In 2018 their headcount was around 131,000 employees. In 2020, that jumped to 163,000. By 2022, they had exploded to 221,000 employees.

Currently, if we exclude the Activision headcount, they're sitting at around 218,000 people.

Maybe the more business minded people can shed some light on this for me, but even with the stronger economy in 2018, Microsoft had no where near this many employees. It feels like this would have happened whether or not the economy was doing poorly right now.

Thoughts?