Comment by drillsteps5
21 hours ago
So I checked your claim and it is accurate, in 2020 Microsoft had 163,000 while in 2022 it had 221,000.
There is a big HOWEVER. At least 2 in fact.
1. The company had been growing in the previous years, 2019, 2018, 2017 (they shrank somewhat in 2015 or 2016). In 2014 they had 29% workforce increase. So the significant growth in 2021/22 is not an aberration but rather continuation of the growth in previous years.
2. What IS an aberration is the workforce count after 2022. No growth in 2023 or 2025 (as in ZERO YoY change), and measly +7,000/3% growth in 2024. And some YoY loss in 2026 (-5,000, or 2.2%). With 2027 YoY likely showing at least some (and possibly a lot) of these 60,000.
So no, "it's just overhiring due to pandemic" was supposed to die years ago.
2014 was the year they acquired minecraft/mojang and nokia, which may have accounted for a lot of that growth. Also 2022 was the Activision/Blizzard acquisition which would have been well over 10k new employees...
Mojang was tiny, they had all of 40 employees. Nokia, on the other hand, was enormous, with 25,000.
What’s the reason for the stagnation/decline since 2022?
The usual answer for the macro trend is “the end of ZIRP”.
Which is where I was going with my (original) post - but the GP post seems to be using this as evidence to disagree, which is confusing.
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I believe this number is FTE's and not contractors. That's a whole different story, and I don't think those numbers are public. After a layoff at big tech, you see an influx of contractors. I would not be surprised if it was 50/50 at this point.
60k workers is only ~18 billion. Maybe 36 billion. Maybe even 72.
That's small potatoes vs their new excess capex spend of 100sB/y.
Maybe making the business look more lean/efficient to prep for upcoming bond/debt/whatever mechanism they'll use to get those 100sB/y...