Those who trained AI ended up losing their jobs to AI in Microsoft

 

Leading information technology company Microsoft has recently laid off a number of employees. According to reports, around 6,000 employees at Microsoft have lost their jobs.

It's not unusual for companies to hire or lay off staff based on workload, labor demand and supply, and other operational factors. However, in Microsoft’s case, something quite unusual has happened. A large number of those laid off were software engineers. According to Bloomberg, around 40% of the layoffs from the company’s Washington branch were software engineers. Ironically, the very engineers who trained AI systems are now losing their jobs due to AI itself.

A few months ago, Microsoft had directed its engineers to increase the use of AI tools. The company had asked these engineers to rely more heavily on AI. But now, it's this reliance on AI that has cost many of them their jobs. According to a report by The Information, Microsoft Vice President Jeff Hens had instructed his team to use OpenAI's chatbot to generate about 50% of the computing code. His team had about 400 members, and months after this directive, the largest impact of the layoffs was felt by this very group.

This has raised the question: did these engineers end up training their own replacements?

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is known to be very vocal about AI. According to him, AI is already writing up to two-thirds of the code in certain Microsoft projects. However, these changes have posed significant challenges for those who lost their jobs.

These layoffs haven’t just affected lower-level coders. Even positions in product management and technical program management have been impacted.

In reality, one of the primary reasons behind Microsoft's latest round of layoffs is the increasing dependence on AI. The company says it is streamlining operations by reducing managerial layers.

Despite a strong quarterly revenue report from January to March, Microsoft is continuing with its workforce reduction. Even Microsoft's Director of AI, Gabriela de Queiroz, was affected by the layoffs. She revealed this in a post on LinkedIn.

She wrote:
"I'm sharing a few bittersweet updates. I, too, have been impacted by Microsoft’s recent layoffs. Was this expected? Maybe not. In today’s environment, no matter how hard you work, how much you advocate for your company, or how much change you drive, you are not immune to organizational restructuring."