Microsoft announced a time-limited, voluntary exit offer on October 26 for eligible employees in participating teams at level 70 and below. It applies in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, according to a post by Chief People Officer Amy Coleman.

What the post says

  • Who: eligible employees in participating teams, at level 70 and below, in the four countries.
  • What they get: the post says employees may leave with "financial support and career planning resources."
  • Not everywhere: not all organizations are taking part. The post says each business sets its own priorities.
  • How they find out: eligible employees get an email with a link to their details, which the post says would arrive within hours.

The post says the offer builds on what Microsoft learned from its earlier Voluntary Retirement Program.

What the post does not say

The post gives no number of employees who are eligible or expected to leave (the reported figure is below). It lists no payout amounts or formula beyond "financial support." It does not name the participating organizations, and it states no deadline for accepting.

The reported number

Microsoft's post gives no figure, but about 60,000 workers are eligible, Bloomberg reported. Treat that as reported, not confirmed by Microsoft. That report words the cutoff as "VP level and below"; we use Microsoft's own term, level 70 and below.

For scale, Microsoft's annual report filed with the SEC says it employed about 223,000 people full time at the end of June.

The earlier program

That earlier program was reported in April. Engadget, citing earlier reporting, said it covered US employees at the senior director level and below whose age and years of service added up to 70 or more, and could reach up to 7% of the US workforce. That outlet put the figure at about 8,750 people, by its own estimate.

Those details come from that reporting, not from Microsoft's new post. We have not applied any of them to this offer.

What this means for you / what we checked

For most people, nothing changes. The offer reaches only eligible employees in participating teams, and the choice to accept is theirs.

If you work at Microsoft, your own email is the place for terms. If you are a customer or partner, the post announces no product or service change.

For other recent workforce news, see our Netflix layoffs story. For Microsoft's research work, see its MAI-DxO diagnosis benchmark paper. This is not employment advice.

We read Microsoft's post in full and took every detail about the new offer from it, except the 60,000 figure, which is reported and unconfirmed by Microsoft. The April details are second-hand and labeled that way.