Microsoft Executives Enjoy Intimate Performance by Sting Before Mass Layoffs
The night before the company announced it planned to layoff 10,000 people, executives were treated to a little “Desert Rose” serenade in Switzerland.
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As the tech industry feels the burden of an economic downturn, companies like Amazon, Netflix, Meta, and more have all laid off thousands of workers—but Microsoft executives, at least, got to really enjoy themselves the night before the company ruined thousands of lives.
On Wednesday morning, the company announced plans to layoff 10,000 people—the largest round of layoffs the company has seen since 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal. And the night before CEO Satya Nadella broke the news to the company, prominent Microsoft executives were sloshing champagne glasses at a private event in Geneva, Switzerland, being serenaded by none other than Sting.
My imagined scenario of this celebratory fête is almost too rich for comprehension. The company’s highest paid empresarios are all in attendance at the lavish World Economic Forum in Davos, where U.S. Senators Kyrsten Sinema (clad in sheepskin?) and Joe Manchin are literally high-fiving over blocking filibuster reform so that Congress can actually help people. Microsoft is hosting an “intimate gathering of 50 or so people,” the theme of which is “sustainability.” Nadella has just returned from a Wall Street Journal panel in which he lectures the crowd on “the promise of artificial intelligence” (let’s not mince words: a bleak future without the need for human labor!). Now, the executives gather, shoulder to shoulder, and sway to the tune of tiny corporate violins as they mourn the coming loss of a significant chunk of their workforce…and rock out to Sting. And just like that, Sting has unwittingly become the face of corporate greed.
As our friends at Kotaku noted, the company reported “record results” last year, with $83 billion in operating income. That sounds mighty sustainable to me. You know what’s not sustainable? Dumping your employees like a soiled pizza box to appease shareholders
At the very least, I hope Sting ended the set with “Fields of Gold,” leaving those sons of bitches sobbing inconsolably.