Microsoft layoffs: Marketing, Office, partner groups all reportedly hit

A new round of Microsoft layoffs is, indeed, happening on July 7, as long-rumored and expected.

According to various comments I’ve seen — all anonymous from those infamous “people knowledgeable about the situation” — the latest round is going to be less gruesome and more broadly spread than last year’s two waves of cuts that totaled more than 5,000 people.

I’ve been watching the growing stream of comments on the Mini Microsoft blog and gathering reports (direct and indirect) from individuals in the trenches today. It looks as if Microsoft’s Central Marketing Group (CMG), Enterprise Partner Group (EPG), the SharePoint/Office team and the search/advertising teams all have made cuts. Most of the cuts I’ve heard about have been in the marketing/sales organizations.

(The usual caveat, re: Mini Microsoft: Given the anonymous comments, it’s impossible to tell whether folks who are reporting in are real Microsoft employees or not. But based on other sources I’ve got — not to mention the relatively high accuracy rate last year, in terms of Mini Microsoft comments regarding which teams/products/projects got cut — , it sounds like the reports there are in line with what’s actually happening.)

So far, there’s no word on what the final tally is likely to be or whether there will be a follow-up Round 2 this year, like there was last year.

In a new blog post, published on July 6, Who Da’Punk (a k a Mini) shared more of the internal back-and-forth over Microsoft’s recent decision to pull the plug on the Kin (”Pink”) phones. So far, I haven’t heard any talk that members of the Kin team were “kinned” today as part of the new round of cuts. Supposedly, Microsoft is moving many of the Kin developers to the Windows Phone 7 team.