Microsoft Fires More Than 400 Employees in Russia
Microsoft announced today that it will significantly reduce its operations in Russia with immediate effect. The company had previously announced that sales would be largely halted – now almost all employees have to leave.
Like Microsoft, according to the US Economic Service Bloomberg announced that due to the economic outlook and the impact on the company’s operations in Russia, the decision has been made to significantly reduce the number of employees in Russia. The company said it would continue to honor existing contractual obligations and refrain from making new sales.
More than 400 employees will initially be affected by the downsizing of the US software company’s presence in Russia, according to Microsoft. The company is seeking to treat affected employees with respect and assured them of its “full support during this difficult time,” Microsoft said in a written statement.
No new sales in Russia since March
As early as March, Microsoft had almost completely stopped selling its products in Russia, but even then announced it would continue to honor existing contracts until they expired. The company’s offices should also remain in place for the time being, but that is now apparently changing as part of the job losses. As in most other countries, Windows is the operating system on most PCs in Russia. The delivery of updates for the computers used there continues, even though calls have already been made to end the update service for PCs in Russia.
Microsoft does not operate its own data centers in Russia but has been working with Russian network operator MTS since 2018 to jointly offer cloud services based on Azure. It is currently unknown whether and to what extent existing cooperation with partners and customers in Russia will be negatively impacted by the layoff of most of Microsoft’s Russian employees.
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