Hundreds of people from Microsoft's Chinese AI team "packaged" abroad? Employees report receiving an email asking for a move

The Paper

2024-05-15 21:44Posted on the official account of Shanghai The Paper

Microsoft China plans to relocate hundreds of employees engaged in AI (artificial intelligence)-related businesses abroad.

On May 15, a number of netizens broke the news on social media such as Maimai and Xiaohongshu that hundreds of employees of Microsoft China, mainly the AI team of Microsoft's Azure cloud platform in China, received company emails asking if employees were willing to move to other regions to work, including the United States, Australia, Ireland and other countries. The company will be responsible for the family visa issue, and the employee will need to respond by June 7.

Subsequently, Microsoft officials responded to the media that this is to give some employees an optional internal transfer opportunity and will not affect the company's domestic operations.

Some Microsoft employees told The Paper that the situation is true, this is the news that just came out on May 14, and some employees suddenly received an email about the recruitment to work overseas, asking to answer whether to go or not before June 7, "everyone is very confused", and did not feel any signs before. Especially for employees who drag their families with their families, "there are more things to consider". Some colleagues thought that this was a "disguised layoff", and although they could choose not to go, they also worried about the future of staying in the company.

A user of Microsoft's Azure ML (machine learning) told The Paper that the family's group was relocated to Australia, and that "there were more than 300 people at the meeting" when the online meeting was held, involving employees in Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou. ”

It is understood that Microsoft's China C+AI ML team can be transferred to Seattle, the Azure team can be transferred to Australia, and DevDiv (Development Platform Division) will maintain the status quo.

Another person close to Microsoft said that hundreds of people in the two groups of Azure ML and Azure Core (infrastructure) who are related to the AI business are known to have the opportunity to "package" abroad, and the destinations include the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which are designated (destinations) and cannot be picked and selected.

On social media, there are also different opinions about the reason behind Microsoft's move in China. Some people say it is related to the international situation, but some users who claim to be Microsoft employees say that there are more than 10,000 people in Microsoft China, and only a few hundred of them are involved in this transfer.

Some industry insiders told The Paper that given the large scale of the Chinese market and the high cost of manpower in the United States, it is really difficult to explain Microsoft's intentions.

On May 13, Gartner, an international consulting agency, released the latest cloud computing market tracking data report, and in 2023, Microsoft Azure ranked third in the cloud computing IaaS market (infrastructure as a service) in the Asia-Pacific region, with a share of 16.1%. Alibaba Cloud ranked first with a market share of 22.2%, and Amazon AWS ranked second with a share of 16.5%.

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