Microsoft employees call work ‘joyless’ in open letter as 60,000 get buyout offers

FILE - The logo of Microsoft is seen outside its French headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris on May 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)

A group of current and former Microsoft employees is circulating an open letter accusing the company of chasing artificial intelligence at the cost of its own people, customers and climate goals.

The letter has drawn fresh attention after Microsoft offered buyouts to about 60,000 employees, more than a quarter of its workforce. It is the largest such offer in the company’s history.Signed “Concerned Microsoft Workers,” the letter says that for many staff, “working at Microsoft has become joyless and demoralizing.” It ties the slump in morale to the period when the company ramped up its AI investments. It also points to heavy workloads, constant reorganisations and the threat of being replaced by AI.According to a report by The New York Times, the letter began doing the rounds among colleagues before the October 26 buyout announcement. It asks Microsoft to involve employees in decisions about how AI is built and used, and to stop linking AI use to rewards or reprimands.

Microsoft employees say mandatory AI tools are making their work worse

The letter is blunt about what AI adoption looks like on the ground. Workers say they are pushed to use AI tools in almost every part of their jobs, often with little or no training and no reason given beyond speed.

The result, they write, is a costly cycle of learning new tools, cleaning up poor AI output and rolling back weak features.The complaints go beyond the office. The signatories claim the company’s own research shows AI agents do not put user safety first, and that internal planning documents describe ways to get people hooked on AI products. They also object to secretive data centre projects, contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Israeli military, and what they call circular investments among a handful of AI firms.Their 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 point, they want Microsoft to recommit to being carbon negative, water positive and zero waste by 2030. The group is open to full-time staff, employees of subsidiaries like GitHub and LinkedIn, vendors, interns and contractors.

Microsoft buyout covers employees in India, US, UK and Canada

The Voluntary Exit Offer went to eligible employees at level 70 and below in participating teams across India, the US, the UK and Canada.

Sales and some engineering teams were left out. Those who accept get at least eight weeks of base pay, with the amount rising by level and tenure. They have until December 9 to decide and would leave on December 31.In a note to staff, chief people officer Amy Coleman called it “a new choice to make that transition now with support.” The company expects fewer than 5% of eligible employees to sign up.This is Microsoft’s second buyout of 2026. In April, about 8,600 long-serving US employees were offered early retirement, and roughly 30% took it.

In July, the company cut about 4,800 jobs, including a fifth of its Xbox workforce. That followed 10,000 layoffs in 2023 and more than 15,000 in 2025. Headcount stood at 223,000 in June, down 5,000 from a year earlier.

Microsoft's record profits and AI spending sit beside raises below 1%

The timing has not gone unnoticed inside the company. Two days after the buyouts were announced, Microsoft reported quarterly profit of $36.6 billion, up 32%, on revenue of $92.3 billion. Capital spending, mostly on data centres, rose 30% to $45.2 billion.

The company expects to spend about $170 billion this calendar year.Employees told The New York Times that merit raises this year were unusually small, in some cases under 1%. At a town hall last month, a question on how leadership balanced over $100 billion a year in AI spending against flat rewards drew more than 80 reactions, about double what most questions got.Gretchen Thomas, a 57-year-old design leader who left in September after five years, told the publication her stock award was cut partly for not consistently showing speed and a willingness to experiment, including with AI.

“I just can’t believe how grim it’s gotten just in the last three years,” she said.Coleman has said the buyouts are not linked to how AI is changing work, the report noted. She did not rule out future layoffs either.For those who stay, the bigger worry is the work left behind. Several employees said they do not expect departing colleagues to be replaced, which leaves more on their plates as the AI push carries on.