All techies fired as Microsoft's GitHub sacks 142 India staffers: Report

New Delhi: Microsoft-owned GitHub has laid off 142 people in India, including the entire staff in its engineering division, people aware of the development said on Tuesday.

Those affected by the decision were deployed across the company’s offices in Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi.

When contacted, a GitHub spokesperson said the decision was part of the company’s reorganisation plan.

“As part of the reorganisation plan shared in February, workforce reductions were made on Tuesday as part of difficult but necessary decisions and realignments to both protect the health of our business in the short term and grant us the capacity to invest in our long-term strategy moving forward,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the company’s focus is to ensure that GitHub is a fully-integrated platform powered by artificial intelligence (AI) for developers and customers.

“With this focus, we are consolidating certain business operations, some of which happen to be based in India, and it has resulted in role eliminations. We remain committed to serving the Indian market and these changes will not impact our customers and the 10 million (one crore) developers in India who use GitHub daily,” the spokesperson said.

Microsoft had, in January, announced that it would lay off around 10,000 employees to align its cost structure with revenues.

Microsoft acquired GitHub for USD 7.5 billion in a stock deal on June 2, 2018.