Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella kicked off one of the largest layoffs in tech history on Thursday, signaling he intended to shake up the aging PC industry titan, but leaving questions about how exactly he would transform it into a nimbler, Web-based rival to Apple Inc and Google Inc, Reuters reports.
Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will slash up to 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, over the next 12 months as it almost halves the size of its newly acquired Nokia phone business and tries to become a cloud-computing and mobile-friendly software company.
The larger-than-expected cuts are the deepest in the software giant’s 39-year history and come five months into Nadella’s tenure.
“We will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster,” Nadella wrote to employees in a memo made public early Thursday. “We plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making.”
