Will laid-off Microsoft workers end up at startups?

Flexible work arrangements and better prospects to grow their skills could attract thousands of recently laid off employees at Microsoft to jobs at startups.

Forced out the door, the employees are poised to see plenty of demand from quickly growing startups, according to Chandra Shekaran, a general manager in Microsoft’s Bing search unit. He’s hoping to hire some of them to start an engineering office in the Seattle area, where about 1,300 Microsoft staffers were let go.