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Microsoft’s Buyout Offer Reaches About 60,000 Workers, Though Not in Security or Sales

About 60,000 Microsoft employees, more than a quarter of the company’s workforce, can now choose to leave with a buyout, a Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider. Whether a given person gets the offer depends on which part of Microsoft they work in.

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman introduced the Voluntary Exit Offer in a note to staff Monday that Microsoft also posted on its official blog. It covers employees at level 70 and below in participating teams in the U.S., Canada, India and the U.K. Not every organization is taking part, and Coleman wrote that participation depends on each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs.

People familiar with the program told The Verge that Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources staff are eligible, while marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security teams are sitting it out. Business Insider reported that sales organizations are excluded too.

Terms will resemble Microsoft’s standard severance, the spokesperson said. When the company cut jobs earlier this year, its U.S. package started at 60 days of base pay and, for most employees, went as high as 39 weeks depending on seniority and tenure. Eligible staff have until early December to decide and would leave at the end of the year. Microsoft has no plans for another buyout at this time, the spokesperson added.

That is a much wider net than April’s Voluntary Retirement Program, which went to roughly 9,000 U.S. employees whose age and years of service added up to 70 or more. About a third accepted. Microsoft also laid off 4,800 people a few months ago, mostly in Xbox and commercial sales.

Heavy data center spending to serve AI customers has put a strain on Microsoft’s finances, CNBC said, though the company kept free cash flow positive in the second quarter while Alphabet and Amazon did not. Fiscal first-quarter results come after the market closes Wednesday.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it,” Coleman wrote.

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