Microsoft, Amazon to start layoffs today: Report

SAN FRANSICO:According to reports, Microsoft may cut more positions from its global workforce. Tech giants are cutting staff to cope with tough economic conditions. Bloomberg News reported that Microsoft may announce layoffs in its engineering divisions as early as Wednesday. A Microsoft spokesperson told that the company declined to comment, calling it a "rumor".

Industry trackers say the Washington state-based company employs more than 2,20,000 people. The company laid off its employees twice last year. A new layoff will be announced a week before Microsoft releases its earnings report for the last three months of last year.

 "Over the past few weeks we've seen significant headcount cuts from giants Salesforce and Amazon," Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to investors. Ives told investors that Wedbush expects to cut 5 to 10 percent of employees in the technology sector. Ives wrote, "Many of these companies were spending like 1980s rock stars and now need to get spending under control ahead of macroeconomic conditions."

Major platforms with ad-based business models are facing cutbacks in advertiser budgets, which are reducing spending in line with inflation. Meta announced 11,000 job cuts in November. This was about 13 percent of its workforce. At the end of August, Snapchat (Snap Chat) laid off about 20 percent of its employees, about 1,200 people. In early January, IT group Salesforce announced that it was laying off 8,000 people, about 10 percent of its workforce. Twitter was bought by billionaire Elon Musk in October. Musk immediately fired nearly half of the social media platform's 7,500 employees. An unknown number of employees resigned in protest of the change in their policy.