The parent company of Google, Alphabet, announced Friday Google cuts 12000 jobs worldwide, citing a changing economy.
As the tech sector prepares for the economic downturn, Microsoft announced a 10,000 reduction in its workforce just a day earlier. Facebook owner Meta, Amazon and Twitter also announced cutbacks.
As people went online for work, school, and entertainment, companies scrambled to meet demand during the height of the Coronavirus pandemic.
“Our growth has been dramatic over the past two years, and to match and fuel that growth, we hired for an economic reality that may be different from our current reality,” Sundar Pichai wrote to Alphabet employees.
“Our product and function teams have performed an in-depth review of their roles and responsibilities to assure they align with our highest priorities,” said Pichai. Google cuts 12000 jobs approximately he stated.
” We’re getting rid of these roles after this review.”
At the end of September 2022, Alphabet employ approximately 187,000 people worldwide. There are about 6% fewer employees as a result of the cuts.
As a result of local labor laws, Pichai says American employees have already been notified about the cuts, while employees in other countries will have to wait longer for notification.
As Pichai pointed out, cutbacks will made across departments, functions, levels of responsibility, and regions.
I take full responsibility for the decisions we made that will affect the lives of Googlers.”
Insufferable
As a result of the cuts, Pichai pointed to the necessity of investing even more in artificial intelligence, explaining that it would “sharpen our focus” towards new priorities.
In some areas, we are constrain, but others we are able to bet big on,” he explained.
The rise of ChatGPT
With the rise of ChatGPT, a Microsoft-backed chatbot that generates elaborate, human-like content within seconds, Google’s world-dominating search engine is under pressure.
Bing, Microsoft’s longtime rival to Google, will be strength by using the technology.
In addition to severance packages, Pichai announced that US employees will receive 16 weeks of salary, a bonus for 2022, paid vacations, and six months of health insurance as part of their termination packages.
Despite tough days, he remained optimistic about our ability to complete our mission.”
Prior to the stock market opening, Alphabet shares rose by 3.5% in electronic trading.
Other tech giants saw their shares rise during this period as well, with Meta’s stock up 35% since its 11,000 job cuts on November 9 and Amazon’s stock up 13% since its 18,000 layoffs earlier in the month.
It has been reported that technology’s big guns have previously overspent, without seeing a slowdown in the near future.
In a sector basking in “hypergrowth,” wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives pointed to the layoffs as evidence of irresponsible spending over the past few years.
“In reality, tech giants overheard at an unsustainable rate, and now a darker macro is forcing layoffs in the sector,” he said.
The layoffs announced by Alphabet on Friday do not include those that have been announced by Layoffs.fyi. Nearly 194,000 industry employees have lost their jobs in the US since the beginning of 2022, not counting those announced by Layoffs.fyi.
Despite rampant inflation and rising interest rates, both Hewlett Packard and Salesforce announced significant cuts this month.
