For more than three decades, Mike Kostersitz had one constant in his life — Microsoft. He joined the company when personal computers were just becoming mainstream and built his entire career there, rising to the role of principal product manager lead on the Azure team.

So when the 60-year-old received a sudden meeting invite one morning in May, he didn’t think much of it. The day before, his team had met a senior leader, and everything had seemed normal. But what followed caught him completely off guard. Advertisement

"Me and 120 other anonymous faces got told our jobs had been eliminated," said Kostersitz, who lives in Washington state. His manager and two of his direct reports were also affected, along with about 6,000 others across the company.

The news, he said, came without any wa

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