For one, in many many companies layoffs start in HR/hiring themselves. If MS needed to hire a ton of people in 2020-2022 it’s not at all a sign of incompetence

For one, in many many companies layoffs start in HR/hiring themselves. If MS needed to hire a ton of people in 2020-2022 it’s not at all a sign of incompetence if they hired a lot of recruiters/other HR folks in that time to handle it, and then spin it down when they aren’t as busy hiring. The same goes for marketing. If you are going to reduce your marketing spend you don’t need as many FTEs to work on it. For engineering, MS is a lot more old school than some other tech companies. Internal transfers basically require re-interviewing, and a lot of people don’t have many transferable skills. MS could be better off (and employees even better off) if they directly laid off e.g. engineers working on Windows LTS rather than trying to find them roles in Bing. Not saying layoffs are ever good, and the details of this one remain to be seen, but I don’t think a 5% layoff signals incompetence