Microsoft Great Flattening: Why a Veteran Employee Resigned

Phil Coachman loved working at Microsoft for most of his nearly decadelong tenure. But as the culture began to shift and layoffs piled up, he decided it was time to move on.

He started looking for a new role in July 2024 when he was still at Microsoft, but struggled to get much traction. In January, he resigned from his role as a senior cloud solution architect to focus on his job search.

“I just didn’t feel happy there anymore,” said the 44-year-old, who lives in Pennsylvania. “I wanted to just continue making cool stuff and not have this constant fear of losing my job every week.”

Coachman said company layoffs — including the elimination of about 10,000 roles in 2023 — took a toll on his morale and that of his co-workers. He said he knew several people who were let go, including one teammate he regarded as a “top performer.”

“Every team that I worked with was just down,” he said. “So now you go to work and everybody’s depressed every day.”

Coachman is among the current and former Microsoft employees who have been affected by workforce reductions — either by losing a job or being left to adjust to coworker departures. After cutting about 6,000 jobs in May, the company laid off roughly 9,000 more in July. A Microsoft spokesperson previously told Business Insider that the company was focused on reducing management layers and streamlining processes. The cuts have also included many individual contributor roles.

Microsoft isn’t alone. Google, Intel, Amazon, and Walmart are among the companies that have also announced plans to reduce the number of managers in a trend dubbed the “Great Flattening.” Layoffs remain low by historical standards, but tech workers have been hit hard — just as white-collar hiring has slowed. That’s made it more difficult for workers like Coachman to switch jobs — or find new ones after they resign or are laid off.

“It just got to a point where morale was no longer up to par,” Coachman said, “and ultimately it got to a place where it was time to make a change.”

The ‘Great Flattening’ and other strategic shifts affected company culture

After working as a Microsoft contractor for several years, Coachman joined the company full-time in 2015. He said he’s extremely grateful for his time at the company, and that before joining, he was earning far less and just trying to get by. He’d be open to returning in the future, he said, if he saw signs of a positive culture shift.

During his final years at Microsoft, Coachman said there appeared to be a push to reduce the number of managers in an effort to increase what the company calls “span of control” — or the number of employees who report to each manager.

While his own manager’s number of direct reports didn’t change during his time on the team, he said they are now working in an individual contributor role. He also said he saw the number of reports per manager increase on other teams.

“I saw managers leave and other managers absorb that head count, so you go from managing 10 people to now maybe 18 people, which when you talk to those managers, becomes really hard,” he said. “The great flattening was definitely happening.”

Beyond layoffs and shifts in management structure, Coachman said he also began being asked to focus more on performance metrics, which he felt came at the cost of flexibility and meaningful customer work. In recent years, Big Tech firms, including Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon, have revamped their performance review and compensation structures to better reward top performers and weed out underperformers in pursuit of smaller, higher-performing teams.

Another key factor in his decision to resign was the uptick in business travel. He said he was on the road about three times a month — a return to pre-pandemic norms.

“It just got to a point where I was missing too much of my kids’ lives,” he said, adding that his work frustrations made travel less tolerable. “It was different when I was traveling and the job was awesome.”

Taking the risk of resigning without a new job

When Coachman started his job search in July 2024, he thought it was going to be fairly easy.

There seemed to be plenty of job postings on platforms like LinkedIn and Indeed, so after pinpointing a few roles he felt qualified for, he figured he’d be able to get interviews and eventually land an offer. But he quickly realized it wouldn’t be that simple. After all, US businesses were hiring at nearly the slowest pace in more than a decade.

“It was six months of basically just being ghosted,” he said. “It was a completely different world than when I had applied to a job decades ago.”

Coachman said he went through several rounds of résumé tweaks — thinking the format might be the issue — but still got little response.

As his job search dragged on, Coachman said he was hesitant to resign from his Microsoft job before having another role lined up because it would mean giving up a steady paycheck and unvested company stock. However, he said the “rainy day fund” he’d built over the years helped him feel more comfortable.

“I had enough savings that even if it would take me a year to find a job, I would be fine,” he said. “So it was just getting the courage to take that jump.”

In early 2024, Coachman said he hired a life coach — in part to help him navigate the changes he was experiencing at work. He said the life coach helped him get confident in his decision to resign, adding that hiring them was maybe the “best investment” he’d ever made.

His network made the difference

After resigning, Coachman said he adjusted his job search strategy. Rather than simply applying for jobs, he spent more time tapping into the network he’d built over the years. He targeted roles at companies where he knew someone, then reached out to ask whether they thought he’d be a good fit — and if they’d be willing to refer him.

In one instance, he saw a few open roles at the data analytics and AI startup Databricks, where a former Microsoft colleague of his worked. After reaching out, Coachman said they recommended he focus on one specific role that they’d be willing to refer him for. The next day, Coachman received a call from a company recruiter. After the interview process, he received an offer and started working for the company in April.

“Finding my next gig was 100% through my network,” he said.

Coachman said his pay is comparable to what he earned at Microsoft, and that the signing bonus helped make up for what he left behind in unvested stock. He said his travel is also now limited to no more than once a month, which was a big factor in his decision to accept the offer.

Over the course of his roughly nine-month job search, Coachman said he applied to hundreds of jobs and received two offers — one for his current role and another from a startup he turned down due to concerns about job security.

His top advice for job seekers: build your network and lean on it. Rather than just connecting on LinkedIn, he said, it’s better to have real conversations that help foster relationships. He said this could boost your chances of landing a referral down the road — giving your application the “personal touch” it might need to get past applicant tracking system scanners.

“It’s real connections with people that I think make all the difference,” he said.