Microsoft has offered a "Voluntary Exit Offer" to about 60,000 employees, announced on 26 October in a memo from chief people officer Amy Coleman. That is roughly a quarter of the workforce by one count, and about 27% of 223,000 people by another. It covers staff in the US, Canada, India and the UK at experience level 70 or below, a band that reaches vice presidents.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it”
Amy Coleman, Microsoft chief people officer, in a memo to employees · siliconangle.com ↗
Employees have until early December to decide, and those who accept leave on 31 December. According to Business Insider's reporting, staff at level 64 and below receive one week of pay for every six months of service, and levels 65 to 67 receive two weeks. The package also brings six to 12 months of stock vesting, limited health cover and help finding a new job. Microsoft has set no target for how many should accept and has not said which business units are affected, though some marketing, sales and engineering teams chose not to take part. Xbox, which loses money, may be hit after 1,600 cuts there in June.
Microsoft's signage at its Redmond campus, used by Engadget for the April 2026 report on the company's first voluntary buyout
Associated Press · Image: Engadget
The offer arrives alongside strong numbers and heavy AI spending. Revenue rose 18% to $90.01bn in the June quarter, with adjusted earnings per share of $4.74, more than 12% above consensus, 31 new data centers opened last quarter, and capital spending for the September quarter was guided above $50bn, against $34.9bn a year earlier. Anthropic and OpenAI are among its cloud customers. Free cash flow of $19.64bn was down 23% on the year, and the cuts are read as a way to free money for the buildout.
About Microsoft
Microsoft is an American technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen. It rose to dominance with MS-DOS and Windows and, under chief executive Satya Nadella since 2014, has focused on cloud computing and AI.
Offering to pay people to leave is new for it. On 23 April 2026 it reported its first voluntary buyout, open to up to 7% of US staff, about 8,750 people, whose age plus years of service reached 70; coverage called it the first in its 51-year history. Before that came forced cuts: about 15,000 layoffs in two rounds in May and July 2025, which Nadella tied to AI and cloud, and 10,000 roles in early 2023.
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It follows an April retirement programme for about 7% of US staff, which more than 30% of those eligible accepted and which Coleman says taught the company lessons this offer builds on, and 4,800 job cuts announced in July. Microsoft reports quarterly results on Wednesday 28 October.
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