SINCE the start of 2025 until early July, Microsoft has been hogging the headlines, not for some good news like launching a groundbreaking product, but for laying off a total of 15,000 employees. This happened after the announcement that it is investing $80 billion this year on Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology.
The series of mass layoffs started in January with 2,300 employees under its wholly owned subsidiaries like LinkedIn, Azure, Github and Xbox. On May 13, around 6,000 employees were laid off “as the company invests heavily on AI” and for its “strategic rebalancing.”
READ: https://apnews.com/article/microsoft-layoffs-d1f2de54ebad6f099deac8fbd3375835
In June, a total of 305 employees were laid off in its Redmond, Washington global headquarters. On July 2, about 9,000 employees were shown the door, this time among its global sales divisions and Xbox Game Studios.
And just last July 10, Microsoft boasted it has saved up to US$500 million for AI automation in various offices. From a Bloomberg report, chief commercial officer Judson Althoff was quoted as saying how AI tools “are boosting productivity in everything from sales and customer service to software engineering.” (READ: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-09/microsoft-using-more-ai-internally-amid-mass-layoffs)
Based on Microsoft’s website, as of June 2024, or more than a year ago, they had 228,000 employees worldwide, so the 15,000 job cuts could be considered a painfully necessary cost-saving decision.
The Economic Times aptly described it “a double-edged sword.” Various reports, apart from Bloomberg, said the company had $26 billion in profit and $70 billion in revenue in the first quarter this year.
We quote: “With its market cap nearing $3.74 trillion, Microsoft is choosing to spend big on AI researchers instead of retaining mid-level employees…and as more companies follow Microsoft’s lead in adopting AI tools, job security across the tech sector could become more fragile.”
The report summed up our common concerns: “Should companies celebrate AI when thousands of jobs are being lost?”
‘I’m fortunate to have had two rewarding careers–the first at Microsoft, the second in philantrophy–supported by amazing family, great friends and a love for fun games,’ says Bill Gates in a photo caption from his official Facebook page
Now, philanthropist and technology behemoth Bill Gates, who co-founded Microsoft 50 years ago, announced on May 8 via his Gates Notes blog that he will give away, virtually, all his wealth through his 25-year-old Gates Foundation “over the next 20 years to the cause of saving and improving lives around the world. And on December 31, 2045, the foundation will close its doors permanently.”
READ: https://www.gatesnotes.com/work/save-lives/reader/20-years-to-give-away-virtually-all-my-wealth
Gates, who will celebrate his 70th birthday on October 28 this year, would be 90 years old by then.
Expectedly, it was picked up by various news outlets the world over. Our common reaction: Can he actually do that? Is he for real?
My doubts were dimmed the following day. In an interview with BBC Newshour on May 9, or a day after his announcement, Gates expressed his frustration at the Trump administration’s budget cuts for foreign aid, specifically for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the role of Elon Musk in the decision.
He said helping the poorest is not only the moral thing to do, but the benefits of having stable countries and health systems will help prevent pandemics.
He blatantly accused Musk of killing children. We quote: “I’m disappointed that Musk made abrupt cuts and characterized them in a way that was unfair…These cuts will kill not only children but millions of children. This is serious stuff. You wouldn’t have expected the richest person to do it.”
(Then again, Musk recently severed ties to Trump over differences on the present administration’s newly passed tax cut laws. Musk even threatened to form a new political party called America.)
READ: https://apnews.com/article/elon-musk-political-party-92353942308fee929a937b17113e077e
Since the Gates Foundation was founded in 2000, with the help of Warren Buffet, he said they’ve given away US$100 billion to charities and research on vaccines, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria.
Seemingly impossible, like how Miss Universe pageant contestants would wish for “world peace,” Gates’ most important mission is to help end poverty, which, incidentally, is number one on the list of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
‘People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them’
Gates wrote: “Over the next two decades, we will double our giving. The exact amount will depend on the markets and inflation, but I expect the foundation will spend more than $200 billion between now and 2045.”
Now, a quick Google search would give us the vital information that the real-time net worth of the 69-year-old co-founder of the 50-year-old Microsoft, according to Forbes.com, is US$115.3 billion or an equivalent of P6.4 trillion.
What struck me most was when he wrote in his blog, “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them.”
Then again, the BBC report said even if Gates would give away 99 percent of his wealth, he will still end up as a billionaire.
I actually met him, well at least, by second degree of separation. Or so I thought.
I was still with the Microsoft Network (MSN) Philippines news editorial team when I started writing many summers ago some random entry in one of those unused Starbucks planners, among dust-covered books in my personal mini-library, that I considered a diary. I was using the latest version of MS Word when I decided to transfer the hand-written text to digital version, for posterity’s sake and as my way of revising a potential personal essay.
Earlier at work that day, I labored over filling out the blanks in the MS Excel file, where we were required to log in the stories we uploaded on the site.
Deepak Maharaj, former program manager for Microsoft Singapore (Photo from Deepak Maharaj LinkedIn profile)
Something about MS Excel I’ll never forget: There were four of us, the meager editorial MSN Philippines team, invited to eat out during one of those visits by our bosses from the Microsoft headquarters in Singapore. One was our Singapore-based supervisor, Deepak Maharaj, principal program manager for Microsoft, and a Japanese IT manager. Sir Deepak describes himself a “Fijian-born Indian with a New Zealand passport living in Singapore.” Deepak was almost the same age as I. At the time, I was in my early 40s. The Japanese IT manager, who was much older than we, reportedly was the one who attended meetings with Gates in the early years of Microsoft.
In 2018, the author doing a selfie at the main entrance of Microsoft PH office in Makati City, where freshly brewed coffee, healthy snacks, fresh fruits were available all day.
It was some time in 2017, and Microsoft Philippines Inc. had its office in a building near Glorietta and Greenbelt malls. The workplace was basically for the marketing and sales people, as I saw it. The people there were those making deals with companies, government agencies, and retail outlets to sell Microsoft products. We were just some sort of regular guests, because MSN is the global online news aggregator on all Microsoft Office-run computers. If you are using Microsoft Office for your software applications, you will see the site popping up on your screen, whether you like it or not.
As far as I and some of my MSN News Philippines team mates remember, the story over late lunch was about an Indian IT expert in the early days of Microsoft’s spreadsheet. He and his IT team were developing the Visual Basic Applications for Microsoft Excel, and now he’s going to defend their output to the main man, Bill Gates.
As far as I could recall Deepak’s story, up to the last minute, the guy presenting was trying to figure out if there would be some glitches. He knew how Bill Gates could be so data-driven and meticulous.
The presenter was nervous when he entered the boardroom with Gates inside. In the early days of Microsoft with Gates as CEO and chairman of the board, he was known for, reportedly—as we call it now—”smart-shaming” his colleagues, even those older than he. His outbursts had the patented expression: “That is the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard.”
Gates acknowledged this behavior of his younger self, laughing at the thought of it, in the Netflix documentary Inside Bill’s Brain.
So, the Indian IT guy did his thing, explaining how data could be accurately grouped here and there. After his presentation, Gates asked for the folder the Indian IT guy was holding. It had all the details of the project. Gates read the documents, leafing through the pages like a computer scanner.
A fast reader, Gates reportedly has 90-percent retention of anything he lays his eyes on. This tech icon is reportedly more at ease using pen and paper when taking notes during meetings.
A fast reader, Gates reportedly has 90-percent retention of anything he lays his eyes on, more at ease using pen and paper when taking notes
The IT team leader was confident of his presentation and was reportedly relieved when it was finished.
After a couple of minutes, Gates closed the folder and asked the Indian guy point blank: “So what happens during leap years?”
“What about it?” the Indian IT guy asked Gates.
“It has one day more, so naturally, everything will adjust with that. The spreadsheet won’t be the same because the days will be different,” Gates said.
The Indian IT guy, to use the clichéd reaction, recalled to this writer, “felt like the earth was splitting” and wished he’d be swallowed.
Realizing his mistake, the Indian IT guy apologized, and told Gates that he and his team would fix the glitch at once.
My boss didn’t say it, but we could imagine Gates exclaiming, “That’s the most stupid presentation I’ve ever experienced.”
Gates’ attention to detail and the consequences of one’s actions enabled him to anticipate the output, and in many instances, foretell the future of mankind.
In a more recent TED talk, ‘We Can Make COVID-19 the Last Pandemic’ (Photo by Ryan Lash for TED talk, screenshot from Bill Gates official Facebook page)
The TED talk he did in 2015, titled The Next Outbreak, We’re Not Ready, was considered the closest prediction of the impending COVID-19 pandemic. Basing his premise on the Ebola outbreak, which was easily contained from ground zero in Africa, he said we could easily battle the next outbreak using available technology and human resources.
In the lecture, he was quoted as saying: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war—not missiles but microbes. We have invested a huge amount in nuclear deterrents, but we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic.”
At the time, it seemed only a few paid attention. Many dismissed Gates’ prediction as some old retired nerd’s musings.
Five years after that talk, there was the COVID-19 pandemic. On the global scale, as reported by the World Health Organization from January 2020 to December 2021 alone, there were “14.9 million excess deaths associated with the COVID-19.”
And there have been more Gates predictions that world leaders should pay attention to, most especially in the use of AI.
In 2022, he put everything together and came out with the book How To Prevent The Next Pandemic. In 2021, he came out with How To Avoid A Climate Disaster, subtitled The Solutions We Have And The Breakthroughs We Need.
I am a pretentious Bill Gates follower because I still haven’t read these two. Last time I checked, local bookstores have run out of copies. What I have is his new memoir, Source Code: My Beginnings.
But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from that late lunch talk with my former Singapore-based bosses about the early days of Microsoft Excel and what’s happening now, it’s all about seeing the big picture without missing the minutest detail.
For Gates, the practice also applies to his love life.
The Netflix’s documentary Inside Bill’s Brian has an anecdote recounted by his ex-wife Melinda, about when they were still together. She was an executive of Microsoft before they got engaged. She said Bill called her one day to his office; she thought it was just one of those boss-subordinate talks or boyfriend-girlfriend stuff. She was surprised to see a white board presentation, written on it the pros and cons of marrying Melinda.
It was hilarious, but what Gates showed was how small details could matter in seeing the bigger picture to arrive at excellent results. In their retirement, the Gates couple were focused on their foundation. What Bill didn’t calculate for was their eventual divorce.
Before the pandemic, there had been talk about how Microsoft would replace its MSN team of editors, who were mostly former newspaper, magazine, and online journalists, with the use of AI, not only in Manila, but in Microsoft News teams all over the world. There were at least 20 MSN News teams. The mass layoffs happened in May, 2020, or about two months after the Luzon-wide lockdowns on March 15, 2020. The layoffs were reported by credible news outlets, among them The Guardian and the BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52860247
We were not directly employed by Microsoft. Like most of its workforce, we were under a contractual set-up, outsourced through a Manila-based BPO company. It was easy—bluntly put—to get rid of us.
We were not directly employed by Microsoft. Like most of its workforce, we were under a contractual set-up. It was easy—bluntly put—to get rid of us
For a brief backgrounder, I started working for MSN Philippines the first week of February 2017.
As news aggregator, we uploaded news from local partner sources like The Philippine Star, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, GMA Online News, Business World, Business Mirror, Good News Pilipinas, The Summit Group and many more. The foreign news came from, if memory serves, more than 50 partners like The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, BBC, CNN International, and lifestyle, sports, and entertainment news sites. For a news geek, having access to these sites without spending for subscription was close to heaven.
My job, or our team’s job, was to choose the best news articles to be uploaded on the MSN website, shorten the titles, and correct grammatical lapses, which was rare because they were all pre-edited. Most important, it was work-from-home (WFH) even before the set-up became the new normal.
Coming from a six-year back-breaking job as online night editor in a major news organization, I used to commute from Bacoor City to Makati City, and eventually Quezon City to Makati City. In those years of “Edsa killer buses,” I would spend about four hours on the road, then eight to 10 hours at work editing and writing breaking news.
WFH and the less stressful workload with higher pay at MSN Philippines afforded me more time with family and friends. Even while at work, I had the option to just be around them.
I remember going online and trying to upload breaking news while on a boat on a short inter-island trip from Iloilo to Negros Occidental, or on a speeding bus to Laoag City on a night trip from Manila. The bus got a bit delayed, and my duty started before I could arrive in a steady, more comfortable place. It was daybreak, the passengers waking up from sleep and showing surprise at seeing a co-passenger working on a laptop.
My MSN Philippines colleagues and I could work in any Microsoft offices anywhere in the world. A workmate spent months in Seoul and Taipei and regaled us with stories of how state-of-the-art the Microsoft offices were, with free food and drinks all day. Having a company ID with the Microsoft logo brought advantages and privileges. Processing travel documents could be a breeze.
Social-climbing relatives, friends, and grade school, high school, and college batchmates (especially during class reunions) would easily associate me with Bill Gates. They’d ask, “So where do you work now?” My answer would always elicit their “wows,” and questions like, “So you are paid in dollars?”
Our contract with the Manila-based outsourcing company was renewed annually, until it became twice a year. Microsoft announced its exclusive partnership with OpenAI in 2019. Our team felt that in mid-2021. If I remember right, our contract was extended every three months. It was a given from there that eventually we would have to look for another job.
In 2022, our tasks were centered on guiding AI. For example, AI would flag articles about the lechon festival or anything with the image of a suckling pig under the category of violation of cruelty to animals. Any news bearing the University of the Philippines Oblation image was filed under nudity, so we would file reports to the IT team in Singapore to tell the stupid, clueless robots it was actually okay for publishing.
Gates, at 44, stepped down as CEO in January 2000, though he stayed as chairman. This, after making Microsoft Corp. “the most powerful company in the world.” At the time, he was also the “world’s richest person.” His last full day at Microsoft was in June 2008, when he was 52. He stayed as chairman until 2014, and served as technology advisor to then newly appointed and now still current CEO Satya Nadell.
It was in March 2020, at the onset of pandemic, when Gates completely resigned from the board of directors, and announced he would devote the rest of his life to the Gates Foundation.
April 2020, a month after that, we lost our jobs. It was the second month of pandemic, and mass layoffs became common. I got rehired in November 2020, and had my final departure in April 2022.
Among Bill Gates’ advocacies is mitigitating the effects of climate change and helping the agriculture sector. Here, he is shown on a recent trip to India. (Screenshot from Bill Gates FB page)
With his personal staff, Gates started Gates Ventures. According to the five-episode 2024 Netflix documentary, What’s Next? The Future With Bill Gates, he shifted his concerns to “climate change (clean energy), healthcare (Alzheimer’s research), interdisciplinary education, and technology.” This documentary is worth checking out, as he also explored the rise of AI in all workplaces.
He has also divorced Melinda, and now has a girlfriend, Paula Hurd, widow of Oracle CEO Mark Hurd. Bill and Paula were last seen in public attending the 2024 Paris Olympics, and the recent, high-profile wedding of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and journalist Lauren Sanchez.
In the recent scheme of things, when world superpowers and most emerging countries are ruled by strongmen and corrupt politicians, Gates, in his senior years, has become among the philosophers of our time. Unlike his frenemy, the late visionary Steve Jobs, he has been given the grace and gift of reaching old age. He has made bad decisions, but right now, he makes a lot of sense.
So to someone like me, Gates has become some sort of breathing AI with empathy
Having worked for MSN Philippines for nearly six years and for a Manila-based online news organization for a little more than six years, I still consider myself a neophyte when it comes to technology. My mind automatically shuts down when people talk about ChatGPT or cryptocurrency. I still don’t avail myself of online banking, despite its claimed conveniences.
So to someone like me, Gates has become some sort of breathing AI with empathy, as he shifted his focus, as The Guardian put it, to “unsexy concerns” like malaria nets.
He helped improve our lives despite some misgivings, such as AI replacing journalists, writers, editors, thus, changing the way things are in the publishing industry.
Not giving up on my “I’ve-met-Bill-Gates” claim, I asked Deepak if the Japanese IT manager we had lunches and dinners with was the one in the Bill Gates meeting.
“I have no idea,” he said. Like when he treated us for lunch in 2017, he told me it was just one of those casual topics he brought up to lighten things up and teach us some lessons.
Deepak’s exact words: “I use this story as an example that leaders pick parts and deep dive to ensure the subject-matter experts know what they are talking about. The questions get harder as they go along. If, by the end, you are able to demonstrate calmness and speed of thought, you get my trust and blessings.”
Joel Spolsky designed the first version of Visual Basic for Applications as program manager in Excel team. (Image used with permission from his blog joelonsoftware.com)
In my recent online conversation with him, he clarified it was not an Indian but an American IT expert—to be exact, he was a New Yorker and software programmer named Joel Spolsky. Like Gates, he has authored computer books and gone into business. He is co-founder of Stack Overflow, “a question-and-answer website for computer programmers,” among other IT firms.
I learned Spolsky wrote about his experience, which he uploaded on June 16, 2006 on his website, joelonsoftware.com. Deepak forwarded the link to the story: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/
Case closed. Once in a while, I would just entertain the thought that through one of my former bosses who shall not be named, I probably met Bill Gates in the flesh, via two degrees of separation.
And yes, in my anxious and depressing moments, that is one the most stupid personal assumptions that always make me smile.
