Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft offers buyouts up to 7% of US employees

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87 pointsdarth_avocado100 comments

I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now.

Paying to get rid of your institutional knowledge and experience is an insane move, especially as everything is on fire.

It depends. Sometimes these buyouts are targeted towards groups that are toxic to the growth of the organization as a whole, like folks who have been around for a hot minute and have built up a cache of power but fail to use it other than for self-preservation or glory. I've worked in places where a handful of higher-ups nearing retirement block all progress because they refuse to learn anything new and are months or years away from retirement; in those cases, these buyouts can be quite good at eliminating bad actors and freeing up roles for those you want to keep around, but can't due to headcount limits or politics.

Do I think that's what Microsoft is doing here? No, not really. I think they're pulling an IBM - axing older workers generally in favor of younger ones, but done so in a way that won't result in a sueball. I agree with you that right now they need folks with institutional knowledge and experience to gradually hand over the helm to the next set of folks, and this isn't the way to go about it (that would've been all the previous rounds of wholly unnecessary layoffs).

It's just a way to juice the share price through performative restructuring, in my opinion.

I wonder if Raymond Chen is still there :-(

Yes https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20260423-00/?p=11...

For now…

He said many times that he keeps his blog with at least 6 months of articles in the backlog. So even if he goes we won't know until months or maybe a year later.

>I feel like paying your most experienced employees to quit is exactly the opposite of what Microsoft needs right now.

I always felt thats the deal. But not a lot of people left the company when one was given, and we have rolling buys out now so people are trying to time buyout + a new job offer.

I'd think of it this way:

Folks who have institutional knowledge that is really critical to the company are likely treated quite well in prestigious roles and paid handsomely. If they take a modest buyout offer, it's probably because they were close to retirement anyway. Any truly critical role will have a succession plan. And if someone the company really doesn't want to lose signals they intend to take the offer without a credible succession plan, the company could just make them an even better personal offer to stay.

At the same time, I'm sure there are many folks who over-estimate how important their role and knowledge are to the company, especially to its future, which may look increasingly different from its past. Some of these people can become active blockers or political problems that are difficult, visible, and painful to deal with. Getting them to exit on their own is a win for the company, and it avoids the morale problem of visibly performance managing them or firing them.

I assume this voluntary retirement offer will be something like 2 weeks of pay per year of service, plus maybe 16 weeks. And you get to keep your unvested stock. If that's not too far off, you'd expect a principal engineer's gross expected value to be something like 800k from such a move. It seems like the net opportunity cost of accepting the VR would play out like:

1) you lose 1 or 2 million net, in the scenario where you would've otherwise stayed working 4 more years. 2) you lose ~200k net, in the scenario where you get another comparable job, but the job search takes 9 months. 3) you come out ahead if you were about to retire/get laid off anyway.

So, I don't think this plan is going to eliminate a random sampling of senior folks. The folks who accept this offer will tend to be ones that don't super enjoy the work itself, or ones that anticipate bad rewards or impending layoff.

In other words, I doubt it will be a sweet enough deal to entice the already-rich, high performing principal engineers, or the passionate nerds who are just there because they want to be.

I'm in Seattle and used to work at MSFT, along with many others at where I work currently.

The details still haven't been given out to anyone, but I had drinks with someone who is thinking of taking the offer based on what they know. While no one has been told explicitly that they are on the list yet, this particular individual has been there more than long enough and is of the age where this actually makes sense to them.

What is known: 1. 2 years salary 2. RSUs are fully paid out, over standard timeline 3. No restrictions if someone chooses to find work elsewhere (do not compete is now illegal in WA) 4. We didn't discuss healthcare, but I'd assume its the same as salary (2 years)

> 3. No restrictions if someone chooses to find work elsewhere (do not compete is now illegal in WA)

Non-competes are still legal until Jun 30, 2027 for employees earning more than $127k.

I've been through a few rounds of voluntary buy-outs at a big tech company. By far and away the people most likely to take the package are the people who aren't bothered by the prospect of finding another job. Some of them are delusional, but in most cases these are the younger, more dynamic employees with marketable skills who will be difficult to replace.

The people you'd want to see go, people who have been there forever and have gotten overly comfortable, people who may even hate their job, tend to stay because of 1) skill atrophy and 2) a (valid) concern about age discrimination.

Based on my own experience I don't think I'd ever do a voluntary buy-out were I running a company. The company comes out ahead when managers do their job and make the hard choices.

Maybe, but whoever are currently there aren’t making Windows 11 better.

I'm laughing, having explained to my wife that if you are 69 and have worked there one year you are eligible for buyout/retirement.

The kid that started at 10 years old though, there for the whole 51 years: sorry, in another 9 years you will be eligible.

Hilarious that there is an algorithm.

Age + years of service >= 70.

61 + 51 in your example.

I'm dumb—somehow I got it in my head it was your age when you started.

This is what really "AGI" is.

Sounds like an issue for the next CEO when the current one takes their current parachute.

No, once you spend that much time at a Big co, you start treating it like your own little fiefdom. Your allegiance becomes to how do I increase my own scope and not how do I build great products for customers ? Also “coordination tax” is heavy at big companies, it takes monumental effort to ship even incremental improvements. You have to inject new blood and move fast with the times. Your tenure doesn’t give you a birthright to stay at the company forever. This is not to devalue people who have contributed immensely to MSFT before, there are tenured people who aren’t afraid of change and adapt with the times. But someone close to their retirement might not want to rock the boat too much.

There’s a reason why despite investing so much in building AI tools, MSFT has a bad rep and no one uses their tools. People use CC, Codex, Cursor when MSFT already has supposedly competitive tools.

Note: I work at MSFT.

> employees will be eligible if their years of work at Microsoft plus their age totals 70 or more, with some exceptions.

Seems like a voluntarily retirement offer for older employees

I bet they spent a long time figuring out if it was age discrimination or not

People who are 60 often get early retirement offers, don’t see this any different.

They did not. They had already done this thinking with the 55/15 retirement option, where if you’re aged 55 or older and 15 years continuous service you could leave and keep most of your equity. And you signed a suite of “non” agreements including non-litigation.

any large firing / buyout / HR change will absolutely have HR + Legal thinking about it.

probably doesn't need a "long time" just a week to check the regs and then to get an excel sheet together of ages + salaries

> years of work at Microsoft plus their age totals 70

Is that ageism? How is that different than saying if their gender is Y, their race is X or their religious belief is Z?

Because "number of expected working years left" is a factor in evaluating common law severance.

I can see if it would be exact years working at the place not years left.

The idea is that a 60 year old will have a harder time finding a new job than a 30 year old.

In the US, ageism is allowed as long it doesn't discriminate against older people(45 years old or older I think?). You're allowed to discriminate against youth all you want.

Offering a buyout is in no way discriminatory since it is voluntary. If it was forced buyout, then yes it would be discriminatory

By that logic a job offer is in no way discriminatory since it is voluntary?

A job offer can be discriminatory, why not? "You were our only female candidate, so we're offering you the job"

...there are a lot of answers on the "why not?"

Yes, that is exactly my point. "You were our only female employee, so we're offering you VR"

Oh, I see. The difference there, I think, is that you're illegally discriminating against men by doing that, which is not allowed. However, by law, you can't illegally discriminate against youth, so it's ok.

> In the US, ageism is allowed as long it doesn't discriminate against older people(45 years old or older I think?). You're allowed to discriminate against youth all you want.

I think it's 40 https://www.eeoc.gov/age-discrimination. So for 40 or less years + X years worked to be more than 70 they'd have to work there 30 years starting at 10 years old or younger. Granted, some of the decisions I saw Microsoft make do look like they were made by 10 year olds, so maybe there is some truth there.

> Offering a buyout is in no way discriminatory since it is voluntary. If it was forced buyout, then yes it would be discriminatory

Still, what if they offered it based on gender, religious belief, or race? Would that look just as good or bad of an offer.

>Still, what if they offered it based on gender, religious belief, or race? Would that look just as good or bad of an offer.

Those would be illegal. Based on age + tenure is not. Simple as that

But in terms of optics, I think this comes out positively. They're basically letting people retire early with a generous buyout offer that they are not required to take instead of just laying these people off with or without severance, which they'd be within their legal rights to do

"Hey, John. I see here that you didn't volunteer to retire. I admire your dedication to your job and to the company. However, I just got a troubling message from HR about your recent performance/allegations of misconduct/social media postings/<etc insert other BS excuse that HR makes up etc> and I need you to come with me to the board room so that we can sort this out. Don't bring anything with you. Just leave it on your desk. That'd be grrrrreat..."

Not all ageism is illegal.

I am not a native English speaker so I actually geniunely wonder:

1. Could you please tell more?

2. Could this be said for other -ism s as well? (Sexism, Racism, Ableism, Classism, Nationalism, Nepotism)

In the US ageism is illegal if you are discriminating against someone for being too old. It is not illegal in the US to discriminate against someone based on how young they are

I see, thank you for the info.

And is this only about the employment, or generally?

As far as I know, generally, although different categories have different laws. But it's not illegal to have housing that is reserved for elderly people. It's not illegal to require someone to be 18 or 21 to come into your place of business, etc

I mean they could instead fire them, at least they can opt to this.

Going by age, wouldn't that be breaking the law? Can't imagine they'd get more than a slap on wrist for it though, so kind of surprised they even bothered with the offer.

If it’s just by age I’d guess yes, but they always have the option to do mass layoffs including these folks + others.

In Spain there’s something similar called “prejubilación” (apologies for the Spanish link but the Wikipedia entry does not have an English version):

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejubilaci%C3%B3n

If you quit at age 55 or later and you have been with Microsoft for 15 years your stock continues to vest. That has always been the case.

This "buyout" appears to extend that benefit to employees who are >= 50 and have been with the company for 20 years. (Or any other combination that adds up to 70, for example you are 46 and have been with the company for 24 years).

Can't help but notice the trend of tech companies shaving employees at an accelerating pace.

Nobody wants to admit this (and there's a lot of reasons it could be temporary factors like "overhiring"), but to me this seems primarily if not exclusively driven by AI. You just can't say that to HR.

The bigger question is if this keeps accelerating, can the industry and broader economy handle so many jobs disappearing, so fast?

It's driven by attempting to outinvest eachother in AI, which is very different. They're not replacing job functions by AI. They're dropping more and more stuff on the floor, abandoning it and using the money to invest in datacenters (ie. paying NVDA and a few others).

But they're not replacing these employees. That may come, in the future, but it's not what's happening. This is freeing up money at any cost to products.

It is overhiring. We are nowhere near close to some collapse: https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-data-playground/

If you try to pattern match using news headlines towards some belief, you will. But the statistics are often a lot more boring.

It's share price juicing, plain and simple. The evidence for AI displacement is thin, while the longer-term view of American enterprise is incredibly dim (the fact data sovereignty is now common vernacular as opposed to tinfoil-hat bullshit when I started discussing it almost a decade ago is anecdotal evidence enough to me, but just go look at EU/APAC spooling up their own clouds/services for more evidence), and those in power know that the business cycle is teetering on another, larger collapse after ~15 years of growth. It's all about getting that share price as high as possible to cash out before the downturn, and making a big to-do about handing over leadership to "the next generation" before the economy implodes.

Cynical? Yeah, but I fail to see evidence to the contrary yet.

> The bigger question is if this keeps accelerating, can the industry and broader economy handle so many jobs disappearing, so fast?

No, but smarter economies are already adapting. These companies make money through "butts in seats" licensing schemes, and their continuous layoffs and devaluing of labor in the face of constant price hikes are scaring businesses in other sectors into following suit with layoffs of their own. Eventually one or more of them will cross the trust thermocline (my money is on Microsoft), at which point numbers will collapse so fast that everyone else suffers for it as the larger economy panics. Think a bank run, but on XaaS licensing as companies downsize and cut their cloud bills, which in turn causes those companies to downsize, which slows economic engines in other tertiary industries, who then cut their headcount and licensing bills, etc, etc.

It's going to be a vicious cycle, but the thinking seems to be that doing this will depress the value of technical labor (some of the last highly-paid labor out there) between a glut of supply and AI offsetting some costs, with the assumption that consumers/workers will suck it up, cut back somehow, and make it work again.

Except that can't happen this time around. Fifty-odd years of American boom-bust cycles have left workers - especially younger workers - with nothing left to cut to survive. The cost of necessities is already unaffordable on current wages, and there's this expectation that we'll figure out how to cut down even further on our paychecks while still paying record prices for everything. The math doesn't work anymore, and so this downturn is going to hurt exponentially worse than the COVID, 2008, dotcom, S&L crisis, or stagflation turned out.

Microsoft hired a lot of people post-covid. Googling, they went from 125k employees in 2017, to 163k in 2020, to 221k in 2022, and have been mostly steady in size since then (latest number from 2025 is 228k).

How "temporary" is overhiring? I think that they could probably cut quite a bit from the company, and it might actually improve their output.

They keep doing cuts but their employee count in 2025 is still higher than whenever we identify "overhiring" to have occured? Meanwhile, we know US hiring is on the downswing the past few years.

Doesn't sound like a company that actually cares about "overhiring". More that where they hire is shifting.

There are a ton of passengers at Microsoft, and many sit in the middle of our unnecessarily bureaucratic processes. They would absolutely do well to trim down.

We're in a recession. We're not going to admit we're in a recession until it's over (or worse, until it goes on long enough to qualify as a depression), because that's how the powers that can call a recession work.

And no, we cannot handle it. Not without a major overhaul of policy, New Deal style. Will we get that? Who knows.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/23/microsoft-plans-first-volunt... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47877184)

I think they're removing old rust that would crate friction in moving towards AI assisted development. Old rust which is used to higher quality of code...

Yes, that good old high quality code Microsoft is famous for.

There is good quality stuff at Microsoft, it's just on some of the innards.

NT Kernel, Direct3D, .NET Runtime. Also a lot of stuff that came out of Microsoft Research like Z3.

Which also happen to be the sort of projects older devs would normally be working on.

That was exactly my point. Old C++ Microsoft was good. New Electron Microsoft is shite.

That makes sense that if they want to move the company to have only AI actually write code then offer retirement to people that resist this directive.

Though based on the headlines that I've seen regarding Azure development I'm not confident that they would end up in a better place if this ends up happening.

But maybe who knows, they might open source the NT kernel as there will be nobody left to maintain it within Microsoft.

So the goal is to get rid of the people who have all the internal knowledge?

Yeah domain knowledge is expensive. Can you imagine how much it would cost to run a business where everyone knows the ins and outs of all of the customer use cases?

Speaking as a greybeard, it's not really that valuable. Younger people are just as smart, if not smarter, and they can figure it out if I get hit by a bus. There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.

Microsoft uses React Native in their Start menu because the kids don't know Windows programming anymore.

Makes no sense if you look at the start menu as an interface to the operating system.

Makes perfect sense if you look at it as one more place to show ads

Windows native app development is a mess https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47475938

>There's literally nothing I know that someone younger couldn't learn or figure out.

Learn, yes. Will they get the time and training for that, given that they are taking on 30+ year legacy code? I'm less confident.

I think it was perhaps useful, at least in knowing which things are Chesterton's Fence. I doubt that AI can figure that out, since it's not always possible for humans to figure that out either.

But with AI, simple codebase understanding or even just paving over everything, including the fence, is potentially easy, and getting easier each month.

Certainly, a certain amount of senior experience is needed. The AI lacks taste and discretion. But the greybeard sensibilities the come with increasing seniority will probably hold back the new pace of things.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton's_...

Ah, but can they tell the same tales as you can? Maybe in time when their beard starts getting grey in it, but that time is not now.

There is a difference between figuring out and already knowing. Especially if time is a limiting factor

They’re probably not the only people who keep the lights on. And if a few people are gate keeping information, you already have a problem that needs fixing.

How do you go about fixing the problem if you end up buying out all the people with the domain knowledge you were hoping to preserve? That's like burning all the treasure maps before you set sail.

Not saying a move like this won’t have any impact, but over emphasizing on domain knowledge is detrimental to engineering orgs. Some things will break, some things will be rediscovered by sinking more time, some things will be lost forever. But you also gain flexibility, fresh direction and the ability to move forward. When you work at a company for 20 years, you may be valuable when it comes to things that are done “the company way” but are also partially blind to how the industry has moved forward in those 20 years.

Microsoft is a services company with engineering roots. That can be a dangerous combination in the long run if they forget where their bread is buttered. I would hope the Windows 11 backlash serves as a warning that they can’t just ignore their customers in pursuit of a vision.

it's more like just giving the employees that are nearing retirement an option to retire early if they want to.

all the people that knew how to keep Github running and make a clean version of Windows are already gone, I suppose

Absolutely true for GitHub; there was an exodus a few years after the acquisition presumably once some key vesting dates hit…

Get rid of their highest-paid employees, replace them with off-shoring and AI.

Eventually the fact that the US military and government is getting tech support from overseas will catch up. Microsoft is a walking national security disaster.

But all they care about is "line go up next quarter". Their monopoly has made them lazy.

There might be these wizards, but probably most of them are dudes who were attached to something successful 15 years ago and have been riding out their time at an inflated level.

Satya is 58, plus his years at ms totals over 70, maybe he takes the buyout : )

History suggests the axe may well fall on the remaining if a certain target head-count is not achieved.

Seeing a lot of layoffs lately in tech generally. My sense is that Corporate knows something that the rest of us do not. (Or at least that Wall Street does not.)

I don't think most of the people they will inevitably layoff qualify for this package. age + num years work >= 70. They seem to be per-emptively shielding against age discrimination lawsuits.

And yes, but no. I think we all know what's happening. No one wants to say it out loud.

Yeah, agree. It's a clever way to cull the herd of the ones you would have difficulty laying off (due, as you say, to the appearance of age discrimination).

Next up, whole teams will be axed—not individuals.

A lot better than what Oracle offered their laid off employees which was `Severance includes 4 weeks' base salary plus 1 week per year of employment.`

Isn't this one of the things IBM did multiple times through the late 90s and early 2000s? Is Microsoft the new IBM?

>Is Microsoft the new IBM?

Lots of us thought they peaked during the Windows XP, now it looks like the Windows 10 era will be their peak beginning a long decline.

There have been major missteps trying to turn Windows into a subscription/surveillance product, combined with Azure being a mess, Europe running away from American locked in products, OpenAI losing the lead and the space becomming crowded and expensive, and the console wars being won by Steam... yup Microsoft is the new IBM. Clinging on to as much enterprise and common user inertia as they can while unable to innovate and thrive in the current market. They don't have vision and they can't conjure up a monopoly.

When XP was new people said 2000 looked like the peak. When Vista/7 was new people said XP looked like the peak. When 10 was new people said 7 looked like the peak. Now that 11 is still the latest, guess what the prediction is?

At some point one group will be right and feel extremely justified in achieving broken clock status of telling the future. Well, the folks who still argue ~2000 was peak and it has been a decline since are at least consistent... even if I agree in some ways and disagree in more in the other ways.

All of this might be true, but the numbers still match.

Windows is despite of all this garbage still the de facto standard. Azure is still a way to go thing beacuse so many companies just use office365 and microsoft can be trusted.

If you look at their numbers, they also grew quite fast. That might be more of their motivation though. They added 40k in just 6 years and are now at 230k.

Is Microsoft the new IBM?

Microsoft is the new IBM.

Google is the new Oracle.

Apple is the new Sony.

Microsoft isn’t known for great judgement.

How about stop enshittifying your products, make azure not be a pile of garbage,

All this is doing is delegating more work to AI handled by a lot of junior and unskilled “engineers” overseas or on h1’s

Azure is a disaster. Windows just keeps getting worse. Their branding department I am convinced is staffed with nutjobs. Someone has a fetish with the word “copilot”

"Who is going to provide critical updates for my Win11 workstation?! Hey , Microsoft, I'd like that old guys, who built 3.11 to do that, please"

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