Microsoft’s long rumored job cuts are no longer a rumor, with the company announcing plans to cut as many as 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months—about 5-percent of its worldwide workforce—in the wake of a weaker than expected earnings report and what Steve Ballmer called “the most challenging economic climate we have ever faced.”
Sure, these layoffs are a helluva lot less than the massive, 17-percent reduction some rumormongers had predicted, but that’s little solace to the 1,400 workers laid off today, the majority of whom had been working in Redmond.