Microsoft has reportedly laid off its entire 200-strong Modern Life Experiences team, which was tasked with bringing casual consumers back into the fold.
The computing giant set up its Modern Life Experiences initiative back in 2018 as a means of reaching out to regular consumers rather than its established business base. This came about following a year of distinctly consumer-unfriendly moves, such as the shuttering of its Groove Music and Xbox Kinect initiatives and the confirmation that the gig was up for Windows Phone.
Now the entire Modern Life Experiences team appears to be on the chopping block. Business Insider (via The Verge) carries a report claiming that Microsoft is laying off all 200 staff, instructing them to either find employment elsewhere within the company or accept a severance package.
The company itself isn’t commenting on the claims, but a product design lead for the Modern Life Experiences team has issued a post on LinkedIn that appears to tally with the report.
“To all my colleagues who faced hard news today, please let me know if there’s anything I can do. The culture we created inside a giant company on our small Modern Life Experiences team was so special. Thinking of you all today,” reads the post from Eryn Hesler.
This latest move from Microsoft to lay off its Modern Life Experiences team follows the news last month that it had laid off 1 percent of its 180,000-strong workforce.
It seems none of the major tech companies are immune to the current financial downturn, with the likes of Meta, Google, and Sony all hit hard in their latest earnings calls.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
