abet will lay off 12,000 positions across various product areas and levels, functions, regions, and functionalities //
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, announced today that they would be laying off approximately 5% of their workforce, 12,000 employees and contractors.
Pichai wrote the following email to employees
“I have some very difficult news to tell you. We have decided to reduce our workforce by around 12,000 positions. We have already sent an email to affected employees in the US. This process may take longer in other countries due to local laws or practices.
Tough times ahead. This announcement by Google comes after several large tech companies have announced plans to reduce their workforces.
- Zuckerberg announced meta will reduce 11,000 jobs in November
- Amazon to Let Go 18,000
- Microsoft announced plans to layoff 10,000 employees just one day prior to Google’s announcement
- Twitter announced that they would be laying off 50 more workers, bringing the total number of employees to around 2,000.
Recent layoffs are due in large part to the rapid growth tech companies experienced during the first two year of the pandemic. A recent Forbes article explains
Many tech companies believed this was the start of a new norm. It was a major shift in how we lived our lives, with almost all office workers moving to work from home.
Tech companies hired accordingly because they anticipated this shift would become permanent. They grew their businesses quickly by creating new teams and expanding existing ones. This was made possible by the fact large companies have to provide redundancy.
What is the end result? Too many people were hired by tech companies. These are not casual admin staff making $10 an hour; these are highly skilled software engineers and developers earning low- to mid six-figure incomes.”
Pichai stated, in his email for employees,
“Over the last two years, we’ve experienced periods of dramatic growth. We hired people to help us match and fuel this growth.
Will the search engine results be affected? We aren’t sure. We don’t know yet which jobs are going to be eliminated and which ones will be saved. There is a possibility that customer support staff for search and ads could be affected. Advertisers could become frustrated by long chat waits or delayed approvals, reviews, appeals and appeals.
Why do 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 they are interested in. Mass layoffs can also be a concern for investors. They can cause the company to lose valuable skills and make surviving employees feel uneasy.
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