Last week, I reported on an impending wave of redundancies at Microsoft. 6,000 employees (approx. 3 % of the workforce) are to go. It is now becoming clear that long-time developers will also be affected.
Layoffs in May 2025
On May 14, 2025, I reported on the situation in the German blog post Microsoft-Entlassungswelle 2025: 3% der Belegschaft (6.000 Mitarbeiter) about layoffs at Microsoft. 6,000 employees, or less than 3% of the workforce, are to be made redundant in 2025. The layoffs will affect employees at all levels, in all teams and at all locations worldwide. A Microsoft spokesperson was quoted by CNBC as saying "We are continuing to make the organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic market."
First details become known
I have not been following the above on social media, but the first terminated employees have made this public. The Register reported this in the article Microsoft winnows: Layoffs hit software engineers hard. According to the article, the layoffs primarily affect software developers – including in the TypeScript area. According to Bloomberg, more than 40 percent of the approximately 2,000 job cuts in Redmond are directly related to software development.
Project Faster CPython canceled
Project Faster CPytMike Droettboom, a CPython Core Developer, reports a week ago on LinkedIn, that Microsoft is no longer supporting the Faster CPython project announced here in 2022 to accelerate CPython.
The majority of Microsoft employees on this project have been made redundant. Some of those laid off were on their way to attend the Python Language Summit at PyCon in Pittsburgh when the layoff notices went out to those affected. The three Python core developers Eric Snow, Irit Katriel and Mark Shannon are among those laid off, according to this post.
Other developers known by name
Ron Buckton, who has been with Microsoft for 18 years and has been a TypeScript developer for almost ten years, was also fired. The same applies to Matt Podwysock, who worked at Microsoft for 19 years and worked on the Azure SDK, was also fired.
AI for code development to blame?
The Register echoes speculation that the use of AI in code creation is the cause. Satya Nadella recently said that 30% of the code was generated by AI (see Microsofts CEO Nadella sagt "30% des Codes sind KI-generiert"). However, this is not entirely certain, as the irony of the story is that Gabriela de Queiroz,, Director of AI at Microsoft and responsible for start-ups, was also fired.
