Reading the room is a lost art…at Xbox.
Mike Matsel, the Principal Development Lead at Xbox, recently posted on LinkedIn to look for specialists in device drivers, GPU performance, and systems engineering. What stood out to me, and many others, was both the content and the context of the job posting and all of this is kind of ironic, isn’t it?
Attached to the post is an AI generated “Xbox Graphics Is Hiring” graphic which, comes off as super dissonant.
Microsoft, the parent company of Xbox, laid off around 9,000 employees this month, many from gaming-related divisions. There’s industry speculation that some of these cuts were made to shift available funds toward AI initiatives, which makes this job post feel even more tone-deaf.
The backlash under the post was swift but naturally ignored by the company as the post is still up. This is the second time something this tone-deaf is shared by Microsoft. The day after the lay-offs, an Executive Producer at Xbox publishing told former employees to use AI for emotional support.
Earlier this month, Xbox slashed thousands of jobs across its first-party studios including RARE, Zenimax Online, and The Initiative.
These layoffs were part of Microsoft’s larger strategy to “streamline operations,” with the company simultaneously pressuring remaining staff to adopt AI tools.
The juxtaposition was jarring: fire skilled artists and developers, and then replace them with new hires utilizing AI-generated artwork.
From the Copilot project to GPT-powered integrations within Office and Windows, Microsoft has invested heavily in AI. Will it pay off or are we in a massive bubble? Only time will tell but the human cost for AI is being paid big time.
