Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, announced today that they would be laying off approximately 12,000 workers and contractors. This represents 5% of the company’s total workforce.
Pichai wrote the following email to employees
“I have some very difficult news. Our workforce will be reduced by around 12,000 positions. Employees in the US affected by this decision have already been notified via email. This process may take longer in other countries due to the local laws and practice.
Tough times ahead. This announcement by Google comes after other tech giants announced plans to reduce their workforce.
- Zuckerberg announces will reduce 11,000 jobs in November
- Amazon will let go
- just one day prior to Google’s announcement, announced their own plans for laying off 10,000 employees
- announced that they would be laying off 50 more workers. This will bring the total number of employees at the company to around 2,000.
Recent layoffs can be attributed to the rapid growth of tech companies during the initial two years following the pandemic. A recent Forbes article explains
Many tech companies thought this was the start of a new norm. It was an enormous shift in how we lived our lives, with almost all office workers moving to work from home.
Tech companies made this change permanent because they knew it would. The companies grew quickly by creating new teams and expanding their existing ones. Large companies have to provide redundancy.
What is the end result? Too many employees were hired by tech companies. These aren’t just casual admin workers making $10 an hour; these software developers and engineers are extremely experienced earning low- to middle six figures.
Pichai stated, in his for employees:
We’ve experienced periods of rapid growth over the last two years. We hired people to help us match that growth and drive it.
Search will be affected. It’s not clear. We don’t know yet which jobs are going to be eliminated and which ones will be kept. There is the possibility that customer support staff for search and ads could be affected. Advertisers could become frustrated by long chat waits or delaying ad approvals and reviews.
We care. It will be hard for those who are affected by the massive job loss. Although most employees will receive generous severance payments, it is possible that they may not be able to find work in the field of their choice. Mass layoffs are a risk for investors. They can also cause a loss of valuable skills and make surviving employees uncertain.
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