Microsoft Rapidly Shrinking (No, It's Not About Efficiency, It's About Unbearable Debt)

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Jul 30, 2025

Yesterday: Expect More Microsoft Layoffs | Microsoft Behaving Like It's Running Out of Money to Pay Salaries

Today:

Proprietary software giants that suck the veins of government budgets (i.e. taxpayers) aren't success stories. They are - to put it bluntly - leeches. They go out of their way to portray themselves as tolerant, even while they profit from bombing people, from racism etc.

1 hour ago somebody wrote:

Microsoft also requires all employees to write up how they have contributed to and will contribute to D&I. (D&I is Microsoft's brand for DEI and includes all components of DEI ideology including equity).

Managers are then required to provide feedback and guidance on their employee's D&I performance and plans.

D&I is the first required "Core Priority" (and remained so for years) in annual performance reviews. Then Microsoft started failing in security to the point that there were several government agency hacks and foreign actors attained access to government systems in Azure. (coincidence?) So Microsoft added "Security" as the second required core priority as a reaction. This is how it still today. Any employee (including managers) are familiar with these requirements and go to msconnects to see.

Google says "Microsoft connects Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) with performance reviews by integrating D&I considerations into the performance evaluation process. This includes setting D&I goals ... Microsoft incorporates D&I goals into performance plans, encouraging managers and employees to actively contribute ... Performance reviews assess not only what employees achieve but also how they achieve it, specifically evaluating their inclusive behaviors, such as collaboration, communication, and alignment with core values ... Ensuring Equitable Outcomes: Microsoft strives for pay equity and equitable performance outcomes"

Microsoft's own diversity report publicly says: "Annual performance and development goal related to Diversity & Inclusion (D&ICore Priority) introduced for all employees" [2018-2022] and "Every employee sets an annual D&I Core Priority goal, informed by the One Microsoft D&I Plan, to enable individual accountability" [2024].

https://fortune.com/2023/11/08/microsoft-diversity-performance-reviews-inclusion-managers/

All employees are required to take D&I training and given that D&I is part of everyone's performance evaluations it has become embedded in ALL projects including Microsoft's required annual security and compliance training.

Even employees working directly and indirectly under federal contract are required to take D&I training and write a D&I core priority in their annual performance reviews.

This is about one thing: optics. It can also help keep wages down.

There are meanwhile new stories about how Microsoft rips apart the workforce [1] and shutting things down [2].

The company is going to fake its financial performance, as usual, in effect defrauding shareholders again. We'll soon see how much debt grew in the past quarter. █

Related/contextual items from the news:

1. ‘Like Second-Hand Office Chairs’: Ex-Microsoft Employee Slams Deal With Cognizant Which Resulted In Layoff

   A Reddit user called out Microsoft and Cognizant for a sudden sale of the entire business division without intimating the staff, calling it a betrayal that cost employees their futures.

2. Microsoft feels like the new Sega - why the recent studio closures feel like the collapse of the Xbox ecosystem

   Gaming is in a weird place right now. There are layoffs happening everywhere, games are getting delayed even as the Switch 2 proves to be a bigger hit than even Nintendo could imagine, and a group of studio executives have accused their publisher of sabotaging the release of a game to avoid a $250 million bill. But none of that is going to impact the industry quite as much as what is happening with the Microsoft Xbox. I’ve been following video games for a long time, and the closest analogy I have is remembering Sega in the wake of the Saturn.

   In case you weren’t around, that isn’t good news for Microsoft.