This is on top of all the other staff cuts it announced in May. At that time it said it wanted to let 1,850 people go. Now it seems that once this lot have cleaned out their desks and left the building it wants to fire another 2,850 roles globally by the end of fiscal year 2017.

Since the first round was from Microsoft's struggling smartphone business, including 1,350 employees in Finland working at what was once Nokia world headquarters this was expected. However more layoffs followed and included people in Microsoft's salesforce, which was recently reorganised and saw the departure of COO Kevin Turner.

In fact it seems that  Microsoft has laid off 7,400 employees in its last fiscal year, which ended on June 30 which is much more savage than expected  and if the axe is going to swing until next year there are going to be some very stressed little Voles at the Redmond Volehill.

The new layoffs are a continuation of the same plan, and include the sales group as well as others. About 900 people affected by the new layoffs were already informed during the sales reorganization, according to a person familiar with Microsoft's plans.