Microsoft Layoffs Hit Coders Hardest With AI Costs on the Rise 48
An anonymous reader shares a report: Microsoft's recently announced job cuts fell hardest on the people who build the company's products, showing that even software developers are at risk in the age of artificial intelligence.
In Microsoft's home state of Washington, software engineering was by far the largest single job category to receive layoff notices, making up more than 40% of the roughly 2,000 positions cut, according to state documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Microsoft on Tuesday said it would cut about 6,000 workers across the company. The Washington state data represents about a third of the total.
In Microsoft's home state of Washington, software engineering was by far the largest single job category to receive layoff notices, making up more than 40% of the roughly 2,000 positions cut, according to state documents reviewed by Bloomberg. Microsoft on Tuesday said it would cut about 6,000 workers across the company. The Washington state data represents about a third of the total.
And the enshittification of MS gets worse (Score:1)
MS products are already insecure, unreliable and hard to use. I guess they think the can make their stuff even worse without losing revenue.
Re:And the enshittification of MS gets worse (Score:4, Insightful)
Having had to set up some more Windows 11 machines (Server 2012, Linux and MacOS are my daily drivers now), all I can say is that I don't think AI could do worse than human coders have done with Windows over the last five years. What a monumental clusterfuck of counterintuitive graphical gibberish.
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Indeed. I am sure AI can do even worse, but we will see. My only Win11 installations are going to be one inside a VM on a Linux carrier and one "game launcher".
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Indeed, I've found AI written code fails in some areas like key (bounds) testing, so it's 1980s programming. Maybe it's better now, I've been out of work due to AI pretty much taking my job for 5 months, lol, but the other human doing my job quit due to operator overload on the tasks AI critically failed on.
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Maybe it's better now, I've been out of work due to AI pretty much taking my job for 5 months, lol, but the other human doing my job quit due to operator overload on the tasks AI critically failed on.
Urgh. So essentially AI did not take your job at all, but messed it up badly. "Management" making decisions about tech they do not understand. I hope you find some good replacement job...
Cobol 2 lack of developers in a few years (Score:2)
There will be a crunch in a few years when the most widely used legacy environment programming langue, JavaScript, will have a rapidly shrinking pool of developers willing to work on it and willing to resurrect their React/Angular/Vue knowledge.
It will be compounded with the rapid growth in currently popular open source code packages, being unmaintained and undocumented with nothing other than a NPM package repository and source code repository.
Design isn't done by coders (Score:2)
Although Windows certainly had its share of bugs, especially with 24H2, "counterintuitive graphical gibberish" suggests that's not what your problem is with Windows. Coders have no effect on that.
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You have glossed over all the security and update problems there...
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Monopolies always become dicks.
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Indeed. Hence it is a very good idea to prevent them from happening.
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There is a real disconnect between the professionals who actually write code, and the less than jr level technical managers who think this AI slopware is a sane thing to ship. The managers are currently winning, but I wonder how long that'll last. There is a way to use the slop generated by an LLM, but not without a professional who know how to write good code. It's definitely getting interesting.
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It's definitely getting interesting.
It is. Lets hope that combined with Trumponomics, there are now enough nails in the coffin...
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That's the ecosystem that's worked so well for them though. Odd versions being terrible purely to generate hype and upgrade justification for the next version.
This cycle, getting rid of humans, next cycle, getting them back so everyone can upgrade to the reliable version.
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The problem here is that they force people on Win11 while Win12 (supposedly less crappy again) is not yet available...
More Crowdstrikes and Wannacrys coming (Score:2)
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You're implying that 50% are using hardware not compatible with Windows 11. This isn't necessarily the case. Reportedly there are quite a few people and companies who have downgraded to Windows 10.
It's a good question what percentage of users fall into this category, but my bet is that "50% of their user base abandoned with out updates in October" is far from true, as many users will be able to update to Windows 11.
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Reportedly there are quite a few people and companies who have downgraded to Windows 10.
*upgraded
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The hardware requirements of at least an 8th generation Intel Core (or AMD equivalent) processor, and TPM 2.0, are the problem. The estimate of ~50% of computers in active use was from 2022 so it's slightly dated, BUT there are still many people who don't see a need to replace their computer currently - especially since that could well be a computer just 5 years old...
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You're implying that 50% are using hardware not compatible with Windows 11.
No he's implying that 50% of their users will not migrate to 11 by October. Hardware compatibility is only one reason why users will not migrate. It's a very large reason but not the only reason. Personally, I will not migrate as Windows 11 even thought my hardware is compatible as 11 seems to be a sandbox for beta testing bad ideas on customers like AI enabled massive data harvesting.
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I fall into the category of someone with hardware compatible with Win11 but refuse to update.
First, I don't want to make a windows account to sign in to anything. Sure there are hacks, but I'm going to postpone it as long as possible.
And second, I hate forced reboots of my laptop. It kills my private browser windows.
So for me, October can't come fast enough. I want the forced reboots to stop.
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Yet (Score:1)
I don't think people get it. This is no longer a career path for humans.
The big question is with non-human coding, will Microsoft get better or worse?
Re:Yet (Score:5, Insightful)
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You are nothing but a glorified auto-complete.
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My guess is you, RobinH, write code at a professional level. The folks who have rebutted you - do not. That's my guess.
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For starters, how much new code is needed on an ancient codebase? Whatever the age, it's LARGE. So back in my day, "coders" weren't problem solvers, they didn't do maintenance, they got specs, and cranked out code. They knew the least and had the most mechanical of jobs.
Sooo.. what is with the new old terminology? The word "coder" seems to have crept back into the journalistic lexicon. I'm suspecting that it has been used to stealthily devalue the idea of what I would simply call
grifters everywhere (Score:1)
Those people are pushing for that because they're being paid to do it. There is practically infinite money in the tech space and some of it sloshes into lobbying groups trying to expand the labor pool.
We all know that the people who are actually good programmers are the ones naturally driven to it. There were serious questions about accessibility when a 286 computer cost $2000 -- lots of kids who would have been interested would never have had the opportunity to try. But these days a basic Linux computer is
Put it in context (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft also recently announced that they are slowing some and suspending other AI investments. My rough guess is that Microsoft over-invested in AI and hiring during the 2020-2023 surge and is now in an "ohhhhh fuqqqqqq" mode looking at the ROI of those moves imploding hard in the face of AI not working out as well as they hoped.
They're also supposedly sitting on a ton, an absolute glut, of Nvidia hardware they bought when they were carpet-bombing Nvidia with cash to outbid many of their rivals during the AI hypewave ~ 2-3 years ago. So make of all of that what you will.
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"Microsoft reported Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 33 percent year over year" (from the last earning report), so I do see the job cuts more as aligning with the move to AI rather than AI slowing down.
Re:Put it in context (Score:4, Insightful)
I would not assume this is AI related. Just look at the revenue streams of the company.
According to this revenue breakdown [kamilfranek.com], windows and windows server are not growing revenue, and there are A LOT of people working on those products. I would guess most of the layoffs are from windows. Think about the team who was responsible for trying to put the windows 8 metro UI on xbox one. Or what about the people that used to maintain windows solitaire. There's a lot to trim in the windows team.
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Or what about the people that used to maintain windows solitaire.
This must be the group that has brought most value to microsoft barring nobody else. Every boss in the world at some point in time to their BOFH:
- Simon, what do we need to have Solitaire, reversi and mines on this computer?
- Windows.
- Get licenses for everyone!11!
Re: Put it in context (Score:1)
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Turns out, they're doing layoffs and... whomp whomp 40% of the layoffs are developers, which are also 40% of their employee base. Shocking I tell ya.
No AI Profits for Microsoft (Score:1)
I don't see any sign (Score:2)
What I see is more outsourcing, lots more h1bs (the current administration pushing them heavily) and workloads being shifted to anyone who still has a job.
At the moment AI is just being used as an excuse so we don't have to talk about how companies do Mass layoffs so that they can do stock BuyBacks.
If you have ever lost a job there's a good chance it's because Ronald Reagan deregulated Wall Street paving the way for our cycle of boom and b
I call Bullshit (Score:3)
MSFT Fiscal YE is June 30, but the info thus far:
From Gemini:
For more recent quarterly results in calendar year 2024, we can look at the quarters ending September 30, 2024, and December 31, 2024:
Quarter ending September 30, 2024:
Revenue: $65.585 billion, a 16.04% increase year-over-year.
Quarter ending December 31, 2024:
Revenue: $69.632 billion, a 12% increase year-over-year.
Operating Income: $31.653 billion, a 17% increase year-over-year.
Net Income: $24.108 billion, a 10% increase year-over-year.
They're dumping people while increasing profits, and most of the hit is in US positions.
Nothing To Do With AI (Score:2)
Somehow the headline writer worked 'AI' into headline, but it doesn't appear in the story. I'll even bet that AI didn't cause the layoffs, and that this story is pure clickbait. Google says MS employs about 228,000 people. 2,000 * 0.40 / 228,200 = 0.35%. So, not many developers, and unlikely to be AI-related.
How is that (Score:2)
"everybody should learn to code" working out? Let's get back to "everybody should make buggy whips".