LONDON (AP) — Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, the latest to cut staff amid the economic boom the industry has ridden during the decline of the COVID-19 pandemic. Became a technology company.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, notified staff at the Silicon Valley giant on Friday in an email also posted on the company’s news blog.
It’s one of the company’s largest layoffs to date, adding to tens of thousands of layoffs recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent company Meta, and other tech companies amid a bleak industry outlook. tightening the belt. Just this month, there were at least 48,000 job cuts announced by leading companies in the sector.
“Over the past two years, we have seen a period of dramatic growth,” Pichai wrote. “In order to keep pace with that growth, we hired for economic realities that are different from those we are currently facing.”
The layoffs, he said, reflect a “rigorous overhaul” of the business Google has undertaken.
Pichai said the jobs being cut “span across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and geographies.” He said he was “deeply sorry” for the dismissal.
Regulatory filings show how Google’s workforce swelled during the pandemic, from 119,000 at the end of 2019 to about 187,000 by the end of last year.
Pichai said Google, which was founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, is “destined to go through a difficult economic cycle.”
“These are critical times to sharpen our focus, redesign our cost base, and direct talent and capital to our top priorities,” he wrote.
According to Pichai’s letter, there will be job cuts in the United States and other unspecified countries.
Wedbush Securities analysts Dan Ives, Taz Koujalgi and John Katsingris said on Friday that the tech industry is facing hiring freezes and layoffs as “the clock strikes midnight with hypergrowth and digital advertising headwinds loom”. I write that I am forced to
Just this week, Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts. This equates to nearly his 5% of employees. Amazon said it would cut 18,000 jobs this month, just a fraction of its 1.5 million strong workforce, while business software maker Salesforce laid off about 8,000 employees, or 10% of the total. Last fall, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced it would cut 11,000 positions, or 13% of its workforce. Elon Musk cut staff at Twitter after buying a social media company last fall.
These layoffs have also hit smaller players. UK-based cybersecurity firm Sophos laid off 450 employees, or 10% of its global workforce. Cryptocurrency trading platform Coinbase has cut 20% of its workforce, about 950, in his second layoff in less than a year.
Wedbush analysts said that in the current economic climate, “the stage is being set. All tech companies are cutting costs to maintain margins and slim down.”
US employment is resilient despite signs of economic slowdown, with a further 223,000 jobs added in December. However, the technology sector has grown very quickly over the past few years due to increased demand as employees started working remotely.
The CEOs of many companies are responsible for their rapid growth, but those companies, even after recent job cuts, remain much bigger than they were before the pandemic-induced boom began.
