Microsoft首席执行官萨特雅·纳德拉(Satya Nadella)在过去几年里所说的话，Microsoft目前向全美，英国，加拿大，印度等地约60,000名员工提供自愿买断服务。
Microsoft的AI未来就业机会减少
也是时候给下个"长老"游戏取名了
公司首次向这么多员工提出这样的提议，这都是持续努力的一部分
“我们的总的人力成本将下降，我们的人均成本将上升，我的GPU每个研究员将上升，”近两年前，Microsoft的人会更少，但它会给剩下的人提供更高的工资、更多的工具和人工智能。
也帮助解释过去数年里，Microsoft在过去十年中经常进行裁员，但在过去的几年里，裁员和行政人员离职的情况相当严重。
这些不是每年的老裁员，Microsoft解雇了4800名员工，削减对Xbox和商业销售团队的影响最大
Microsoft的总人数也逐年下降，这是十年来第一次。 Microsoft目前截至6月30日雇用了约223,000人，比2025年雇用的228,000人少了5,000人。 Microsoft去年7月解雇了4%的员工
今年早些时候，9000名合格雇员中有30%以上接受了退休计划，但这个数字对于公司最新的自愿退出计划来说可能要少得多。 这主要是因为，根据熟悉的消息来源，这一提议实际上与Microsoft的定期离职条件相同，即按公司时间计算的现金、加快股票储备、一些额外的补贴医疗保险以及几个月的职业服务。
但这种异常之处在于被提供这个出口的员工人数即使只有5%的人接受这个提议，因此我们暂时还不知道这项提议的影响。 由于11月和1月有更多解雇的传言，确实接受的员工数量肯定会告知Microsoft的下一轮削减的数字。
公司内外也有一些人认为Microsoft需要这些削减。 “Microsoft需要更少的人”，称 Merill Fernando，前Microsoft Entra产品经理。 “我一直在参与其中。 我亲眼目睹了事情的形成。 很多小矮人。 层上分层。 到处都是硅。
费尔南多描绘出Microsoft的画面，每个组织“都有自己的重点，这听起来有点像一个mememe 在Microsoft的每一个组织正在指枪相对，竞争而不是合作。
Nadella去年在与Stripe联合创始人John Collison的播客中甚至提到Meme，承认该漫画定义了Microsoft的文化叙事“比现实更真实”, “从某种意义上说，这些分裂的紧张局势中有些是需要引起紧张局势的真正问题。 称 Nadella: “社会凝聚不是一个目标，在市场上获胜是一个目标。
现在的问题是，纳德拉能否为AI时代重塑Microsoft，而不会使帮助界定他的领导力的文化转变被推翻。 一家转而围绕同情心建设的公司现在要求其雇员考虑AI的未来，这可能会使他们的许多工作变得不必要的。 Nadella如何处理转型问题
Xbox的"福扎汽车港"建筑师在将近27年后即将离开。
几周前，我从Xbox员工那里得知，Dan Greenawalt，长久以来的创造力背后的福扎汽车港，Greenawalt作为Turn 10 Studios的负责人出发，该作由福尔扎地平线开发者Playground Games合并而成的"福尔扎汽车体育"创作者。
Playground Games工作室负责人特雷弗·威廉姆斯(Trevor Williams)在一份近期的内部备忘录中披露了这一消息，由Notepad所见。 “丹·格林纳瓦尔特决定，现在是他从Microsoft退休的合适时机”，称 Williams。 Greenawalt 将继续担任威廉姆斯和新任命的"花地运动会"首席运营官米歇尔·巴斯蒂安(Michel Bastien)的顾问，“同时他将过渡到下一阶段”。 以下是威廉姆斯关于格林纳瓦尔特的备忘录：
丹在过去27年的影响很难被夸大。 从2001年最初的XBOX上运送高谭市赛车项目到领导创建了"福扎"(Forza),"Turn 10 Studios"(Turn 10 Studios)，并在我们的E3舞台上多次出场，通常都会用一辆超车牵引出一个戏剧性的入口 — — 以及更多 — — 我们非常感谢丹。 我谨代表两个小组感谢丹的领导、支持和伙伴关系。 我祝愿他今后一切顺利。
Microsoft上个月透露，作为Xbox大规模重组的一部分，它正在将自己的两个Forza开发者合并为一个工作室。 Playground Games 和 Turn 10 Studios 都合并为仅是 Playground Games. 该工作室现在有两个地点：花地游戏Leamington Spa和花地游戏Redmond.
Greenawalt退休后，Turn 10 Studios的70多位员工去年被解雇，此举冲击了绝大多数工作室。 在过去的一年中，Turn 10 Studios基本维持了"福尔扎汽车港"(Forza Motorsport)，现在剩下的员工已经搬到"花地游戏"(Playground Games)去"福尔扎地平线"和"有线"(Fable)工作。
是时候给长者们起名了第六卷：哨兵
自从贝塞斯达正式发布宣布后，虽然关于"长者之作"(The Elder Scrolls VI)的平台排他性
熟悉贝塞斯达计划的消息人士告诉我，Xbox拥有的出版商即将宣布下一部"长老之流"游戏正式取名"长老之流"(The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel). 下个月就可以宣布，这段时期将标志着自"长者行记"(The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim是发布)以来的15年。
贝塞斯达最近几个月一直在炫耀哨兵游戏，Xbox CEO Asha Sharma在8月获得了"哨兵"(Sentinel)的现场播放权，她称赞了游戏的规模和称“故事甚至更大了”.
下个月我只期待一个名字公布，若你想完全避免游戏的破坏者
据我所知，哨兵将在汉默菲尔(Hammerfell)设立。 汉默菲尔(Hammerfell)是长者史克威尔斯宇宙中的一个省份，它出现在"长者史克威尔斯冒险：红卫兵和长者史克威尔斯在线"中。 哨兵会是第一部关于"长者行"历史的游戏，并帮助揭开这些神秘的古代文物的秘密。
垫子
Xbox的首任首席操作官刚过了几个月就出来了。 这是一个奇怪的一个。 蒋海伦出道21年后将离开Microsoft. 她此前曾出任"Minecraft"的主管，后于7月被提升为Xbox COO. 突然离开的是宣布上周Xbox酋长Asha Sharma的一份令人惊讶的简短备忘录 “蒋海伦今天要离开Microsoft。 称 Sharma表示：Xbox COO的立场似乎不会消失，Eurogamer在周末报道说，蒋“因违反政策而被终止职务”。 我从内部听到过类似的谈话，但蒋被许多Xbox员工形容为受到高度尊重，我试图了解更多细节，但若你听到任何消息，请在Notepad@theverge.com或透过安全的信号通讯应用
- Microsoft新的 Surface Laptop Ultra 更新修正了重启并显示错误。 我在审阅时遇到一些怪事，更新地址是屏幕闪烁、意外重启、以及长时间重启，我仍在等待Nvidia或Microsoft是否解决表面笔记本电脑Ultra上奇怪的懒惰情绪
- GitHub的前CEO发布是AI agents的竞争平台。 我们知道前GitHub首席执行官托马斯·多姆克(Thomas Dohmke)在GitHub建立某种竞争对手，但结果在GitHub的"宇宙会"的一周内令内部人惊讶。 开发者可以使用新的Entire平台来主持和审查代码，但是它也设计了与AI agents合作，并用“Trails”功能取代拉出请求，该功能提供“agents在每个代码推取上得分的可定制的evals”。 一位GitHub雇员告诉我，“人们感到震惊，他们在我们自己的会议周上下埋伏了我们。”
Windows很快会让你在不打开浏览器的情况下进行互联网速度测试。 今年早些时候，Microsoft在Windows 11任务栏中添加了速度测试选项，但这只是在您浏览器中打开的Bing中速度测试的链接。 Microsoft实际上正在将一个全速测试整合到任务栏中，这样你就可以右键点击网络图标，并在那里进行互联网速度测试。
- Windows 11正在获得一些整洁的有轨电车特性。 Microsoft正在添加新的Windows trackpad功能，可以更快地通过长文档和网页滚动。 您也可以通过擦去触摸板的边缘，以及支持单指滚动，连续地滚动一页。 我很喜欢看到Windows增加这些功能。
- Microsoft 称它的AI工具比诊断条件下的医生要好。 Microsoft 声称已经开发出一种AI动力工具，它称能够诊断出比人类医生更准确的四倍多的病情。 全球最有名的刊物之一Science上刊登了调查结果。 Microsoft将人工智能系统与人类医生作对，从医疗病例报告和急诊部门数据中得出了一系列假设。 Microsoft认为它的工作很重要。 称 Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman接受The Verge采访时，“这是一个飞跃，但这是这一过程中的一个重要里程碑。”
- Microsoft认证器缺陷让恶意的Android应用窃取信使。 Enclave的安全研究者发现 Microsoft 认证员的弱点使得一个无特权的人
本文由 AI宝库自动抓取并翻译，版权归原作者所有；如需查看原文请点下方链接。
To anyone listening closely to what Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has been saying over the past couple of years, this week felt like the clearest sign yet that AI is about to fundamentally change the size of Microsoft’s workforce. Microsoft is now offering voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees across the US, UK, Canada, and India.
Microsoft’s AI future has fewer jobs
It’s also time to name the next Elder Scrolls game, and Xbox’s architect of Forza Motorsport is leaving.
It’s the first time the company has presented such an offer to so many employees, expanding greatly upon the retirement offer that was limited to around 9,000 employees earlier this year. It’s all part of an ongoing effort to avoid reducing investment in AI infrastructure by lowering Microsoft’s operating costs and headcount.
“Our total people costs will go down, our cost per head will go up, and my GPU per researcher will go up,” Nadella said on a podcast almost two years ago, responding to a question about AI’s impact on headcount. That’s a financial way of saying Microsoft will have fewer people, but it will offer higher salaries and more tools and AI power to those who remain.
It also helps explain the continued layoffs we’ve seen at Microsoft over the past couple of years. Microsoft has been performing layoffs regularly over the past decade, but over the past couple of years, the layoffs and executive departures have been significant.
These aren’t the annual layoffs of old; they’re now happening every few months. This week’s voluntary exit offer arrived just months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 employees, cuts that impacted its Xbox and commercial sales teams the most.
For the first time in a decade, Microsoft’s overall headcount has also gone down year over year. Microsoft now employs around 223,000 people as of June 30th, 5,000 fewer than the 228,000 people it employed in 2025. Microsoft laid off 4 percent of its workforce in July last year, and it’s now offering voluntary buyout offers to around a quarter of its employees.
More than 30 percent of the 9,000 eligible employees accepted a retirement offer earlier this year, but that number will likely be far less for the company’s latest Voluntary Exit Offer. That’s largely because, according to sources familiar, the offer is practically the same as regular severance terms at Microsoft — cash based on time at the company, accelerated stock vesting, some additional subsidized health coverage, and several months of career services.
But what makes this unusual is the scale of the amount of employees who have been offered this exit. Even if only 5 percent accept the offer, that’s still 3,000 employees. I understand eligible employees have until December to decide, so we won’t know the impact of this offer for a while yet. With rumors of more layoffs in November and January, the amount of employees who do accept will surely inform Microsoft’s numbers for its next round of cuts.
There are some, both inside and outside the company, who think Microsoft needs these cuts. “Microsoft needs fewer people,” says Merill Fernando, a former Microsoft Entra product manager. “I’ve been on the inside. I’ve seen how things get built. Lots of small orgs. Layers on layers. Silos everywhere.”
Fernando paints a picture of a Microsoft where every organization “had its own priorities and its own decision makers,” so it’s hard to get the company to do anything collectively. It sounds a little like the meme where each organization in Microsoft is pointing guns at each other, competing instead of collaborating.
Nadella even addressed that meme last year in a podcast with Stripe co-founder John Collison, acknowledging that the comic has defined Microsoft’s cultural narrative “more so than reality,” but that it had signaled some very real tensions inside the company. “In some sense, some of these divisional tensions are real issues that need to have tension. Social cohesion is not a goal, winning in the marketplace is a goal,” said Nadella.
The question now is whether Nadella can reshape Microsoft for the AI era without undoing the cultural transformation that helped define his leadership. A company that has shifted to be built around empathy is now asking its employees to reckon with an AI future that could make many of their jobs unnecessary. How Nadella handles that transition will define his legacy as much as the growth and success he’s achieved over the past decade.
Xbox’s architect of Forza Motorsport is leaving after nearly 27 years
A few weeks ago I started hearing from Xbox employees that Dan Greenawalt, the longtime creative force behind Forza Motorsport, is leaving after almost 27 years. Greenawalt is departing as the head of Turn 10 Studios, the Forza Motorsport creator that merged with Forza Horizon developer Playground Games.
Playground Games studio head Trevor Williams revealed the news in a recent internal memo, seen by Notepad. “Dan Greenawalt has decided that this is the right time for him to retire from Microsoft,” says Williams. Greenawalt will stay on as an adviser to Williams and the newly appointed Playground Games chief operating officer, Michel Bastien, “while he transitions to his next phase.” Here’s part of Williams’ memo about Greenawalt:
It’s hard to overstate Dan’s impact over the past 27 years. From shipping Project Gotham Racing on the original XBOX in 2001 to leading the creation of Forza, founding Turn 10 Studios and appearing so many times on our E3 stage, usually making a dramatic entrance with a supercar in tow – and so much more – we owe tremendous thanks and gratitude to Dan. On behalf of both teams, I would like to thank Dan for his leadership, his support, and his partnership. I wish him well for whatever comes next.
Microsoft revealed last month that it was merging its two Forza developers into a single studio as part of a massive restructuring of Xbox. Both Playground Games and Turn 10 Studios have merged into just Playground Games. The studio now has two locations: Playground Games Leamington Spa and Playground Games Redmond.
With Greenawalt retiring and Turn 10 merged into Playground Games, it’s not clear if we’ll ever see Microsoft return to Forza Motorsport. More than 70 people at Turn 10 Studios were laid off last year, in a move that hit the vast majority of the studio. Over the past year, Turn 10 Studios has essentially been maintaining Forza Motorsport, and now the remaining employees have moved to Playground Games to work on Forza Horizon and Fable.
It’s time to name The Elders Scrolls VI: Sentinel
It’s been more than eight years since Bethesda officially announced the existence of the sixth game in its Elder Scrolls series. While there have been some debates around platform exclusivity for The Elder Scrolls VI, we’ve heard very little detail about the game that Bethesda has been working on all this time.
Sources familiar with Bethesda’s plans tell me that the Xbox-owned publisher is about to announce that the next Elder Scrolls game will officially be called The Elder Scrolls VI: Sentinel. The announcement could come as soon as next month, during a period that will mark 15 years since The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was released.
Bethesda has been showing off Sentinel gameplay in recent months, I’m told. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma got a live playthrough of Sentinel in August, and she praised the scale of the game and said “the story is even greater.”
While I’m only expecting a name reveal next month and nothing more, I’ve been hearing some additional details about the game. If you want to totally avoid spoilers about the game, then don’t read the next paragraph.
I understand that Sentinel will be set in Hammerfell, a province in the Elder Scrolls universe that’s appeared in The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard and The Elder Scrolls Online. Sentinel will be the first game about the history of the Elder Scrolls, and help uncover the secrets of these mysterious ancient artifacts.
The pad
- Xbox’s first chief operating officer is out after just a few months. This is a weird one. Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft after 21 years. She previously served as the head of Minecraft before being promoted to Xbox COO in July. The sudden departure was announced in a surprisingly short memo from Xbox chief Asha Sharma last week. “Helen Chiang is leaving Microsoft today. I’m grateful for her years of service and wish her well,” says Sharma. It doesn’t seem like the Xbox COO position is going away, as Sharma notes that “we’ll share more on COO leadership as plans are finalized.” Eurogamer reported over the weekend that Chiang had been “terminated for policy violations.” I’ve heard similar chatter internally, but Chiang has been described to me by multiple Xbox employees as highly respected, with high integrity, so this turn of events is quite odd. I’m trying to get more details, but if you’ve heard anything, please reach out confidentially at notepad@theverge.com or through the secure Signal messaging app. (I’m tomwarren.01.)
- Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Ultra update fixes reboot and display bugs. I ran into some weird issues with the Surface Laptop Ultra during my review, and Microsoft is now fixing some of them with a firmware update. The update addresses screen flickering, unexpected restarts, and lengthy reboot times alongside unspecified “additional bug fixes and general performance improvements.” I’m still waiting to see if Nvidia or Microsoft addresses the strange laggy feeling on the Surface Laptop Ultra, and it’s too early to say whether this firmware update addresses that or not yet.
- GitHub’s former CEO launched a competing platform for AI agents. We knew that Thomas Dohmke, former GitHub CEO, was building some kind of competitor to GitHub, but the result has surprised people internally during the week of GitHub’s Universe conference. Developers can use the new Entire platform to host and review code, but it’s also designed to work with AI agents and replaces pull requests with a “Trails” feature that offers “customizable evals that are scored by agents on every code push.” One GitHub employee tells me, “people are shocked, they have ambushed us up and down the stack on our own conference week.”
- Windows will soon let you perform an internet speed test without opening your browser. Microsoft added a speed test option to the Windows 11 taskbar earlier this year, but it was just a link to a speed test in Bing that opened in your browser. Now, Microsoft is actually integrating a full speed test into the taskbar, so you can right-click the network icon and perform an internet speed test right there.
- Windows 11 is getting some neat trackpad features. Microsoft is adding new Windows trackpad features that let you scroll through long documents and webpages faster. You’ll also be able to continuously scroll through a page by swiping the edge of your touchpad, along with support for single-finger scrolling. It’s the small things that count, and I love to see these kinds of features being added to Windows.
- Microsoft says its AI tool is better than doctors at diagnosing conditions. Microsoft claims to have developed an AI-powered tool that it says can diagnose conditions up to four times more accurately than human doctors. The findings were published last week in Science, one of the world’s most prestigious journals. Microsoft has pitted its AI system against human physicians on a series of scenarios drawn from medical case reports and emergency department data. While there’s still a long road ahead before this AI system can be widely deployed, Microsoft thinks its work is significant. “It needs clinical validation,” says Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman in an interview with The Verge. “That is a leap, but this is a major milestone along that journey.”
- Microsoft Authenticator flaw lets malicious Android apps steal tokens. Security researchers at Enclave have discovered a vulnerability with Microsoft Authenticator that lets an unprivile
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