The company’s annual revenue grew 58 percent over three years, during which time it hired more than 75,000 people. But rising interest rates and the prospect of a recession have tempered Microsoft’s outlook. In the latest quarter, it reported its slowest growth in five years and warned that more tepid results could follow.

Microsoft’s stock price closed down nearly 2 percent on Wednesday and is down about 22 percent in the past year, which is better than many of its tech peers. The company is scheduled to report its next quarterly earnings on Tuesday.

Microsoft is going forward with several expensive bets, including potentially putting another $10 billion into its investment in OpenAI, which makes the explosively popular ChatGPT artificial intelligence system, and a $69 billion acquisition of the video game maker Activision that is facing challenges globally by antitrust regulators.

Mr. Nadella said in a message to staff that the layoffs “are the kinds of hard choices we have made throughout our 47-year history to remain a consequential company in this industry that is unforgiving to anyone who doesn’t adapt to platform shifts.”

The layoffs, which began on Wednesday and will continue through March, are the company’s largest in roughly eight years. Mr. Nadella cut about 25,000 jobs over the course of 2014 and 2015 as Microsoft abandoned its ill-fated acquisition of the mobile phone maker Nokia.

Despite the high-profile layoffs from some of the biggest names in tech — Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others — the broader labor market remains generally strong. Cooling wage growth has provided some investors optimism that it will relieve pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep raising interest rates, but hiring has slowed only slightly.

The skills of engineers and other technical talent are still in high demand. Those who are laid off will likely find roles directly in industries like banking, retail or health care, which are undergoing the digitization of their operations, rather than at big tech firms themselves, labor analysts and recruiters say.