Google slashes 12,000 positions as tech layoffs continue
As the COVID-19 epidemic subsides, Google is cutting off 12,000 people, or 6% of its workforce.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Google’s parent firm, emailed and publicised the layoffs on the business’s press blog Friday.
It’s one of the company’s largest layoffs and joins tens of thousands of job cuts disclosed by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta, and other internet giants as the industry’s outlook darkens. Major sector corporations eliminated at least 48,000 jobs this month.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote.
He claimed Google’s “rigorous review” of operations caused the layoffs.
“cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai stated. He apologised “deeply” for the layoffs.
Google’s staff increased from 119,000 to roughly 187,000 by late last year, according to regulatory documents.
Google, created nearly 25 years ago, was “bound to go through difficult economic cycles,” Pichai remarked.
“These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” he wrote.
Pichai’s letter threatens employment cutbacks in the U.S. and other nations.
“As the clock has struck midnight on hyper growth and digital advertising headwinds are on the horizon,” Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Taz Koujalgi, and John Katsingris wrote Friday, the IT industry has had to stop hiring and eliminate employment.
Microsoft eliminated 10,000 jobs, or 5%, this week. Amazon eliminated 18,000 positions last month, a small percentage of its 1.5 million-person workforce, while Salesforce cut 8,000, or 10%. Facebook parent Meta cut 11,000 jobs, or 13%, last September. After buying Twitter last autumn, Elon Musk cut positions.
Smaller firms are also losing jobs. Sophos, a U.K. cybersecurity company, fired 450 workers, 10% of its global staff. In its second wave of layoffs in a year, cryptocurrency trading company Coinbase lost 20%, or 950 workers.
Wedbush analysts stated, “The stage is being set: tech brands across the board are lowering expenses to protect margins and becoming leaner” in the present economy.
Despite a sluggish economy, 223,000 jobs were added in December. Due to remote employment, the tech sector has grown rapidly in recent years.
Even with the recent wave of employment layoffs, some firms’ CEOs have been criticised for growing too rapidly, although those companies are still significantly larger than before the pandemic’s economic boom.