I was part of the much bigger proportioned layoff back in 2009 shortly after my second child was born, back when MiniMicrosoft was still posting. I was so upset! BUT! It was actually a great thing that happened to me. I got a big severance, and almost immediately started somewhere else I've been considering with 30% raise and pretty quickly arriving great bonuses. I wish the same to the people laid off, looks like at least a couple of people in that twitter thread are awesome people!

ALSO!

I went back to Microsoft consulting as a both orange and a purple badge for a number of years, and In 2011 I worked on a super secret project with Microsoft HR helping tune a badly implemented upgrade to the system tracking layoffs, so secret I had to sign a ton of docs just to know it existed. It was eye opening. In organization that size there are always layoffs, some small (like 10 people), some slightly bigger (like 100 people). They were in the height of the Skype integration (aka ripping it to pieces) and so several hundred of scandinavians/estoninans were getting an axe. I fixed the system's perf issues and got out of there asap