Microsoft laid off 9,000 workers to fund AI. Now that talent could use AI to outplay Microsoft
When one Microsoft executive told laid-off workers to use ChatGPT for “emotional support,” they accidentally handed those ex-employees the perfect weapon for entrepreneurial revenge.
Big tech corporate culture has reached a new level of absurdity.
Microsoft just laid off 9,000 employees while announcing an $80 billion investment in AI. Then one of its executives reportedly suggested that these displaced workers should use AI chatbots for advice on how to cope with the mental anguish of their unemployment.
Matt Turnbull, an Xbox Game Studios Executive Producer who has been continuously employed at Microsoft since 2011, decided that what recently terminated employees needed wasn’t just job security or severance packages, but AI prompts. In a now-deleted LinkedIn post, Turnbull suggested that laid-off workers “use LLM AI tools (like ChatGPT or Copilot) to help reduce the emotional and cognitive load that comes with job loss.”
Let that sink in. The same company that just fired thousands of people to fund its AI ambitions is now recommending those very AI tools as therapy for the trauma they’ve inflicted.
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Turnbull’s arguably well-intentioned but insensitive suggestion reveals a much darker reality: we’re witnessing the beginning of an AI-driven employment crisis. When major corporations are willing to eliminate 9,000 jobs in a single sweep to fund AI development, we’re not just seeing isolated cost-cutting—we’re seeing the systematic replacement of human workers with algorithms.
The math is terrifying. If AI continues to eliminate jobs at this pace across every industry, we’ll soon reach a point where the very consumers these companies depend on won’t have the disposable income to buy their products. Microsoft is essentially killing its own customer base to feed its AI ambitions. Who’s going to buy Xbox games when the game developers are all unemployed? When promised games are shelved?
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But here’s where this sad story could end up with a happy ending. Those 9,000 laid-off Microsoft employees represent one of the most concentrated pools of tech talent suddenly available on the market. They know Microsoft’s weaknesses better than anyone since they’ve lived them, breathed them and probably complained about them in personal Slack channels.
Instead of using ChatGPT to “reduce their emotional and cognitive load,” these displaced workers should embrace the ultimate irony: use AI to create something better. Not maliciously, but strategically. They should band together and create a company built on everything their former employer gets wrong.
Imagine a collaborative effort where thousands of former Microsoft employees (and others made redundant at other big tech companies) use AI to systematically analyse every customer complaint, every negative review, every competitive weakness in Microsoft’s vast portfolio.
They could create AI-powered market research that identifies the gaps Microsoft has ignored, the features users desperately want, and the business opportunities their former employer is too suck in their ways to pursue.
The AI-powered business plan
Here’s the ironic twist that would make even the most cynical observer smile: Use the very AI tools that replaced you to build a business plan that could potentially outcompete your former employer.
Feed GPT-4 or Claude (or bespoke AI Agents) every negative Microsoft review from the past five years that has yet to be solved. Analyse competitor strengths where Microsoft is weak. Identify underserved markets that Microsoft’s corporate structure is too rigid to address.
AI could help these entrepreneurs develop, for example:
- Product concepts based on genuine user frustrations with Microsoft’s offerings
- Business models that prioritise employee retention over AI replacement
- Company culture frameworks that explicitly reject the dehumanising practices they just experienced
- Marketing strategies that highlight the human touch their former employer has abandoned
- Building trust through transparency
- Don’t cut gaming development projects too fast by letting gaming customers down
One of Microsoft’s biggest vulnerabilities is trust. Users are increasingly wary of big tech companies that treat employees as disposable and customers as data points. A new company founded by ex-Microsoft talent could differentiate itself by embracing radical transparency about its AI use. They could promote how they’re using AI to augment human capabilities rather than replace human workers.
They could create a company ethos that states: “We use AI to make our human employees more effective, not to eliminate them.” This approach would resonate with consumers who are growing tired of corporate rhetoric about “AI efficiency” that really means “fewer jobs for humans.”
Ultimate poetic justice?
The beautiful part of this scenario is the potential for poetic justice. Microsoft’s executives, sitting in their Redmond offices, would watch as their former employees use the very AI tools they were told to embrace for emotional support to build competing products. It’s the ultimate “hold my beer” moment in corporate history.
Turnbull’s suggestion that laid-off workers should use AI for “emotional clarity and confidence” could indeed provide clarity, however, just not the kind he intended. Sometimes the clearest path forward isn’t coping with your situation but using every tool at your disposal to create a better one.
The gaming industry employees who were told to use ChatGPT to find new jobs should absolutely take that advice, but not in the way their former boss intended. They should use AI to identify exactly what gamers hate about Xbox, what features they wish existed, and what kind of gaming company they’d actually want to support with their wallets.
A new breed of Microsoft?
Microsoft’s approach to both AI and human resources reveals a company that has lost touch with the very creativity and innovation that made it successful. For game developers, this is particularly true. By treating employees as line items and AI as a replacement for human ingenuity, they’ve created the perfect opportunity for disruption.
The 9,000 laid-off employees have something their former employer has lost: the hunger to prove themselves through creativity, and now, thanks to Turnbull’s suggestion, explicit permission to use AI as their secret weapon.
In the end, Microsoft’s greatest contribution to the future of technology might not be Copilot or ChatGPT integration. It might be the army of motivated, talented ex-employees they’ve created, armed with AI tools and a deep understanding of how not to run projects. Instead, they will give consumers what they have been waiting for.
That’s the kind of emotional clarity that no chatbot can spurt out, but that 9,000 unemployed Microsoft veterans might just deliver with like-minded grit and backers.
