By LI Jingya
Microsoft has denied rumors of mass layoff of its Suzhou office which started circulating online Wednesday. In an internal memo, WANG Yongdong, senior vice president of Microsoft and chairman of Microsoft Asia-Pacific R&D Group, said he was not aware of any plan to trim the Suzhou team or shut the division down.
In the memo, Wang said the company usually doesn’t respond to such rumors but this one has attracted much attention. He urged employees not to “waste time on such groundless canard.”
On its official website, Microsoft’s Suzhou office is still hiring. A senior product manager post was just made available on Thursday.
Microsoft set up its first Chinese office in Beijing in 1992. It now has offices in 13 cities, with more than 9,000 employees. The Suzhou office was founded in 2013 and has over 2,500 staff. In May last year, the company said it wanted to expand the office to 5,000 employees by 2025.
A new office building will open in August this year, while the third phase of the office is under construction.
But in October, sources told Jiemian News that the expansion plan in China was approved by the Asia-Pacific office but denied by the US headquarters.
In January, Microsoft said it would lay off 10,000 employees in the coming months as the economic downturn continues, the tech giant’s first ever mass layoff.
