In the most recent round of significant tech layoffs, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has announced a plan to slash 12,000 employees globally.
According to the business, the new choice would have an impact on 6% of its global staff.
A day after Microsoft revealed plans to fire roughly 11,000 of its employees, a fresh development has occurred.
Alphabet Incorp. Chief Executive Officer, Sundar Pichai, announced the company’s decision to slash 12,000 roles from its staff in a blog post on Friday, January 20, 2023.
“We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.
“This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Mr Pichai said.
Over the past two years, he said the company has seen periods of dramatic growth.
“I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI.
“To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” he said.
He pointed out that the layoff provides a crucial opportunity for the corporation to narrow its focus, redesign its cost structure, and devote talent and resources to the organization’s top priorities.
The corporation reported revenue of $69 billion and profit of $13.9 billion in its earnings report from last October, reflecting an increase in revenue (from $65.1 billion the year before) but a decline in profits (from $18.9 billion during the same period in 2021).
Google is the most recent technology business to lay off staff as part of a recent wave of widespread layoffs in the sector that have also impacted workers at Twitter, Facebook, Amazon, IT firm Salesforce, and Microsoft.
Layoffs so far
Earlier in January 2023 Salesforce announced it was laying off around 10 per cent of its employees.
Last year, Amazon laid off about three per cent of its corporate employees and less than one per cent of its global workforce.
In November 2022, Twitter Inc laid off half its workforce as advertisers pulled spending amid concerns about content moderation.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, also announced it would lay off more than 11,000 of its employees, reducing the company’s workforce by about 13 per cent.
On Thursday, 19 January 2023 Microsoft announced plans to lay off approximately 11,000 of its employees, reducing the company’s workforce by roughly 5 per cent.
