Xbox sales have tanked pretty hard.
Many of their surface devices are not selling in the hundreds of thousands of units.
They’re about to axe some products (surface models) too.
Is Microsoft basically going to become a software only company?
Two days before July 4th, Brad Smith posted a video series on LinkedIn celebrating America’s 250th birthday. “As an American company, we believe we have a responsibility to understand where we have been, learn from it, and help make real for others the opportunities created for us.”
Here’s what Microsoft has made real for others lately: roughly 20,000 jobs cut last year. Nearly 9,000 US employees offered “voluntary” retirement this spring under a Rule of 70 formula – age plus tenure – that conveniently targets the company’s older American workers. And per this week’s reporting, thousands more layoffs landing next week across Xbox, sales, and consulting. All while pouring $100+ billion into international AI infrastructure.
Now the timing. Companies that are actually proud of being American – the flag makers, the ones staffed with veterans – have been celebrating this anniversary for months. Microsoft discovered its patriotism 48 hours before the fireworks. And not with a national campaign, not a single TV spot. One executive’s LinkedIn post. You don’t reach the American public through LinkedIn. You reach the press and the professional class – the same audience about to read next week’s layoff coverage.
Then watch the videos. They’re entirely about what other Americans did. Founders in Philadelphia. People who “faced uncertainty and made choices.” If Microsoft were proud of its own American story, it would celebrate its own workers – the people who actually built the place. That’s a hard video to make when you’ve spent 18 months walking tens of thousands of them out the door.
So my read: this is air cover. A feel-good history series rolling out “throughout July” – the exact month the layoffs land. Microsoft times its cuts to the fiscal year, which starts July 1. The flag imagery arriving the same week is not a coincidence. It’s a cushion.
The series says history is made by people, in moments, through choices. True. In America’s 250th year, Microsoft’s choice was thousands of pink slips, timed to the fiscal year, wrapped in red, white, and blue.
That’s not celebrating America. That’s borrowing it.
It seems like MS keeps moving the goalposts on what's included in E7. We are not allowed to consolidate Copilot + E5 into E7 as MS considers it a risk that customers would consolidate in order to cancel services at the earlier renewal date. Today, they produced a new license matrix to my CSP that excludes Intune Suite as part of the E5 and E7 product lines-- it's an add-on only. The same matrix on the website shows it as included in both licenses. I'm glad I only bought a handful of new Copilot licenses this summer before the launch of E7, otherwise I'd have almost total redundancy in products between separate E7 and Copilot licenses.
I installed HealthPCCheck from https://aka.ms/ subsite to check if I can use Windows 11 on my PC. It was 2nd result on google so I thought it should be safe, but I'm not sure anymore.
Microsoft Certified: Cloud and AI Security Engineer Associate (beta)
vs Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate
Context: I have recently completed my 3rd in college, and will be moving to 4th year now .
I am cybersec student, and want to continue further in this field, I have done an internship as well.
From next month, the placements season starts , Which certification would help me better
The beta certificate wont cross the filter(as it is beta and is not famous) but will surely in future while the sec engineer would retire on 31st aug, but would help me in placements and is well recognized in industries
What should I be prioritizing, present or future? Which certificate should I pursue, could you all give pros and cons of both
IBM Bob? Does IBM not employ anyone old enough to remember Microsoft Bob?
Any tips or guidance for the role at Microsoft?
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I recently noticed that on October 25th of this year, that day will mark 25 years since Windows XP was released to the public. After that, I thought to myself in the form of a question for me and the internet on what we should do to commemorate its anniversary, so, what should we do?