Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees across the US, UK, Canada and India, a maximum reach of roughly 27% of its approximately 223,000-person workforce.

Chief people officer Amy Coleman told employees in a memo that the offer provides “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.”

The program lands just months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 people and is intended to trim staffing without another round of layoffs, according to The Verge. The stakes are direct for Microsoft’s product and support organizations: AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources all sit within the offer’s reach, The Verge reported.

“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman writes in a memo to employees. “We’ll learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.”

Coleman’s wording acknowledges that Microsoft is trying to meet several staffing needs at once without treating the voluntary exit as a companywide formula. It also puts the burden on the program’s results: Microsoft said it would learn from the approach while keeping affected employees connected to internal opportunities and new skills.

Which Microsoft teams are in scope?

According to sources familiar with the situation who spoke to The Verge, eligibility extends across Microsoft but does not apply uniformly.

• Eligible: AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources.
• Partially participating: Microsoft’s cloud + AI and MicrosoftAI teams, plus corporate, external and legal affairs.
• Not participating: marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security.

Participation is broad by headcount, but The Verge described it as selective by organization. The eligible list covers products, AI groups, finance and human resources; partial participation reaches cloud and legal functions; excluded groups sit outside this particular offer.

Microsoft’s commercial sales teams are also outside the program, The Verge reported. That matters because the earlier 4,800-person layoff round primarily affected Xbox and commercial sales, according to The Verge.

The offer therefore spans a much wider set of employees while excluding the commercial-sales group among those primarily affected in the previous round. The sources did not identify how many employees in each organization received offers, leaving 60,000 as a program-wide ceiling rather than a team-by-team tally.

How does this differ from Microsoft’s earlier retirement offer?

The new program differs materially from the voluntary retirement program Microsoft offered earlier this year.

• Eligibility: Up to 60,000 employees can receive the new exit offer, compared with around 9,000 in the earlier program.
• Geography: The new program covers the US, UK, Canada and India; the earlier offer was available only in the US.
• Criteria: The current offer reaches a broad roster of functions; the previous offer required a specified employee level and an age-and-service calculation.
• Program type: The newer plan provides financial support and career planning for a voluntary exit; the previous plan was a voluntary retirement program.

On maximum reach, the new offer covers more than six times the roughly 9,000 employees eligible for the earlier program. That earlier offer required US employees at a certain level to have their combined years of service and age total 70 or more.

The new program covers four countries and a broader mix of functions, with no comparable age-and-service formula reported. The Verge did not disclose buyout amounts, acceptance deadlines, country allocations or a breakdown of likely acceptances.

Together, the two programs show Microsoft using voluntary departures for different purposes: retirement for a limited cohort of long-serving employees, then a broad exit mechanism across operating teams.

Why use buyouts after 4,800 layoffs?

The buyout program follows Microsoft’s 4,800-job layoff round by only months. The company cut those positions primarily in Xbox and commercial sales, The Verge reported, while Coleman’s memo says the new program allows Microsoft to trim staff without another layoff round.

A voluntary exit lets employees choose whether to leave with company support. A layoff does not. That distinction is procedural, but it changes who bears the decision to end employment.

The buyout program is not Microsoft’s only staffing action. At the same time, Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is planning new rounds of layoffs, according to Fortune. That points to two simultaneous paths: voluntary exits across a broad employee pool and further involuntary cuts at Xbox.

For Microsoft, the staffing stakes extend beyond total headcount into AI and cloud capacity. The team list includes AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, cloud + AI and MicrosoftAI, making voluntary attrition a direct issue for those groups.

What remains undisclosed?

The words “up to” define the program’s scale. Microsoft is offering access to 60,000 buyouts, not saying that 60,000 people will leave. Actual reductions will depend on employee participation, which the company has not quantified.

No dollar figure. No acceptance deadline. No country breakdown. The Verge report did not state how much financial support each employee would receive or explain the selection process.

Those omissions leave workers without the information needed to compare the offer across countries or assess their likely career outcomes. Coleman said Microsoft would learn from the approach she described as new for the company.

The next measure is whether voluntary uptake produces meaningful reductions while Microsoft manages the additional Xbox layoffs Sharma reportedly plans. Those results will determine whether the 60,000-person buyout program can deliver a substantial staffing change without another broad layoff round.