this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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Offering buyouts to 60k people is not the same as looking to remove 60k employees. A lot of those people are not going to take them, and MS has that factor into the number they offered.
It would be kind of entertaining to see what happened if all 60k people accepted the offer, though. I’d be surprised if the company expected more than 10% to do so. Probably even less.
But its also not not the same as looking to remove 60k employees. Right before my company did forced layoffs, they offered voluntary packages like this with the stipulation that if enough people didnt take them, it'd transform into involuntary layoffs.
They are offering this to 60k employees and should all of them take it, that's 60k fewer employees at the end of the day. Of course it's unlikely for that to happen but not impossible meaning they're prepared to lose all of these people.
I don't know the details of the microsoft offer, but at another company we had a few of them, and the 'fine print' was:
So offering to 60k does not mean they actually accept the risk of all 60k leaving.
More interesting is the logic of a 'buyout'. Now the superficial assumption is that it's better for morale, but as you saw, it's pretty much certain that morale will be hurt by an involuntary layoff action anyway after the buyout. But maybe you could argue the hit was softened by the buyout earlier...
However, I think the actual goal is to disproportionately get the people in their 60s, the folks that given the right 'nudge' will just nope out into retirement. They would love to do that in layoffs, but historically that has hit age discrimination suits. Whenever we had a farewell celebration in a buyout, the people were mostly people at retirement age.
There's a more obvious demographic that they'd be cutting. The US government / Trump administration is blocking things like international visas etc, and demanding that people who work on gov contracts be US citizens -- and they've specifically targeted / highlighted Microsoft as a 'problem' on that front. Microsoft hasn't disclosed which regions these 'buyouts' are impacting.
My guess would be that its largely in places like India, the EU and Canada. Especially as the more US gov control is excerpted, the more data sovereignty pushes get attention, the less business MS projects outside the US.
They literally did name regions, USA, UK, CAnada and India
Sorry, guess I should've been more specific -- they don't say how many in each region, do they? Like I heard that Canada's govt might be inquiring with them, as there are some regulations around mass layoffs etc that may need double checking. Plus Canada's sensitive to any reports of US companies potentially letting go mass amounts of Canadian employees, as a result of the auto/steel industry shit and tariff stuff. So the media here was commenting on how its not yet clear how many of the losses/packages are in which country.
That's what they did with the first VEO, where it was available to anyone who's age and years of service added up to 70. In order it went 15K layoffs, VEO for 70+ which 30% took, then another 5K layoffs after it closed.
Now it's just everybody on your team if your team is eligible. Managers also weren't informed beforehand as they were included as well.
With my friend, they got the offer, so did their entire team they talked to as well as their manager and their skip. And that's across Azure, the real money maker, and Teams - CoPilot.