Microsoft is cutting thousands of jobs in sales and hiring …
is replacing thousands of traditional salespeople with more technical staff following its latest round of layoffs that eliminated approximately 9,000 employees this week. The strategic shift comes as the company faces intensifying competition from OpenAI and Google in the artificial intelligence market.
The job cuts, affecting less than 4% of Microsoft's global workforce, specifically targeted conventional sales roles that the company plans to replace with "
solutions engineers
" who can demonstrate AI tools and provide technical expertise earlier in the sales process. This marks Microsoft's fourth major workforce reduction in 18 months.
Customer demands drive Microsoft's shift to technical sales approach
"The customer wants Microsoft to bring their technical people in front of them quickly," said a source familiar with the plans. "We need someone who is more technical, much earlier in the cycle."
by Taboola
by Taboola
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Microsoft has received feedback from enterprise customers that they had to engage with too many salespeople before accessing technical details and product demonstrations. The new approach aims to streamline this process by deploying technically skilled staff who can show actual AI demos from the initial customer contact.
Xbox division also hit by the recent layoffs
The layoffs hit multiple divisions, with gaming subsidiaries including King, ZeniMax, and Halo Studios bearing significant cuts. Microsoft also shuttered The Initiative studio and canceled high-profile projects like the Perfect Dark reboot and Everwild.
Sales chief Judson Althoff outlined the company's vision to become "the
Frontier AI Firm
" in an internal memo, consolidating six previous sales areas into three: AI Business Solutions, Cloud & AI Platforms, and Security. The restructuring prioritizes establishing "Copilots on every device across every role."
Microsoft's AI-related expenses reached $80 billion last fiscal year as it competes against companies like OpenAI, whose ChatGPT remains more recognisable to many enterprise employees despite Microsoft's existing customer relationships.
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