Microsoft employees are bracing for layoffs to be announced Thursday
Conference rooms are booked and some employees are being scheduled for short 15-minute meetings with their managers, according to several postings on the anonymous chat app Blind that were shared with Business Insider.
Only verified employees at a company can access Blind. The app is popular at Microsoft; some 25,000 of the software giant's employees use it, according to Blind.
Microsoft has not confirmed the layoff but the company did send an email to employees on Monday alerting them that it plans to make wide-ranging changes to its sales organization, GeekWire reported.
The employees who commented on Blind did not know how many total jobs would be cut. Not all of them who have meetings scheduled Thursday believe that they personally will be laid off. Some of those who commented on Blind believe that, instead, they will be transferred to new roles within Microsoft.
TechCrunch reported last week that Microsoft is planning to lay off "thousands" of workers worldwide.
Even so, it's possible the cuts will amount to a small percentage of the company's workforce. As of March, Microsoft employed 121,567 people worldwide with about 52,000 employees in its global sales, marketing and worldwide business units.
July has become the classic month for Microsoft to announce layoffs, coming right after its fiscal year ends on June 30. Last year the company announced it would cut cut 2,850 positions. Those layoffs were dragged out over a period of months, with the final 700 cut in January.
Although layoffs can be painful for the people who lose their jobs, not everyone thinks this reorg is a bad idea. The changes are intended to make it easier for Microsoft to sell subscriptions to its all-important cloud computing services.
In the current sales structure, too many deals have to go through the hands of too many different sales and marketing people, employees say. Company CEO Satya Nadella is systematically cleaning up Microsoft, getting rid of layers of management and reducing bureaucracy, one former Microsoft employee told us.
For all the changes, Nadella has a 95% approval rating on Glassdoor, one of the highest rated CEOs of 2017 in tech.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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