Microsoft announces voluntary retirement for over 8,000 employees

The US tech giant Microsoft has reportedly announced a voluntary retirement programme to around 7% of its US workforce with 8,750 people out of 1,25,000 employees will be eligible.

In simple terms, voluntary retirement will provide an option to the employees to retire early, effectively saving them from future layoffs. This one-time retirement programme will be available to employees whose age and years of service total 70 or higher. 

This program is only open to employees at the senior director level and below, those who are above this level including vice-president and other top executives are not eligible. Employees who are part of a sales incentives plan are also excluded as they are not aligned with the program.

This decision was reportedly taken to increase the company’s investments in the artificial intelligence field with downsizing the employees. Reports are suggesting that the company thought that AI has allowed the company to accomplish more results with smaller teams.

 This is not the first time the company is cutting headcount, in 2023, it laid off 10,000 employees, about 5% of its global workforce and in 2025 it laid off 15,000 employees.