Microsoft’s latest large-scale layoffs, targeted at 3% of the staff (about 6,000 people)The layoffs affected mostly programmers — about 2,000 IT workers were laid off in Washington alone.
According to the company, the restructuring is aimed «at automating routine processes» — using AI, among other things, and, more interestingly, a specially developed algorithm selected candidates for layoffs. These are confirmed on Reddit (via Economic Times) is the wife of one of the fired programmers who was dismissed a few days before his 48th birthday.
«My husband worked at Microsoft for 25 years. He has just been fired, by a random computer algorithm. His last day of work — Friday, when he will be 48 years old».
The woman clarifies that her husband is autistic and suffers from multiple sclerosis, but despite this, he rarely took sick leave and always helped his colleagues.
«He never missed work, even when he was sick — He did everything he needed to do from home. He worked more than 60 hours a week, and took shifts on Christmas and Thanksgiving so that his colleagues with children could stay home. He never asked for a promotion or a raise — he just kept working and solving impossible problems».
The programmer’s wife clarifies that she wrote the post not for pity, but for publicity.
«I just need you to know what this world does to people who give it everything — quietly, consistently, and never ask for more».
Another interesting (and somewhat ironic) point is that the latest dismissals directly affected the director of AI at Microsoft Gabriela De Queiroz.
«I have been affected by the latest wave of layoffs at Microsoft», — wrote a woman on X. «My heart is broken that so many people I have had the privilege of working with are being laid off».
Predictably, the employees’ stories caused a flurry of criticism on social media towards Microsoft, and most of all — the cynical use of AI to select «those who are not worthy of further work».
«It would be interesting to know how many people 40+ or with illnesses were included in this list suggested by the» algorithm, — wrote one social media user.
We would like to remind you that Mike Krieger, the founder of Instagram and now Chief Product Officer at Anthropic, predicted that The work of software engineers will change dramatically in the next three years due to artificial intelligence, and Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated thatmore than a quarter of the company’s new code is already created by AI. Similar statistics were previously Microsoft itself cited, while the company’s boss Satya Nadella, shortly before the layoffs, called for increasing the amount of AI-generated code in the company to 50%.
Earlier, ITC told the story of an IT employee who was fired after being replaced by AI — he now lives in a trailer and allegedly received rejections for 800 jobs
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