Google Representative updated that some of the positions at risk will be transferred to non-managerial roles, while others will eliminated fully.
Google’s efforts to improve efficiency have been in full swing since Pichai said he plans to improve productivity in 2022, aiming to bring the company’s share to 20%. more efficient .
Pichai announced the strategy in September 2022, explaining that this evolution would include streamlining the company’s organizational structure through cuts as well as merging certain product lines.
At the beginning of 2023, Google laid off 12,000 employees, approximately 6% of the company’s workforce. global workforce .
Pichai defended the decision in a note distributed to Alphabet employees at the time, insisting the firm faced a “different economic reality” compared to the pandemic-era hiring frenzy.
“As a company with almost 25 years of history, we are obliged to go through complex economic cycles . These are important times to focus our attention, reorganize our cost base and focus our talent and capital on our highest priorities,” Pichai told employees at the time.
Google’s cuts go deep
Later in 2023, Google continued further cuts, announcing several small rounds of layoffs in its HR, Google News, and Google Assistant teams.
According to the parent company Alphabet financial results layoffs will cost the company approximately $2.1 billion in 2023.
This trend continued into 2024, with approximately 1,000 job cuts across the company’s core engineering and hardware teams, including Pixel , Nest and Google Assistant products.
This news comes after affected employees received an email from Google containing the following excerpt announcing their layoffs.
“Due to changing business needs, Google has decided to restructure operations at some of its facilities, including the facility (if any) where you work. The restructuring is scheduled to begin on January 10, 2024.”
“As a result of this decision, we have had to make some difficult decisions regarding the future employment of certain Google employees, and we regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated. We understand how much this impacts you and regret having to move in this direction.”
At the time of writing, the company has laid off about 13,300 employees since Pichai announced Google would be shutting down. new efforts to improve efficiency .
The move to cut overhead comes as the search giant faces growing pressure from new competition, including OpenAI .
OpenAI integrated web search function into its ChatGPT interface in October 2024, positioning itself to keep pace with traditional search engines like Google.
Google is investing heavily in generative AI since ChatGPT arrived on the scene in 2022, and the ongoing layoffs appear to be a way to further focus on this area of the business.
In December 2023, insiders reported that the company was embroiled in “code red ‘ in relation to rapid innovation in artificial intelligence exit from competitors Microsoft and others.
In an internal memo sent to employees explaining the January 2024 cuts, Pichai explained that the layoffs were aimed at “removing layers to simplify execution and increase speed in certain areas,” namely generative. AI .
