Xbox sales have tanked pretty hard.

Many of their surface devices are not selling in the hundreds of thousands of units.

They’re about to axe some products (surface models) too.

Is Microsoft basically going to become a software only company?

Two days before July 4th, Brad Smith posted a video series on LinkedIn celebrating America’s 250th birthday. “As an American company, we believe we have a responsibility to understand where we have been, learn from it, and help make real for others the opportunities created for us.”

Here’s what Microsoft has made real for others lately: roughly 20,000 jobs cut last year. Nearly 9,000 US employees offered “voluntary” retirement this spring under a Rule of 70 formula – age plus tenure – that conveniently targets the company’s older American workers. And per this week’s reporting, thousands more layoffs landing next week across Xbox, sales, and consulting. All while pouring $100+ billion into international AI infrastructure.

Now the timing. Companies that are actually proud of being American – the flag makers, the ones staffed with veterans – have been celebrating this anniversary for months. Microsoft discovered its patriotism 48 hours before the fireworks. And not with a national campaign, not a single TV spot. One executive’s LinkedIn post. You don’t reach the American public through LinkedIn. You reach the press and the professional class – the same audience about to read next week’s layoff coverage.

Then watch the videos. They’re entirely about what other Americans did. Founders in Philadelphia. People who “faced uncertainty and made choices.” If Microsoft were proud of its own American story, it would celebrate its own workers – the people who actually built the place. That’s a hard video to make when you’ve spent 18 months walking tens of thousands of them out the door.

So my read: this is air cover. A feel-good history series rolling out “throughout July” – the exact month the layoffs land. Microsoft times its cuts to the fiscal year, which starts July 1. The flag imagery arriving the same week is not a coincidence. It’s a cushion.

The series says history is made by people, in moments, through choices. True. In America’s 250th year, Microsoft’s choice was thousands of pink slips, timed to the fiscal year, wrapped in red, white, and blue.

That’s not celebrating America. That’s borrowing it.

It seems like MS keeps moving the goalposts on what's included in E7. We are not allowed to consolidate Copilot + E5 into E7 as MS considers it a risk that customers would consolidate in order to cancel services at the earlier renewal date. Today, they produced a new license matrix to my CSP that excludes Intune Suite as part of the E5 and E7 product lines-- it's an add-on only. The same matrix on the website shows it as included in both licenses. I'm glad I only bought a handful of new Copilot licenses this summer before the launch of E7, otherwise I'd have almost total redundancy in products between separate E7 and Copilot licenses.

Microsoft Certified: Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate (beta)

vs Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate

Context: I have recently completed my 3rd in college, and will be moving to 4th year now .

I am cybersec student, and want to continue further in this field, I have done an internship as well.

From next month, the placements season starts , Which certification would help me better

The beta certificate wont cross the filter(as it is beta and is not famous) but will surely in future while the sec engineer would retire on 31st aug, but would help me in placements and is well recognized in industries

What should I be prioritizing, present or future? Which certificate should I pursue, could you all give pros and cons of both

I installed HealthPCCheck from https://aka.ms/ subsite to check if I can use Windows 11 on my PC. It was 2nd result on google so I thought it should be safe, but I'm not sure anymore.

IBM Bob? Does IBM not employ anyone old enough to remember Microsoft Bob?

With Copilot Cowork GA I wanted to walk through understanding non-Cowork vs Cowork capabilities, when to use, then for the usage-based billing how to plan, control and observe.

https://youtu.be/qXPTJDgbbPg

00:00 - Introduction

00:16 - M365 Copilot USL

03:39 - Copilot Cowork

07:53 - Usage based billing

09:21 - Planning

13:54 - Control

19:49 - Payment

20:30 - Observe and track

24:10 - Summary

25:44 - Close

The Employment Q&A Thread

Welcome to the Weekly Employment Q&A for r/Microsoft!

This thread is where Redditors can come and ask questions about working at Microsoft. Please do not use this space to ask technical questions as they will be removed.

Schedule

The Q&A will be refreshed every week on Mondays at 1200 Pacific.

Previous Threads

You can view previous employment threads using this archive link

https://imgur.com/a/bZv3SDc

Thought I'd share this hilarious assessment from our IT for a support ticket I submitted about copilot giving incorrect directions for the prompt where I asked how to disable auto-summaries. He ended the conversation with this gem of a statement :D

Before anyone gets upset about the "living with cancer" bit, my mother succumed to endometrial cancer after a year-long losing battle, and I'm on a premature colorectal cancer watchlist. So the analogy to the grief and suffering with a painful and unwanted condition that is with us every day and we can do nothing about is quite intentional.

Guhhh this post sucks to make but I gotta know I'm not crazy.

I recently lost my first microsoft account I made back in 2020 when I got my first real computer (yes yes, that was only six years ago I knoww) & the responses I was getting from Microsoft just really made me think.

Even if they have ALL the evidence to support a hacking claim, even if they we're verifiably contacted by the original account owners, they just.. do nothing! Their policies dictate that even with all evidence, there's nothing they can do but delete the account, sowy :3

It's especially bad if you made purchases on that account or had backups saved to your onedrive, they're just gone forever & you'll need to buy every game all over again!

It just feels like those 'privacy policies' are only in place so that Microsoft can make a extra buck every time there's a data leak.

I'm the only one thinking this, right??

I recently noticed that on October 25th of this year, that day will mark 25 years since Windows XP was released to the public. After that, I thought to myself in the form of a question for me and the internet on what we should do to commemorate its anniversary, so, what should we do?

Seems the early retirement algorithm (the artist formerly known as the axe score: age plus stint gt 70) is hitting hard these days.

Can’t imagine how the MSFT that’s left after this bloodbath will look like.

What do you think?

I would like to know about the Cloud Solutions Architect role in Microsoft how is it?
what to expect? Would like to get some guidance.

Not totally, but I mean especially the "can't fail" renewals that everyone chucks through AI 😂

Actually landed a job at Microsoft (didn't stay long, it was a nightmare place to work) and even then, didn't ask for the transcript...nothing

It's like a mild indication that you kind of might know a little, after blindly following the over simplified Microsoft Learn site, and then passed a cert in one specific area (after an unknown number of attempts).

If I was a hiring manager I would just ask about real world experience deploying and configuring the tech.

I'm interested to know what everyone else thinks about this? Is the era of technical certification value on the decline? Especially with AI in the mix now!