Microsoft Planning Thousands More Job Cuts Aimed at Salespeople (bloomberg.com)
- Reference: 0178090623
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/25/06/18/1855243/microsoft-planning-thousands-more-job-cuts-aimed-at-salespeople
- Source link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-18/microsoft-planning-thousands-more-job-cuts-aimed-at-salespeople
> The cuts are [1]expected to be announced early next month
[2]non-paywalled source
, following the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, according to people familiar with the matter. The reductions won't exclusively affect sales teams, and the timing could still change, said the people, who requested anonymity to discuss a private matter. The terminations would follow a previous round of layoffs in May that hit 6,000 people and fell hardest on product and engineering positions, largely sparing customer-facing roles like sales and marketing.[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-18/microsoft-planning-thousands-more-job-cuts-aimed-at-salespeople
[2] https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-planning-thousands-job-cuts-183947422.html
Salespeople? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does MS need salespeople? People only buy from MS because they don't have a choice. MS might need order takers, but then it's easier to put up a crappy website (that makes things like server CALS confusing as f.) and let people buy online. (There are lots of cases where Linux isn't an option. My accounting system doesn't run on a Linux server.)
Re: (Score:3)
At the risk of being that guy, maybe you should use a different accounting system?
I would agree that there is little need for a salesforce when you have a locked in customer base.
Re: Salespeople? (Score:3, Informative)
You clearly haven't ever sold a multi-million MACC to some organization. The sales exist to convince the prospective customer they need it and they need to sign the PO yesterday or else they lose their super special one-off 'we don't want to sell at this price really because we're making a loss on this'-discount.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, even back in the 90s it was confusing - and that was just a few hundred seats and a handful of servers.
I suspect it's just as confusing today if you want to be completely sure you're in compliance.
Re: (Score:2)
...because we're making a loss on this'-discount.
No, no, no! "At this price, I'm cutting me own throat!" Don't you know your Pratchett?
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need car salesmen. The cars sell themselves just fine. You still need the loan officer but really, you don't need dealerships either. In fact, not having car salesmen would be a net gain for society. I can't stand dealing with those people. The car should just have a set price, much like everything else does.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, they're adding $50k (or *MORE*) as 'dealer adjustments' for the new ZR1.
I actually want one, but I refuse to pay more than the sticker price. I'll happily pay that, adjusted for my options, without any haggling or debate. I'll even put it all on a credit card so that it's the same as cash. If they wait a few days, I'll bring them cash - or even go get them a cashier's check that very day.
I refuse to pay more than the MSRP. I will not do it, regardless of the desirability.
That said, I do have an acquai
Re: Salespeople? (Score:2)
It's easy to be cynical, but enterprise sales don't happen by themselves. Microsoft's enterprise sales team is an enormous asset for the company. (Yes, it's about to become a smaller asset...) Microsoft wouldn't be where it is today without that team getting customers to pay for Microsoft's products and services. Multimillion dollar licensing deals require significant effort.
If you insist on a cynical take, try this one: Companies don't just run to Microsoft to beg for software. Microsoft begs companies to
"particularly in sales" (Score:2)
And nothing of value was lost.
Copilot (Score:2)
So they are replacing them with Copilot?
Re: Copilot (Score:2)
If AI can do one thing, it is sales. Now only if there is an AI that can filter out all the sale BS.
Traditionally, cutting sales staff is a bad thing. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't like salespeople any more than anybody else, but a bigger company cutting sales staff is usually a sign that things are going topsy-turvy with the business somehow. Sales folks tend to be a protected class in the business world, and while some businesses may cycle through a period where they allow natural attrition to lower the overall sales force, it's pretty rare to see a big enough drop in sales staff that it needs to be chatted about. Thousands of sales people let go from a business sounds like a giant red flag. And something tells me that Copilot isn't going to be up for entertainment and drinks like the sales folks tend to do to woo prospective big clients.
In short: Something smells off here. Unless they've become yet another tech company succumbing to the overall hype of "AI will save us all."
Re: (Score:1)
> Microsoft had 228,000 employees as of June last year.
That is insane. Time to fire the incompetent CEO who let things get so far out of hand.
They have a monopoly (Score:2)
And there is absolutely no chance in hell we will be enforcing any antitrust law for the next 4 years. Europe might try but Microsoft has ways of dealing with them. If all else fails they will just kind of coordin them off in their own little world.
The Microsoft doesn't particularly need sales people. Because you need microsoft. Or at least your boss probably does. And every time Linux starts to get a hold on any sort of desktop or workstation environment Microsoft will do nasty little monopolistic thin
Re: They have a monopoly (Score:1)
Not this time. Nadella has decided that the profit margin in consumer windows licensing is too thin, so he's trying to kill Windows 10 and force a migration to Windows 11 where your data can be commoditized being fed to train LLMs and sell to databrokers for advertising purposes. If a quarter goes to Linux/Mac/Other he doesn't care, as long as you keep buying big margin products like M365. Looking at the stagnant state of LibreOffice UI, I don't think he's wrong about that either...
Not for much longer (Score:2)
Plenty of clones exist which can be ran locally or hosted with an identical UI and support for modern Microsoft Office formats to the same degree that MS Office Online does. There is ONLYOFFICE in Europe, WPS Office in China and for folks who want SaaS, Google is nipping at their heels by having school kids learn their offering in the US and UK. It is only a matter of time until Office division retires the classic desktop products in favour of Webview2 crap. When they do, it will be their undoing.
The Xbo
Re: Not for much longer (Score:2)
Lots of alternatives exist - sure. And how successful are these alternatives at capturing market share? 19 our of 20 orgs I talk to use Microsoft 365. Maybe max 1 out of 20 uses Google Suite. I have yet to talk to the first org (Europe, North America) that uses anything else as their collaboration suite. I'm sure they exist, but as fraction of the total market you can safely ignore them.
They don't need any more salespeople. (Score:2)
They've already conquered the market and managed to get an ideal subscription product onto everyone's machine. All they need to do now is out Windows behind subscription.
Makes sense (Score:2)
The terminations would follow a previous round of layoffs in May that hit 6,000 people and fell hardest on product and engineering positions, largely sparing customer-facing roles like sales and marketing.
If you got rid of the people who produce the product you don't have a need for people to sell the product.
I just want to know... (Score:2)
Are they going to call it a layoff, or are they going to pretend that it's all about performance issues?
Because a surprising number of engineers got their first negative performance review right around the time that Microsoft was announcing that it would be shrinking the engineering team.
Microsoft's products are so good (Score:3)
they sell themselves.
Either that or they're so unavoidable that people pretty much have to buy them, so crappy AI sales agents are quite enough.
No worries! (Score:5, Funny)
We're bring manufacturing and farm jobs back to Americans. Who needs a six figure sales job at Microsoft when you could have a great job picking lettuce or applying glue on shoe soles a thousand times a day.
Re:No worries! (Score:5, Insightful)
Idiots getting what they voted for.
Re: (Score:1)
> Idiots getting what they voted for.
They voted for AI and automation to wipe out office work?
Re: (Score:3)
They voted for hatred, stupidity and corruption.
Re: (Score:2)
The phrase going around right now is, I hope you have the day you voted for.
Not that it matters but they polled a bunch of hardcore self-identifying maga types and even a quarter of those nut jobs were opposed to what Trump was doing.
Hilariously they still approve of his job because they can't connect in their minds the Trump screwing them over to the Trump they keep seeing on TV.
Heavy spending on AI (Score:2)
According to TFA, this is due to heavy spending on AI. What does heavy spending on AI have to do with political drivel that you just posted?
Re: (Score:2)
Those jobs aren't coming back, not even with the tariffs. On top of it, automation has eliminated many of those roles in the process.
No... You're just going to pay more for the things you buy. Sure, a few companies will do some production here, enough to qualify as lip-service and maybe to get some favorable tax relief. But, you'll still be buying goods made in Asia for a long time to come. You might see some stuff 'assembled in the USA', which will make some people feel like something was accomplished.
Fran
Re: (Score:3)
Picking lettuce or apply glue to shoes is more beneficial to society then any of the shit Microsoft is pushing. Besides, 100k to be a bullshitter (literally what sales is), fuck that noise.
Re: (Score:2)
Trump's own commerce Secretary already admitted that any factories did come back will be automated.
And we're going to use unpaid prisoners, AKA slaves, to pick the lettuce.
So I'm afraid you're going to have to find a different career.
According to random slashdot posters we should all be HVAC welding plumbers. As I understand it from the posters around here that's how Peter thiel makes all his money. I don't know I didn't make it to the bottom of their comments...