Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees While Worker Letter Calls the Job 'Joyless'

Microsoft is offering buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees. That is more than a quarter of its 223,000-person workforce, and the largest such offer the company has made.

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced the Voluntary Exit Offer in a memo on Monday, Oct. 26. Business Insider first reported it, and Microsoft confirmed the numbers. A spokesperson told Business Insider that about 60,000 people are eligible.

Who can take the offer

The offer covers eligible employees in the U.S., Canada, India and the U.K. at level 70 and below, which reaches up to vice president level. Only participating teams are included. Bloomberg reports that Xbox, Windows, Copilot and Finance are in. Sales, data center staff and some engineering and marketing teams are not.

Terms are similar to Microsoft's standard severance, according to the company. Employees have until early December to decide, and those who accept leave on Dec. 31.

"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support," Coleman wrote. The note also says: "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We'll learn from it."

A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider there are no plans for another buyout at this time.

A third workforce move this year

This is not Microsoft's first headcount move of 2026. Earlier this year it ran a Voluntary Retirement Program for roughly 8,750 long-serving U.S. employees, and more than 30% accepted. In July, Microsoft announced plans to lay off 4,800 people, CNBC reported.

How many will take this one is unknown. A person briefed on the plan told CNBC that Microsoft has no target this time. That person also said the program reaches higher up the org chart than the retirement offer did. Another account says the company expects fewer than 5% of eligible employees to sign up. Microsoft has not published a figure.

The money behind it

The cost pressure is public. Microsoft said in July that capital expenditures for the September quarter would exceed $50 billion. A year earlier, capital spending and finance leases came to $34.9 billion. Much of the spending goes to data centers serving AI demand from customers including Anthropic and OpenAI.

Microsoft's finances are still strong. CNBC reports free cash flow of $19.64 billion in the quarter, down 23% from a year earlier. Alphabet and Amazon both reported negative free cash flow in the same period.

Voluntary exits are a cheaper and less disruptive way to shrink than mass layoffs. They also let the company claim nobody was pushed. That is a real advantage over a pink-slip round. It does not change the fact that the people most likely to take a buyout are often those with the best outside options.

Microsoft stock closed at $530.61 on Friday, Nov. 6, down 0.99% on the day.

The open letter

The buyout has drawn fresh attention to an open letter from current and former employees who sign as "Concerned Microsoft Workers." According to The New York Times, the letter was circulating internally before the Oct. 26 announcement.

Its central claim is that "working at Microsoft has become joyless and demoralizing." The signatories tie that to the company's AI ramp-up, heavy workloads, constant reorganizations and the threat of being replaced by AI.

They say workers are pushed to use AI tools in nearly every part of their jobs, often with little training. The result, they write, is a cycle of learning new tools, cleaning up poor AI output and rolling back weak features. They ask Microsoft to stop tying AI use to rewards or reprimands.

The letter goes further. The signatories claim Microsoft's own research shows AI agents do not put user safety first. They also claim internal planning documents describe ways to get people hooked on AI products. They object to secretive data center projects, to contracts with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military, and to what they call circular investments among a handful of AI firms.

These are the signatories' allegations. Microsoft's own account, in Coleman's memo, is that the buyout is about flexibility. She describes it as "creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter." The company says AI tools have produced noticeable results for programmers, sellers and supply chain workers, according to CNBC.

The letter's demands fall under three headings: no AI without worker input and protections, no AI without community protections, and no trading away environmental promises for AI. On the last, the group wants Microsoft to recommit to being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030. Membership is open to full-time staff, employees of subsidiaries such as GitHub and LinkedIn, vendors, interns and contractors.

What comes next

The decision window closes in early December, and exits take effect Dec. 31. Microsoft has set no public target for acceptances, so the first hard number on uptake will come only if the company or a named source discloses it after the window closes.

It is unclear whether the offer is the last one. The company says no further buyout is planned, but the AI spending that prompted it has not slowed.