Microsoft offers voluntary exit to about 60,000, a quarter of staff
- Microsoft’s exit offer is open to about 60,000 employees, about a quarter of its workforce.
- It covers participating teams in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and India up to level 70.
- The package equals Microsoft’s standard severance, with a deadline in the first week of December.
- About 30% of the roughly 8,750 employees eligible for its spring retirement program took it.
WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES — Microsoft is offering a voluntary exit package to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, in participating teams in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and India. The company expects a much smaller share to accept than the roughly 30% who took its earlier voluntary retirement offer.
Open to staff up to level 70
Chief people officer Amy Coleman announced the Voluntary Exit Offer in a memo to employees on Oct. 26, and the company told GeekWire that about 60,000 people are eligible. “This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” she wrote.
The offer has no age or tenure requirement, and performance isn’t a factor, the company said. It goes up to level 70 on Microsoft’s internal scale, which includes general managers and some employees with vice president titles, but not corporate vice presidents.
Business leaders decide whether their groups take part, and the sales organization is not participating. “There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee,” Coleman wrote.
Standard severance, December deadline
The package is equivalent to Microsoft’s standard severance, including base pay based on tenure and level, continued stock vesting, healthcare coverage for a fixed period and career transition services. Employees have until the first week of December to decide.
The spring retirement program, the first in Microsoft’s history, went to longtime U.S. employees. About 30% of the roughly 8,750 eligible took it, and Microsoft disclosed a $900 million charge for the program in its April earnings report.
Layoffs stay on the table
Microsoft says the offer isn’t a sign that it needs fewer employees, and that it is not a replacement for layoffs, which will remain part of its approach depending on business conditions. The company cut 4,800 jobs in July, about 2% of its global workforce, and hundreds more in September, after cutting more than 15,000 jobs in 2025.
Its full-time headcount stood at 223,000 on June 30, down from 228,000 a year earlier. Microsoft is under pressure from Wall Street to hold down operating expenses as it pours tens of billions of dollars into data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it,” Coleman wrote.
What it means for employers
Microsoft’s offer adds a voluntary route to reshaping teams, alongside layoffs and internal moves. The company said in July that it had redeployed more than 4,000 employees into new roles over the previous year.
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