And so it begins.
As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella hinted at in a recent letter to employees, his company will be soon be announcing layoffs, and according to reports Wednesday many will likely be in Nokia’s home country of Finland.
Microsoft bought the cellular device devision of Nokia last spring, and since then 25,000 Nokia employees have become Microsoft employees.
A thousand of those jobs are about to disappear, a Finnish daily newspaper reported Wednesday, quoting anonymous sources. Today, Microsoft has 4,700 ex-Nokia employees in Finland.
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The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat says Microsoft plans to close down a former Nokia research and development unit in Oulu, northern Finland. The facility in Oulu employs 500 people, mainly working on software used in basic cellphones. The other 500 hundred position eliminations would come from other Nokia locations in Finland.
Microsoft now has a massive 127,000-employee payroll, far bigger than those of Apple and Google.
The layoffs in Finland may foretell the scope of the carnage that will be announced next week with Microsoft earnings.
Analysts expect Nadella to announce some cuts next week when the company announces earnings. It’s expected to be Microsoft’s first major staff reduction since 2009.
Some analysts have projected that Microsoft could lay off as much as five percent of its workforce.
