WebProNews

Earlier this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer hit a pessimistic note by saying that he expected to see IT spending growth, but not recovery.  Now, it seems that Microsoft is about to prove it's still in recession mode, as rumors of imminent layoffs are circulating.

Todd Bishop wrote late last night (or early this morning, to those of us a few time zones east of Seattle and Redmond), "We're hearing from unofficial but reliable sources tonight that Microsoft is poised to make additional job cuts this week . . ."

As for the size of the cuts, Bishop then continued, "This latest round of layoffs is expected to be noticeably smaller than the first two -- numbering in the hundreds but totaling less than 1,000 overall."

Still, morale among Microsoft's employees isn't likely to get much of a boost as a result.  Since many analysts believed that both the economy and the company were doing better these days (the Dow's risen 6.21 percent in the past three months, while Microsoft's stock has gained a whopping 18.05 percent), they may have expected the era of layoffs to be over.

Perhaps Google's Matt Cutts should extend to some Microsoft engineers the same job offers he lobbed in Yahoo's direction.

UPDATE: The elimination of 800 jobs has been confirmed.

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