Microsoft's AI-Driven Layoffs: Software Engineers Bear the Brunt as AI Writes 30% of Company's Code

Programmers bore the brunt of Microsoft's layoffs in its home state as AI writes up to 30% of its code | TechCrunch

Coders were hit hardest among Microsoft's 2,000-person layoff in its home state of Washington, Bloomberg reports. Over 40% of the people laid off were in software engineering, making it by far the largest category, Bloomberg found based on state filings. Relatively few sales or marketing positions were affected, Bloomberg added. To be fair, coders are a big chunk of Microsoft's workforce, although it doesn't disclose the exact proportion. The cuts are part of recent layoffs at Microsoft affecting about 6,000 people. Still, these cuts come after CEO Satya Nadella said last month that up to 30% of the company's code was now written by AI. TechCrunch asked Microsoft if the layoffs were motivated by the rise of AI-assisted coding. The tech giant declined to comment. Microsoft has said the layoffs are aimed at reducing management layers.

Microsoft's latest layoffs hit software engineers hard

Microsoft's recent round of layoffs appears to have fallen largely on software developers, including several prominent Python developers and a veteran TypeScript developer. As The Register reported earlier this week, Microsoft plans to cut 3 percent of its staff worldwide, or almost 7,000 employees. According to Bloomberg, more than 40 percent of roughly 2,000 jobs cut in Microsoft's home state of Washington are in software engineering. This is after Redmond in April warned of swinging the ax on middle managers, with CFO Amy Hood saying the Windows giant would be "reducing layers with fewer managers." Be as that may, coders definitely felt the squeeze this month. Mike Droettboom, principal software engineering manager at Microsoft and a CPython core developer, mentioned the cuts in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. "It's been a tough couple of days," Droettboom wrote. "Microsoft's support for the Faster CPython project was canceled yesterday, and my heart goes out to the majority of the team that was laid off. A hard day for me, but even harder for others." He added, "We were all (minus one) set to attend the Python Language Summit at PyCon today, and in fact the notifications went out while we were en route to Pittsburgh." Beyond the at least three core Python devs let go, Microsoft also laid off Ron Buckton, a long-time TypeScript developer. "After 18 years at Microsoft, with roughly a decade of that time working on TypeScript, I have unfortunately been let go in the latest round of layoffs," Buckton wrote in a Mastodon post. "I need to take a few days to process before I start looking for work. Thanks to everyone who's been part of my journey so far." Matt Podwysock, a 19-year-veteran of Microsoft who worked on the Azure SDK, also said he'd been given notice. When we asked Microsoft about the layoffs, we got the following boilerplate response: "We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace." Thank goodness they're not positioning the company for failure! The prominence of software developers among those let go is noteworthy in light of CEO Satya Nadella's claim last month that 30 percent of its code is now written by AI. The idea of using AI to code seems to be a growing meme among tech CEOs. During the LlamaCon 2025 discussion in which Nadella made that remark, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded that at Meta, "our bet is sort of that in the next year ... maybe half the development is going to be done by AI as opposed to people." Social media wags were certainly full of speculation that AI is to blame for Microsoft's developer winnowing, but the company said it would be misleading to assume so, and the real answer is probably much more complicated. IBM, for example, has talked up the transformative power of AI, while shifting jobs overseas. And last month, the CEO of e-commerce firm Nate was charged with fraud for allegedly powering the company's purported AI automation with people. Other factors may be at work too. For example, Microsoft's plan "to invest approximately $80 billion to build out AI-enabled datacenters" may be constraining what the mega-corp wants to spend on salaries. Meanwhile, in a fitting bit of irony, Gabriela de Queiroz, director of AI, Microsoft for Startups, was among those laid off. We reached out to the laid-off employees mentioned in this article, as well as some others, and will update the story if we hear back. ®

Programmers bore the brunt of Microsoft's layoffs in its home state

Around a third of Microsoft's code is AI-written, Google and Meta are also in a similar place Microsoft recently confirmed around 6,000 to 7,000 job cuts globally, including an estimated 2,000 redundancies in its home state of Washington. It's now come to light that over 40% of the Washington layoffs were related to software engineering (817 roles) (via Bloomberg), with the company previously stating that the layoffs were part of a broader cost cutting effort and a shift in investments into AI. Together with software engineers, the heaviest affected roles in Washington were product management (373 roles) and technical program management (218 roles), with business program management (55 roles), customer experience program management (44 roles) and product design (31 roles) also on the table. Despite the clear and ongoing need for software engineers in an increasingly software-defined world, it has become apparent that Microsoft deer appropriate to replace human workers with artificial intelligence. CEO Satya Nadella recently confirmed that AI now writes around one third of some projects' code, with the recent layoffs raising concerns about AI's effects on human workers and software developers. More broadly, this is a trend that we are seeing from other tech companies including Salesforce and Workday. Google's CEO Sundar Pichai and Meta's CEO Mark Zuckerberg have also noted how much of their code is now written by AI. However, Microsoft has been criticized for mixed messaging. The company stated that the recent layoffs were primarily designed to reduce inefficiencies in middle management by removing unnecessary layers, and while 17% of the Washington redundancies did relate to managers, the loss of hundreds of software engineers raises alarm bells. Microsoft Principal Software Engineering Manager Mike Droettboom suggested in a LinkedIn post that Python and open-source remain important roles even though companies are enacting major shifts: "Looking around the room, I saw so many faces - some I have known for almost 25 years - coming together again with the same shared purpose, even as the company names on our badges change." "My heart goes out to the majority of the team that was laid off," Droettboom added. TechRadar Pro has asked Microsoft for further transparency into the roles affected by its redundancies.

With AI writing 30% of its code Microsoft now cuts human coder jobs

Microsoft's recent layoffs in its home state of Washington hit software engineers the hardest, with over 40% of the 2,000 people affected coming from this department, according to a Bloomberg report citing state filings. The layoffs, part of a larger 6,000-person reduction across the company, saw relatively few sales or marketing positions impacted. Coders make up a significant portion of Microsoft's workforce, although the company doesn't disclose the exact proportion. The recent cuts follow CEO Satya Nadella's statement last month that up to 30% of Microsoft's code is now written by AI. When asked by TechCrunch if the layoffs were related to the rise of AI-assisted coding, Microsoft declined to comment. Microsoft has stated that the layoffs are intended to reduce management layers, streamlining the company's structure. The disproportionate impact on software engineers has raised questions about the role of AI in the tech industry, particularly in coding and software development.