Microsoft have revealed a memo just lately despatched to employees by CEO Sayta Nadella, which addresses the unusual truth of Microsoft reporting internet revenue within the ultrabillions whereas shedding 1000’s of supposedly “treasured colleagues”. A lot of the weblog is a gusty, jargony paean to generative AI know-how, through which Microsoft have made huge investments, and the way it’ll “empower everybody to create their very own instruments” and create a “native surplus” of Capacity To Do Stuff in Microsoft dominions worldwide.
Nothing within the weblog immediately addresses what Nadella characterises because the “seeming incongruence” of Microsoft being richer than the entire Roman emperors mixed, and nonetheless taking a blowtorch to online game studios like ZeniMax On-line Studios, King, Uncommon and Sledgehammer Video games. However I assume it is good that they’ve recognised that the optics are bizarre.
“By each goal measure, Microsoft is prospering – our market efficiency, strategic positioning, and progress all level up and to the proper,” Nadella writes. “We’re investing extra in CapEx than ever earlier than. Our general headcount is comparatively unchanged, and among the expertise and experience in our business and at Microsoft is being acknowledged and rewarded at ranges by no means seen earlier than. And but, on the identical time, we have undergone layoffs.
“That is the enigma of success in an business that has no franchise worth,” he continues. “Progress is not linear. It is dynamic, generally dissonant, and all the time demanding.”
Ah, whomst amongst us can fathom the dissonant enigma of trillion greenback companies spontaneously having layoffs occur to them, whereas doleful executives float by on golden balloons, scratching their heads with bloody hacksaws.
In different information, Microsoft have reportedly been changing Sweet Crush Saga degree designers with the generative AIs they helped to “practice”. Satya Nadella is seemingly a non secular genAI consumerand I do wonder if there is a “native surplus” of capability there that might justify some additional cost-cutting, in step with the fantastic thriller of progress. I hear CEOs value much more than degree designers.
