of the redundancies coming internationally, although some are reported at the Redmond HQ for the company in the US.

Technology reporter, Matt Day, reports that the jobs losses are mostly expected to impact the sales departments. Around 40 per cent of Microsoft’s workforce works in sales and a lot of the losses will come from IT, finance and other non development focused departments.

The reports come following a memo from was sent from business sales chief Judson Althoff that said sales employees would need to ‘operate in new ways’. According to CNBC, the redundancies only equate to 10 per cent of the company’s sales force but that it equates to 70 per cent of its international sales team. The company employs around 120,000 people internationally.

Microsoft, away from game development, has moved in to cloud soloutions rather than software and are continuing to grow in this market. The move is expected to help shift the focus to infrastructure as a service, rather than software as the company has traditionally operated, with operating systems, office software and networking solutions.

There is no word yet on exactly where the losses are situated, so sadly no news of how the UK and Ireland Microsoft operations will be affected.

Thanks to The Seattle Times.