Microsoft Workers Protest AI Push as 60,000 Staff Weigh Buyouts

A group of current and former Microsoft employees has gone public with an open letter criticising the company’s race to dominate artificial intelligence, saying the push has come at the expense of its workforce, its customers and its environmental commitments.

The letter, signed “Concerned Microsoft Workers”, surfaced as the company offers voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India — the largest voluntary exit programme in Microsoft’s history. Staff have until 9 December to decide whether to accept, and those who do will leave on 31 December.

“Joyless and demoralising”

The letter is blunt about how the AI drive feels inside the company. For many staff, it says, “working at Microsoft has become joyless and demoralizing” — the spelling is the letter’s own — and the internal culture has shifted from rewarding to demoralising since the company ramped up its AI investment.

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 letter ties the slump in morale to the period when Microsoft sharply increased its spending on AI infrastructure, including data centres, and argues that the drive for speed has crowded out quality, support and job security.

According to reporting by The New York Times, the letter began circulating among colleagues before the buyout offer was announced on 26 October. It has since drawn wider attention as the 9 December decision deadline approaches.

The buyout offer

The Voluntary Exit Offer covers eligible employees at level 70 and below in participating teams. Some groups, including certain data-centre, sales and marketing teams, are excluded. Staff who accept will receive a minimum of eight weeks of base salary, with final severance amounts scaling higher according to job grade and tenure.

Microsoft has set no participation target and says it expects fewer than 5 per cent of eligible employees to take the offer. The company has stressed that the offers are voluntary, not layoffs, and that the figure of 60,000 is the size of the eligible pool, not a confirmed departure count. With about 223,000 employees worldwide, the offer reaches roughly 27 per cent of the workforce.

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman framed the programme in a memo to staff as “a new choice to make that transition now with support”, adding financial support and career-planning resources for those who choose to leave. A company spokeswoman has said the buyouts are not driven by AI.

Record profits, rising costs

The offer lands as Microsoft reports record financial results alongside heavy AI spending. Two days after the buyouts were announced, the company reported quarterly profit of $36.6 billion, up 32 per cent, on revenue of $92.3 billion.

At the same time, the cost of the AI buildout is squeezing cash. Microsoft’s free cash flow in the previous quarter was $19.64 billion, down 23 per cent from a year earlier, according to CNBC. The company has also priced a record $25 billion bond sale to fund its AI infrastructure push, which drew orders of about $115 billion.

The scale of the spending is striking. Microsoft alone is spending on the order of $175 billion on data centres and AI capacity in 2026, according to industry analysis, as the largest technology companies race to build the infrastructure behind AI services. The question investors and now employees are asking is whether that spending will convert into durable returns fast enough to justify it.

What the letter demands

The workers’ 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.

In practical terms, the letter asks Microsoft to involve employees in decisions about how AI is built and used, and to stop linking AI use to rewards or reprimands. It also calls on the company to honour its environmental commitments, which the workers say are being sacrificed to power-hungry data centres.

The group is open to full-time staff, employees of subsidiaries such as GitHub and LinkedIn, vendors, interns and contractors. Microsoft has not said how many people have signed the letter, and it has not publicly responded to its specific demands.

A wider pattern

This is Microsoft’s second buyout programme of 2026. In April, about 8,600 long-tenured US staff received early retirement offers, accepted by roughly 30 per cent. That was followed in July by 4,800 layoffs that eliminated about a fifth of the Xbox unit, and reports say Xbox is planning further job cuts in November and January.

The pattern is not confined to Microsoft. Across the technology industry, companies are cutting costs and reshaping workforces even as they pour record sums into AI, and AI chip demand remains strong. The tension between those two trends — huge investment on one side, leaner teams on the other — is now the defining workforce story in big tech.

For Microsoft, the immediate test is the 9 December deadline. If uptake is low, as the company expects, the programme will pass with little disruption. But the open letter suggests the deeper issue — how AI is changing the daily experience of work — will not be settled by a buyout deadline.

Frequently asked questions

How many Microsoft employees were offered buyouts? About 60,000 employees at level 70 and below in participating teams across the US, Canada, the UK and India — roughly 27 per cent of Microsoft’s 223,000-strong workforce.

When do employees have to decide? Eligible staff have until 9 December 2026 to decide, and those who accept will leave on 31 December 2026.

What does the workers’ open letter say? Signed “Concerned Microsoft Workers”, it says the company’s AI push has made work “joyless and demoralizing” and asks Microsoft to involve employees in AI decisions, stop tying AI use to rewards or reprimands, and protect its environmental commitments.

Are the buyouts layoffs? No. The offers are voluntary, and Microsoft says it expects fewer than 5 per cent of eligible employees to accept. The company has said the programme is not driven by AI.