happily? nobody… begrudgingly? many of us forced to use MS shitty shitty products at work

A ton of government contractors. If you want federal certification and don’t want to run your own datacenter it’s much easier to go with AWS govcloud or azure government

Same reasons big retail companies do it. Release thousands of workers, absolve yourself from paying their insurances and salaries. Reap the rewards. Go back to hiring people, do it again for another quarter.

The quarterly earnings report comes two days after Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, as the tech giant spends heavily on artificial intelligence investments.

Implies that they are getting replaced by bots.

Because less people to pay means more money for the higher ups at the company?

The buyouts were offered to their aging orgs. Datacenter workers, quantum, MAI, sales and marketing, and cybersecurity were not included. https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/articles/microsofts-buyout-offer-employees-shows-135510739.html

Yes