In this sort of situation, always take the first offer. Subsequent offers are always worse.
pipes · 2026-10-26 15:58:26 UTC
Yes, but you don't know if you'll be laid off. The subsequent offer may well be "you get to keep your job".
swiftcoder · 2026-10-26 16:06:01 UTC
if you are one of the ones who is valued enough to keep their job, you are strong enough to go get hired at another FAANG. Do you actually still want to be there after the bloodbath that the follow-up round of layoffs causes?
SoftTalker · 2026-10-26 16:28:20 UTC
Do you expect other FAANG to not have bloodbaths of their own?
swiftcoder · 2026-10-26 16:36:17 UTC
when you start somewhere after their bloodbath, you don't have to deal with all the crap you would if you stay through a bloodbath (i.e. you aren't on the hook for all the legacy shit your team owned before it had a haircut)
paxy · 2026-10-26 15:50:10 UTC
The fact that you will be jobless in this economy.
Havoc · 2026-10-26 15:51:35 UTC
Traditional if you know you’re a shitty employee that can’t find a new job you stay.
Voluntary packages tend to be accepted by the strongest employees
It’s a shitty deal for companies but shareholders love cost cutting
rayiner · 2026-10-26 15:57:38 UTC
Yeah, this is the dumbest thing you can do. It's a message to the strongest people to leave on their own terms.
Grombobulous · 2026-10-26 16:19:11 UTC
I can’t think of many companies that would be better to work for than Microsoft in terms of compensation.
0gs · 2026-10-26 16:38:13 UTC
if you prefer being fired!
ipaddr · 2026-10-26 17:00:25 UTC
It's 9 months. They probably won't do layoffs again for 6 months and you will get a package then for more than 3 months. Makes sense to hang on.
triceratops · 2026-10-26 17:07:28 UTC
If you choose to hang on you have to work for 6 months.
paulpauper · 2026-10-26 18:24:57 UTC
no job?
etchalon · 2026-10-26 15:40:35 UTC
Jesus. 25% is ... a lot.
whobre · 2026-10-26 15:49:04 UTC
It’s way too much to be believable
BobbyTables2 · 2026-10-26 15:50:26 UTC
Especially all at once..
They could have done 10% a year for the next 2-3 years, but the immediate financial gratification wouldn’t be satisfied
Copilot going to pick up the slack of 25% of the workforce?
kqr · 2026-10-26 16:04:07 UTC
I'd argue it's actually better to do 25 % at once and then not doing anything like it for ... decades, ideally, but years, realistically.
Spreading it out means employees spend some of their time with an ear to the ground rather than working, and teams have to deal with multiple restructurings, neither of which are good for well-being nor productivity.
mixdup · 2026-10-26 16:10:42 UTC
But Microsoft has turned layoffs at the end/beginning of the fiscal year into an iPhone-like release schedule. It's so reliable at this point that it's a meme outside the company amongst its customers. I know for a fact each June/July I'm getting a new account team as people are shuffled around, and low performers are shown the door
Even with these buyouts, there will be layoffs next summer. And the summer after that. And the summer after that.
Espressosaurus · 2026-10-26 16:45:09 UTC
Yeah, but they've been running layoffs (sometimes more than even yearly) since what, 2022? 2023 at the latest.
drillsteps5 · 2026-10-26 16:11:06 UTC
Not to say that this is isn't huge, but it's _up_to_ 25%, given that some will accept and some won't.
And the internal memo currently circulating actually does not mention that number so I'd be curious where it came from.
orra · 2026-10-26 17:04:53 UTC
Business Insider says it came from a Microsoft spokesperson. In the absence of an explicit number in a press release, I'd be inclined to believe it.
Good4boothee · 2026-10-26 16:15:59 UTC
Isn't average corporate worker attrition at 11-12%? so they could achieve that much just with hiring freeze.
drillsteps5 · 2026-10-26 17:03:48 UTC
Well, the MSFT stock is up on the news today. Not the effect the hiring freeze is known for.
happyopossum · 2026-10-26 23:00:09 UTC
11-12% annually, so yeah a year long hiring freeze might get you to the right number. The problem is that it gives you no flexibility or control over who attrits, and removes your ability to keep critical roles filled.
yxhuvud · 2026-10-26 15:42:54 UTC
Paywall.
rvz · 2026-10-26 15:45:38 UTC
Maybe Microsoft achieved AGI internally.
pier25 · 2026-10-26 15:51:31 UTC
or maybe they just need to lower their operating expenditure because they're spending too much money...
rvz · 2026-10-26 15:55:01 UTC
Both can be true:
1) "AGI" has been achieved internally which means...
2) ...we need to lower "operating expenditure" which includes i.e (human employees) so that the AI agents can take over.
Lastly, they will use the remaining capital to build homes (data centers) for these AI agents.
_vertigo · 2026-10-26 16:04:17 UTC
How banal. The first action after achieving "AGI" is not taking over the world, curing cancer, or anything fantastic like that, but rather "lowering operating expenditure"..
pier25 · 2026-10-26 16:37:35 UTC
if they had actually reached AGI they would simply fire +90% of employees and make a huge announcement
gottorf · 2026-10-26 15:57:08 UTC
Or maybe, every tech company is still shedding the overhiring they did during the Covid years.
vkou · 2026-10-26 16:01:02 UTC
A hundred years from now, COVID overhiring will still be the excuse trotted out in every layoff cycle.
They gained 40,000 people in 2022. It's not a totally crazy argument.
j45 · 2026-10-26 15:59:32 UTC
Maybe they are shedding workforce to spend more on AI infrastructure like many of the other layoffs to remain competitive.
The layoffs could have nothing to do with the employees.
Spooky23 · 2026-10-26 16:16:18 UTC
They've figured out that they can offer poorly performing services that suck and nobody cares. The company will continue to explore that concept until people care.
I run an org with 200k employees. We're on our 4th significant outage with M365 services in a month. We're talking major stuff -- including user data like email getting deleted by various processes. Their approach is pretty much "meh".
bigbadfeline · 2026-10-26 17:19:13 UTC
> The company will continue to explore that concept until people care.
MS is an entrenched monopoly which is hard to move off of, especially in times of low budgets and tough debt markets. On the other hand, LLMs are reshaping the competitive landscape and MS might be reacting to that threat, in their usual MS way.
tayo42 · 2026-10-26 16:22:04 UTC
They have net income in the billions per quarter
drillsteps5 · 2026-10-26 16:06:28 UTC
There is a joke "When it comes to AI psychosis, Sam Altman was likely patient 0"
Given all insane bets made by previously (somewhat) reasonable and successful business owners, I wonder how much of a joke it really is...
BobbyTables2 · 2026-10-26 16:10:14 UTC
Of course it’s a joke.
In order to be “patient 0”, he’d have to be human in the first place…
doctorzook · 2026-10-26 15:47:33 UTC
Obviously, details are thin. I’m very curious how these offers are distributed by role and by seniority.
jollyllama · 2026-10-26 15:47:50 UTC
Having no regard for the quality of the end user experience opens up a lot of business possibilities, LLM's or not.
ecshafer · 2026-10-26 15:48:52 UTC
60k workers, 1/4 of the workers. This is a big deal. It also really puts you into a bind if you receive the offer. Do you accept, take the money, and hope you can find a job (Now competing with many other Msft employees that are looking). Do you decline and hope you don't get hit with the layoff which hits if not enough people accept?
teepo · 2026-10-26 15:56:04 UTC
If they're doing similar to what was mentioned back in April there is some calculation about current age + years of service that could be tempting to people on the "bubble" of retirement.
j45 · 2026-10-26 15:57:35 UTC
Like with any deal, it's important to be able to run the numbers at any time.
Nemo_bis · 2026-10-26 16:03:02 UTC
> Certain pools of employees, including some focused on data centers, sales and marketing, aren’t eligible, the spokesperson said.
Sales alone is some 25 % of Microsoft expenditures, so are these 60k about 50 % of what's left?
StilesCrisis · 2026-10-26 17:20:10 UTC
It doesn't say "everyone in sales" so it's not clear.
geodel · 2026-10-26 18:07:51 UTC
Can't be software engineers, from what I learned they were never really paid commensurate to value they delivered. So it must be quite economical to keep them around.
thefourthchime · 2026-10-27 14:57:43 UTC
Someone on Twitter said that they're getting rid of the whole co-pilot thing. Pretty much all their AI effort. Not sure if I believe that, but who knows.
vkou · 2026-10-26 16:03:35 UTC
With these kinds of offers, they don't expect to get rid of 60,000. They expect to get rid of Y,000.
They make the offer to 60,000 (typically, an entire department gets this offer, including people they want to keep). Some X,000 will take the offer. If Y,000 > X,000, they they lay off the difference.
silisili · 2026-10-26 16:38:30 UTC
This is what I was wondering, if they have some internal math that says "15% will probably take this offer" targeting a lower number like 10k. And if they overshoot, it's not like they'll have trouble refilling positions in this economy...
guywithahat · 2026-10-26 16:56:31 UTC
You say that but the economy seems pretty strong to me, we have lower than average unemployment with above average job listings. It's harder if you're on visa otherwise it's pretty competitive
ibejoeb · 2026-10-26 17:24:20 UTC
In general, and especially for the technical roles, they are probably going to have trouble finding relatively similar compensation.
sterlind · 2026-10-26 19:43:34 UTC
?s/economy/tech job market/g
fhn · 2026-10-26 17:35:05 UTC
Including people they want to keep? What if all the people they wanted to keep accepted while those they didn't want to keep stayed? Certainly makes no sense.
jasomill · 2026-10-26 17:55:59 UTC
I imagine they don't extend the offer to specific people they want to keep.
I'm still not sure what the advantage to the company of an offer like this is versus layoffs where management gets to choose who leaves, unless they feel the "loyalty test" of deciding to stay is worth more than their own evaluation of employee performance.
vkou · 2026-10-26 19:41:28 UTC
The advantage is this:
1. Some C-suite asshole wants headcount in your division reduced by, say, 5% next year. He has zero visibility into anyone's performance, or any of the projects anyone is actually working on.
2. His subordinate directors could do random, or targeted layoffs to hit that 5%, but this ruins morale for everyone who survives, and is rather awful for those that don't.
3. ...Or, they could make this offer, let people leave on their own, try to convince any stars who want to take it to stay, don't do any backfill. Then, hopefully, between the voluntary layoffs and no backfill, you might hit that 5% reduction, and not have to do involuntary layoffs. (Or if you do, they would be much smaller.)
4. This is less disruptive for teams and managers, because with voluntary layoffs, they have time to plan for these people leaving, instead of showing up to work on Thursday, and being told that 5 people on their team were given the pink slip this morning.
5. This is also, obviously, less disruptive for employees who take the offer (as they can control their exit, and get a payout), and less disruptive for anyone who doesn't take the offer (lower odds of showing up to work on Thursday, and getting a pink slip).
vkou · 2026-10-26 19:38:54 UTC
> What if all the people they wanted to keep accepted while those they didn't want to keep stayed
That's not an outcome they'd like, but it's an outcome they have to accept, in order to not piss off everyone else.
1. For anyone they want to keep who takes them up on the offer, they always have a chance to try to convince those people to not take the buyout offer.
2. If you make the buyout offer conditional to particular individuals, it will sow resentment and division.
It's generally better for the employees and the employer to do this kind of blanket buyout. If they voluntarily hit the reduction targets, nobody needs to be laid off. If they don't, the layoffs will be there, but smaller. If the 'wrong' people want the buyout, there's still a chance to convince them to stay. If they don't want to stay after the convincing, it's probably best for them to go on their way.
Nemo_bis · 2026-10-26 21:06:54 UTC
You can tell what proportion they want to take the offer by how generous the offer is. And indeed:
> The Redmond, Washington-based company is expecting a lower proportion to accept the voluntary exit offer because the employees included in the offer are younger and no additional incentive is given beyond standard severance for their length of service, the person familiar said. Typical take-up levels for buyouts in tech are between 3 per cent and 5 per cent, they added.
I've never been involved in such a situation, but I assume part of individual's calculation is: If I indicate interest, but the company doesn't accept it or go through with it and keeps me... am I now viewed as a disloyal, detached worker?
whoamii · 2026-10-26 16:17:43 UTC
Company sends you offer first
arebop · 2026-10-26 17:09:56 UTC
I've been given such an offer. The company gave eligible employees X days to opt in and then it gave itself Y days to decide which volunteers would get buyouts. This matter of loyalty perception was certainly a live question for the employees. But also the company did iterative buyouts so in later rounds there was some evidence available to the current prospects about how employees were treated earlier. Not so much in what opportunities were withheld from the "disloyal" but in the take rate of volunteers and in the probability of being "laid off" given the receipt of an earlier buyout offer.
peterbell_nyc · 2026-10-26 17:17:59 UTC
Ahhh, I retract my previous statement. I assumed it was "do you want to accept the offer". If it is "do you want to be considered for the offer" that's a little more complicated...
milesvp · 2026-10-26 18:04:52 UTC
very much this. I was denied 2 rounds in 2008. I knew too many of the systems to risk losing me. Was sort of ok with it in at the time, and the length of the recession made me really happy in retrospect. Today I recognize offering to be let go as risky, since upper management may see you as a flight risk, which changes future layoffs and makes you slightly more likely to be included.
skirmish · 2026-10-26 23:48:42 UTC
Did you ask for a raise immediately since they thought you were so essential?
milesvp · 2026-10-27 02:27:18 UTC
In the fastest shrinking industry at the time? I think the phrase has something to do with blood and a turnip…
I was actually thrilled with my cola that year along with the required vacation time.
Honestly it was a very weird time. Less than a year prior I had worked in a real estate office, and there was a lot of scary stuff already starting to happen.
peterbell_nyc · 2026-10-26 17:17:03 UTC
Not a problem. While it is reasonable to consider the signaling impact of all your comms at work, if you take this, they'll smile at getting closer to quota and wish you well.
Reasons to accept. Reasons to decline, but that isn't one of them.
ricardobayes · 2026-10-26 17:25:11 UTC
Anecdotal, but I had an acquaintance try to use the buyout and was point blank told by management "it's not for you".
brainwad · 2026-10-26 19:47:34 UTC
At Google it was really rare to be denied, and if they did then it was kinda a negotiating chip for you - if you're so important to the company they won't let you leave, then are they going to pay you accordingly?
pseudosavant · 2026-10-26 16:17:20 UTC
Microsoft made $134B in net income in the last 4 quarters. It used to be if you worked for a company that was printing boat loads of money that you had job security.
Now, even if the company is crushing it, they'll still see employees more as a cost center instead of a revenue generator.
SoftTalker · 2026-10-26 16:21:08 UTC
No, this has never been the case. Companies are and always have been very conscious of wage and salary expenses, as it's one of the most controllable categories on the P&L.
xphos · 2026-10-26 16:55:41 UTC
But like if your company is making money hand over foot you didn't typically cut staff by 25%. You could just as easily do a hiring freeze and get out ahead of it. I mean if your profit metric is showing all green and growing you have to be really cold to say we need to fire 1/4 people now why? (to maximize shareholders short term value of course)
datakan · 2026-10-26 17:17:02 UTC
They aren't cutting staff because they made a ton of money. They are cutting staff because they see trouble on the horizon and are positioning themselves for that. Layoffs are rarely lagging indicators. They are more often predictors of trouble coming. This bubble will explode, MSFT wants to survive it. Thats all there is to it.
allturtles · 2026-10-26 19:29:19 UTC
This may be so but what others in this thread are trying to point out is that this is a relative novelty. Decades ago, layoffs were something that hapened at struggling companies trying to stave off bankruptcy (or already in it). It is a major cultural change to treat employees so casually as fat to be trimmed.
fugalfervor · 2026-10-27 13:27:06 UTC
Overinvestment in AI.
RivieraKid · 2026-10-26 19:18:37 UTC
> I mean if your profit metric is showing all green and growing you have to be really cold to say we need to fire 1/4 people now why? (to maximize shareholders short term value of course)
Yes, it's cold, but in the grand scheme of things, it's good for the society if companies are efficient and the economy is efficient. An efficient economy means that we can produce and consume more per hour worked.
Such behavior by companies may not be in my self-interest but that's another matter.
pseudosavant · 2026-10-26 17:22:11 UTC
They are making $600k in net income per employee. 10+ years ago, I'd never seen a mass layoff at any company making that kind of money per employee.
Their net income is up more than 2x in just the last 5 years. 10 years ago, Microsoft only had $85B in revenue, now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?
ricardobayes · 2026-10-26 17:27:46 UTC
Contrast that with NVIDIA's princely $2.5M net income per employee.
OrangeDelonge · 2026-10-27 03:31:15 UTC
Or Jane Street
bijowo1676 · 2026-10-26 17:28:34 UTC
profitable divisions are making more than that per employee
while other divisions are sinking ship
there always a case for a yard cleanup and decluttering
mr_toad · 2026-10-26 17:44:37 UTC
> now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?
Tomorrow they’ll announce that they’re going to spend $134b on new data centers.
hibikir · 2026-10-26 17:59:54 UTC
If I have a team of 20, making a lot of money, but I think I can do the exact same job with 15 because of AI productivity gains, should I keep the other 5 employed for the vibes?
The total net income doesn't matter: The move is management saying they are overstaffed for the work they think they need.
Assume Microsoft is expecting just a third of people to take the offer. It's just too many people to want to move to a different division that needs more labor: It's basically entire divisions that they'd have to create from whole cloth.
panta · 2026-10-26 18:36:42 UTC
> If I have a team of 20, making a lot of money, but I think I can do the exact same job with 15 because of AI productivity gains, should I keep the other 5 employed for the vibes?
yes, because, (a) you would be an amoral company otherwise and (b) the productivity and work quality of those remaining 15 will plummet if you don't and AI won't save you in the end: you'll build faster and cheaper, but the quality of your products will enter a downward spiral it will be hard or impossible to exit from.
redwall_hp · 2026-10-26 18:58:09 UTC
Companies should also be legally barred from hiring for three years if they engage in layoffs. Mergers should also be off the table for the same period.
It's deleterious to the economy. As the recent Microsoft game studio apocalypse shows, mergers are also extremely deleterious. It would be better to have a dozen game studios employing people and competing rather than one shit company cutting expenses and reducing products going to market.
apple4ever · 2026-10-26 22:27:40 UTC
> Companies should also be legally barred from hiring for three years if they engage in layoffs.
I like this. I was trying to think of some way to allow layoffs for struggling companies but not reward layoffs for companies that are making a profit, who just want to make more. My idea was more around the executive team being unable to take a salary or having to fire the CEO or something, nothing which as I worked through in my head seemed workable.
OnlineTux · 2026-10-27 01:32:38 UTC
In some places, if an employee is made redundant the employer is barred from filling the same position for a period of time.
Enforceability is a problem; it's always been trivial to re-write a job description.
RivieraKid · 2026-10-26 19:08:04 UTC
Why amoral? If a an employee costs the company more than they make, it means the owner of the company is essentially donating his money to the employee. Is it amoral to not do that? What if the owner wants to donate the money to cancer research instead?
panta · 2026-10-26 19:24:11 UTC
To expand on this, a company’s purpose should go beyond simply generating profit for its owners, imho; among other things, it should also include a duty of care toward its employees. Society instills a strong work ethic in us from childhood, teaching us that contributing to the greater good is our individual duty. Before the plague of neoliberalism, there was an expectation that companies would have a positive impact on society, too. Nothing, except greed, forbids to return to those values.
ParentiSoundSys · 2026-10-26 23:14:16 UTC
> If I have a team of 20, making a lot of money, but I think I can do the exact same job with 15 because of AI productivity gains, should I keep the other 5 employed for the vibes?
What should actually happen is everyone should be paid the same amount while doing 75% of the work they were doing before, but unfortunately there are no serious power structures like unions which could ensure that technological gains actually improve people's lives in that way.
hajile · 2026-10-26 23:38:48 UTC
Why risk a sure thing? You might have others quit or get rid of someone more important than you thought. The morale hit might affect work quality. Any number of things can go wrong and its simply not worth it when you make $600k in profit per person.
Comments
Voluntary packages tend to be accepted by the strongest employees
It’s a shitty deal for companies but shareholders love cost cutting
They could have done 10% a year for the next 2-3 years, but the immediate financial gratification wouldn’t be satisfied
Copilot going to pick up the slack of 25% of the workforce?
Spreading it out means employees spend some of their time with an ear to the ground rather than working, and teams have to deal with multiple restructurings, neither of which are good for well-being nor productivity.
Even with these buyouts, there will be layoffs next summer. And the summer after that. And the summer after that.
And the internal memo currently circulating actually does not mention that number so I'd be curious where it came from.
1) "AGI" has been achieved internally which means...
2) ...we need to lower "operating expenditure" which includes i.e (human employees) so that the AI agents can take over.
Lastly, they will use the remaining capital to build homes (data centers) for these AI agents.
They gained 40,000 people in 2022. It's not a totally crazy argument.
The layoffs could have nothing to do with the employees.
I run an org with 200k employees. We're on our 4th significant outage with M365 services in a month. We're talking major stuff -- including user data like email getting deleted by various processes. Their approach is pretty much "meh".
MS is an entrenched monopoly which is hard to move off of, especially in times of low budgets and tough debt markets. On the other hand, LLMs are reshaping the competitive landscape and MS might be reacting to that threat, in their usual MS way.
Given all insane bets made by previously (somewhat) reasonable and successful business owners, I wonder how much of a joke it really is...
In order to be “patient 0”, he’d have to be human in the first place…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-26/microsoft...
Sales alone is some 25 % of Microsoft expenditures, so are these 60k about 50 % of what's left?
They make the offer to 60,000 (typically, an entire department gets this offer, including people they want to keep). Some X,000 will take the offer. If Y,000 > X,000, they they lay off the difference.
I'm still not sure what the advantage to the company of an offer like this is versus layoffs where management gets to choose who leaves, unless they feel the "loyalty test" of deciding to stay is worth more than their own evaluation of employee performance.
1. Some C-suite asshole wants headcount in your division reduced by, say, 5% next year. He has zero visibility into anyone's performance, or any of the projects anyone is actually working on.
2. His subordinate directors could do random, or targeted layoffs to hit that 5%, but this ruins morale for everyone who survives, and is rather awful for those that don't.
3. ...Or, they could make this offer, let people leave on their own, try to convince any stars who want to take it to stay, don't do any backfill. Then, hopefully, between the voluntary layoffs and no backfill, you might hit that 5% reduction, and not have to do involuntary layoffs. (Or if you do, they would be much smaller.)
4. This is less disruptive for teams and managers, because with voluntary layoffs, they have time to plan for these people leaving, instead of showing up to work on Thursday, and being told that 5 people on their team were given the pink slip this morning.
5. This is also, obviously, less disruptive for employees who take the offer (as they can control their exit, and get a payout), and less disruptive for anyone who doesn't take the offer (lower odds of showing up to work on Thursday, and getting a pink slip).
That's not an outcome they'd like, but it's an outcome they have to accept, in order to not piss off everyone else.
1. For anyone they want to keep who takes them up on the offer, they always have a chance to try to convince those people to not take the buyout offer.
2. If you make the buyout offer conditional to particular individuals, it will sow resentment and division.
It's generally better for the employees and the employer to do this kind of blanket buyout. If they voluntarily hit the reduction targets, nobody needs to be laid off. If they don't, the layoffs will be there, but smaller. If the 'wrong' people want the buyout, there's still a chance to convince them to stay. If they don't want to stay after the convincing, it's probably best for them to go on their way.
> The Redmond, Washington-based company is expecting a lower proportion to accept the voluntary exit offer because the employees included in the offer are younger and no additional incentive is given beyond standard severance for their length of service, the person familiar said. Typical take-up levels for buyouts in tech are between 3 per cent and 5 per cent, they added.
https://www.ft.com/content/2ef29406-f2f8-413f-81f6-5ae098c97...
I was actually thrilled with my cola that year along with the required vacation time.
Honestly it was a very weird time. Less than a year prior I had worked in a real estate office, and there was a lot of scary stuff already starting to happen.
Reasons to accept. Reasons to decline, but that isn't one of them.
Now, even if the company is crushing it, they'll still see employees more as a cost center instead of a revenue generator.
Yes, it's cold, but in the grand scheme of things, it's good for the society if companies are efficient and the economy is efficient. An efficient economy means that we can produce and consume more per hour worked.
Such behavior by companies may not be in my self-interest but that's another matter.
Their net income is up more than 2x in just the last 5 years. 10 years ago, Microsoft only had $85B in revenue, now they are up to $134B in net income, and they need to let 25% of the company leave?
while other divisions are sinking ship
there always a case for a yard cleanup and decluttering
Tomorrow they’ll announce that they’re going to spend $134b on new data centers.
The total net income doesn't matter: The move is management saying they are overstaffed for the work they think they need.
Assume Microsoft is expecting just a third of people to take the offer. It's just too many people to want to move to a different division that needs more labor: It's basically entire divisions that they'd have to create from whole cloth.
yes, because, (a) you would be an amoral company otherwise and (b) the productivity and work quality of those remaining 15 will plummet if you don't and AI won't save you in the end: you'll build faster and cheaper, but the quality of your products will enter a downward spiral it will be hard or impossible to exit from.
It's deleterious to the economy. As the recent Microsoft game studio apocalypse shows, mergers are also extremely deleterious. It would be better to have a dozen game studios employing people and competing rather than one shit company cutting expenses and reducing products going to market.
I like this. I was trying to think of some way to allow layoffs for struggling companies but not reward layoffs for companies that are making a profit, who just want to make more. My idea was more around the executive team being unable to take a salary or having to fire the CEO or something, nothing which as I worked through in my head seemed workable.
Enforceability is a problem; it's always been trivial to re-write a job description.
What should actually happen is everyone should be paid the same amount while doing 75% of the work they were doing before, but unfortunately there are no serious power structures like unions which could ensure that technological gains actually improve people's lives in that way.