Microsoft has announced plans to cut up to 18,000 jobs over the next year – the biggest wave of lay-offs ever suffered by the company.
Nokia will suffer the greatest losses, with about 12,500 job across Nokia's Devices and Services business being eliminated. The Xbox team, meanwhile, will experience "limited change".
In a new email to employees today, Nadella said that the job cuts were necessary to help "simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster. As part of modernizing our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change.
"In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making," he continued. "This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. In addition, our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams.
"The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft."
