Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable @Home In My Bag Safety Net Look Up Versus Trending Now Say More Creator Playbook Mashable Selects Getting Technical with Mashable All Series Alex Perry is a tech reporter at Mashable who primarily covers video games and consumer tech. Alex has spent most of the last decade reviewing games, smartphones, headphones, and laptops, and he doesn't plan on stopping anytime soon. He is also a Pisces, a cat lover, and a Kansas City sports fan. Microsoft is looking to shed a massive number of workers. In a Monday blog post, the Windows and Xbox maker announced a voluntary buyout plan for its employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Microsoft announced that it would offer buyouts to 60,000 employees in an effort to reduce costs amid the rising use of artificial intelligence, according to reports, the latest example of how AI is reshaping tech companies and the greater workforce. This is the latest of several trimmings Microsoft has made to its workforce this year. The company announced in April that it was offering voluntary retirement to about 7% of its US workforce, which consisted of about 125,000 employees at the time. Its global workforce is made up of about 223,000 workers globally. Some of Microsoft's most recognizable divisions - including Xbox, Windows and Copilot, its AI tool - will be participating in the offer, Bloomberg reported on Monday.

Pearson's Workera deal targets a big workplace problem: No time to AI upskill Pearson has agreed to acquire Workera to help businesses assess employees' AI skills and target training where it's needed most. Kayla Solino is a ZDNET Editor based in New York City and New Jersey. Pearson will acquire the AI skills platform Workera in H2 2026. A recent Workera report in ZDNET indicated gaps in AI upskilling. Together, the firms hope to develop the future of AI skills training.

The telecom giant is eager to show Wall Street that it can do more with less. That means fewer employees, less electricity, and increased automation. AT&T, which already shed more than half of its workforce over the past decade, says it's going to continue laying off staff as it gears up for the AI era . The telecommunications giant is also doing away with its old-school landline service and using artificial intelligence to automate some internal processes. All this downsizing is resulting in tangible benefits, including a considerable decrease in electricity usage, AT&T chief technology officer Jeremy Legg tells WIRED.

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Sometimes, AI-driven restructuring goes about as well as an AI-assisted legal brief. Reuters reports that Meta spent much of this year testing a plan in which AI would take over many of the workforce's daily tasks. Dubbed Project OT, the plan appears to connect two stories from earlier this year: Meta's 10 percent workforce reduction and the company's program that tracked employees' mouse movements and keystrokes. Meta executives were reportedly influenced by startups, including some they observed in Asia, that had structured themselves around AI. At an annual leadership retreat in January at Mark Zuckerberg's Hawaii estate, executives laid out an "AI native" vision for the company.

Beyond China's humanoid robots, a quieter machine revolution is unfolding To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. I take a nap and the world changes, says Chen Tianyu. The 28-year-old keeps up with the latest technology by spending his spare time in factories that are switching to automation. That way he knows what to prioritise when teaching his class about artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. In front of him, around 30 college students are studying code.

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AI has prompted fears over job security for City workers, particularly staff that do back-office work. AI has prompted fears over job security for City workers, particularly staff that do back-office work. Reeves to launch City'skills compact' committing firms to retrain staff in AI Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to announce a new City "skills compact" that will commit firms such as Barclays and Lloyds to retraining thousands of financial sector workers for the AI revolution. The financial services skills compact will be launched on Tuesday, during what is likely to be Reeves's final Mansion House speech to City bosses before Andy Burnham's expected takeover of No 10. The government-backed initiative will commit employers to improving workers' skills and helping them "keep pace" with significant technological changes that have prompted fears of mass redundancies.

Oracle shed about 21,000 roles globally in the last year as the US technology giant reshapes its business around artificial intelligence (AI), the firm's latest annual report shows. The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce, the report says. The cuts, which amount to about 13% of Oracle's workforce, are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI infrastructure like data centres. Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta have cut thousands of job in recent months as they invest heavily in AI.