A large layoff is under way at Microsoft, as the technology company says it will cut 13,000 jobs in the next six months. All but 500 of the layoffs are related to the Nokia phone division the company acquired in April. Microsoft says it might shed as many as 18,000 jobs as it restructures itself.
The company says it will complete most of the layoffs by the end of this year, and complete the restructuring by next June.
In an email to employees about the changes, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella promised that the company would "become more agile and move faster."
He also said that Microsoft will update its engineering process and will "have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making."
Discussing the financial impact of the moves, Microsoft said it "expects to incur pretax charges of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion over the next four quarters," related to severance and benefit costs, along with other charges.
The site Re/code has this analysis:
"After years of being so dominant that it drew the ire of antitrust regulators, Microsoft now finds itself a distant third in the overall market for computing devices — PCs, phones and tablets."
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