Microsoft CEO consoles employees by saying recent layoffs are down to 'the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value'

This month began with some stark news for Microsoft employees: The business was doing better than ever before, and that somehow means layoffs. Around 9,000 employees were laid-off globally, studios were closed, games were cancelled, and then to rub salt in the wound some Microsoft exec with terminal LinkedIn brain suggested that those affected use AI to console themselves.

Judging by the latest bizarre missive from Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, that very executive is probably in line for a promotion. There's executive leadership verbiage, and then there's Nadella in full flow, an endless spewer with terrifying levels of executive power and a cheery disregard for the economic realities of the little people. Ahem.

In a new blog titled "Recommitting to our why, what and how" Nadella takes off, first of all bravely addressing the question of why Microsoft has just fired so many folks.

"I want to speak to what’s been weighing heavily on me, and what I know many of you are thinking about: the recent job eliminations," writes Nadella. Then it's on to the "seeming incongruence" of the fact that "by every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving—our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right [...] And yet, at the same time, we’ve undergone layoffs."

Get ready because, in the annals of executive bullshit, this is a beauty.

"This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value," writes Nadella. "Progress isn’t linear. It’s dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding. But it’s also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before."

I'm not sure exactly what Nadella means by "franchise value" but neither's he, and that's the point. Is the suggestion that big tech can fail overnight with a bad product? Because Microsoft's history and de facto monopoly certainly suggests otherwise!

There's more nonsense about "creating new categories with new business models and a new production function" and, naturally, a reference to "this new paradigm."

Then we get into the titular "why, what, and how" of Microsoft's "mission" and surprise surprise people: it's AI! "What does empowerment look like in the era of AI?" Nadella wonders. "It’s about building tools that empower everyone to create their own tools. That’s the shift we are driving—from a software factory to an intelligence engine empowering every person and organization to build whatever they need to achieve."

There's some nonsense about AI changing everything because "that’s the empowerment our mission enables, creating local surplus in every company, community, and country." Local surplus? What, of laid-off workers? Is that the future Satya?

The guy's language really makes my head hurt at points, but I can say one thing—Copilot couldn't come up with this:

"We will reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI—infrastructure, to the app platform, to apps and agents. The key is to get the platform primitives right for these new workloads and for the next order of magnitude of scale. Our differentiation will come from how we bring these layers together to deliver end-to-end experiences and products, with the core ethos of a platform company that fosters ecosystem opportunity broadly. Getting both the product and platform right for the AI wave is our North Star!"

The LinkedIn nerds are gonna love this line: "Growth mindset has served us well over the last decade—the everyday practice of being a learn-it-all, not a know-it-all." This is good, apparently, and "it might feel messy at times, but transformation always is." Nadella claims that where AI is now "reminds me of the early ’90s, when PCs and productivity software became standard in every home and every desk!"

Don't ask why. "What we’ve learned over the past five decades is that success is not about longevity," says Nadella. "It’s about relevance. Our future won’t be defined by what we’ve built before, but by what we empower others to build now."

It seems to me that the main thing Microsoft is empowering people to build is the latest version of their CV, but I digress. Nadella's unique mode of expression aside, this is mostly just another tone-deaf missive from a corporation that truly seems to specialise in them. Perhaps the most concrete take-away from all of this though is that "we will reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI—infrastructure, to the app platform, to apps and agents."

AI may not do everything the boosters say, in other words: but it's here to stay anyway and, if you think it's been obtrusive up to now, you really haven't seen anything yet.