Last Updated:
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the layoff of 6,000 employees was due to reorganisation, not performance. Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada discusses evolving AI.
Microsoft has sacked 6,000 employees, which is around 3 per cent of its workforce, in the latest round of layoffs.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has addressed the massive job cuts at the global tech giant and revealed the reason why the company laid off 6,000 employees, which is around 3 per cent of its workforce. He said the layoff happened due to “reorganisation rather than performance”. Meanwhile, the company’s chief product officer Aparna Chennapragada also addressed the coders and computer science as a subject and said she “fundamentally disagree” with the notion that people should not study computer science or coding is dead.
Layoffs Due To ‘Reorganisation Rather Than Performance’: Nadella
Speaking during a company-wide town hall, Nadella clarified that the recent layoffs were a result of internal restructuring aimed at aligning Microsoft’s priorities — particularly its massive push into artificial intelligence (AI) — and not because of employee performance. “This was about reorganisation rather than performance,” he said.
The tech major has announced plans to spend nearly $80 billion this fiscal year on AI infrastructure while also accelerating the rollout of its Copilot AI assistants across various customer segments. The recent layoffs, which affected 6,000 positions globally, significantly impacted product development and engineering roles — highlighting how even core technical positions are being reshaped in the AI era.
‘Engineers Might Become Software Operators’: Microsoft CPO
Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer Aparna Chennapragada offered a strong counterpoint to the growing perception that the rise of AI is making coding skills obsolete. “A lot of folks think about, ‘Oh, don’t bother studying computer science or that coding is dead,’ and I just fundamentally disagree,” she said during a recent podcast.
Chennapragada acknowledged that AI is automating parts of software development — Microsoft has admitted that AI now writes up to 30 per cent of the code in some internal projects — but she sees it as the next natural evolution in how we build technology. “We don’t program in assembly anymore. Most of us don’t even program in C. You’re moving to higher and higher layers of abstraction,” she explained.
The recent layoffs affected coders significantly, with over 40 per cent of the 2,000 Washington state positions eliminated belonging to software engineers, according to a Bloomberg analysis. Project management roles accounted for nearly 30 per cent of the job cuts in the state.
In the future, she suggested, engineers may be seen more as “software operators” — guiding and refining AI-generated output — rather than traditional coders. “There’ll be an order of magnitude more software operators,” she predicted. “Instead of ‘Cs,’ maybe we’ll have ‘SOs,’ but that doesn’t mean you don’t understand computer science.”
Even for project managers, who also saw significant cuts in the recent round, she sees evolving roles rather than extinction. As AI begins generating more ideas and prototypes, the focus will shift to “taste-making and editing”, helping teams curate and prioritise from an overwhelming volume of possibilities.
A team of writers and reporters decodes vast terms of personal finance and making money matters simpler for you. From latest initial public offerings (IPOs) in the market to best investment options, we cover al…Read More
A team of writers and reporters decodes vast terms of personal finance and making money matters simpler for you. From latest initial public offerings (IPOs) in the market to best investment options, we cover al… Read More
- First Published:
