NEW DELHI: Microsoft, one of the giants of the tech industry has taken steps towards cost-cutting. As many as 1000 employees have been laid off by the company in its latest round of layoffs. This is the third round of layoffs which started in the month of July and the company has fired nearly 1% of its workforce across different sites and product divisions since July as part of a realignment process.
"Today we had a small number of role eliminations. Like all companies, we evaluate our business priorities regularly, and make structural adjustments accordingly," Microsoft mentioned in an official statement.
The recent rise of layoffs has come amid a tightening global environment, fears of a recession, as well as a tech winter that has made investors increasingly cautious about their money. Other multinationals following the same trend include Meta, Netflix, Snapchat, Twitter, Tencent, and Apple.
Close to home, many Indian edutechs are also part of Byjus, Unacademy and Vedantu are also on this bandwagon. In a recent development, Byjus fired 2500 of its employees citing redundancies of roles following its procuring of other similar platforms.
Indian players in IT are still reeling under the moonlighting problems. Moonlighting refers to taking a second job, usually on a freelance basis, to make optimal use of talent and resources. While talented employees take find no problem in working two jobs unless one of them affects the other or there is a decrease in productivity, the administration disagrees. Giants Wipro and Infosys have let 100s of their employees go in recent times blaming them for contract violations and working for competitors. While the employees mention the lack of any clarity regarding their taking a second job in their contracts, the matter gets dragged on and both parties are losing out on valuable time and money.
Which other sectors will be affected by the recent trend of letting go of employees will be seen in due time. And how hard will these problems hit the already fragile economy, remains the most important question.
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