Microsoft offers buyout for up to 7% of U.S. employees

Microsoft is offering voluntary status buyouts for the archetypal clip successful its 51-year history, per reports from CNBC and Bloomberg.

According to an interior memo, employees volition beryllium eligible if their years of enactment astatine Microsoft positive their property totals 70 oregon more, with immoderate exceptions. So if idiosyncratic who is 52 years aged has 18 years of work astatine Microsoft, they could suffice for the buyout.

This determination gives Microsoft an accidental to trim its headcount successful a mode little abrasive than wide layoffs. Over the past fewer years, Microsoft has weathered respective rounds of layoffs, affecting thousands of employees — astir recently, the institution chopped 9,000 jobs past summer.

The institution had an estimated 125,000 U.S. employees arsenic of June. The buyouts would reportedly use to 7% of the U.S. workforce, which amounts to astir 8,750 employees.

TechCrunch has reached retired to Microsoft for comment.