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...
replyMojang was tiny, they had all of 40 employees. Nokia, on the other hand, was enormous, with 25,000.
replyWhat’s the reason for the stagnation/decline since 2022?
replyThe usual answer for the macro trend is “the end of ZIRP”.
replyWhich 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.
replyI was disagreening with your statement
reply> like many of these recent layoffs, this is essentially reversing 2020-2022 net headcount growth.
which I took as "this is just reversing Covid overhiring". Which I'm tired of hearing. MSFT might have grown faster in 2021/22, but have stopped hiring for pretty much 4 consecutive years since.
> but have stopped hiring for pretty much 4 consecutive years since.
replyWhat’s your theory?
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.
reply60k workers is only ~18 billion. Maybe 36 billion. Maybe even 72.
replyThat'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...
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