In the season of tech layoffs, the recently announced Google layoffs have impacted close to 12,000 employees. Just a few hours after the news of layoffs at Alphabet spread, many criticised the move and even questioned CEO Sundar Pichai’s judgement. Hence, after facing all the backlash, Google CEO has reportedly come forward and explained his stance.
As per a report in Bloomberg, Google’s CEO told employees that the job cuts were made in an effort to act decisively as the tech giant’s growth had relatively slowed. In an internal meeting, CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly consulted with the company’s founders and the board before deciding to layoff almost 6 per cent of Google’s workforce.
“If you don’t act clearly and decisively and early, we can compound the problem and make it much worse...These are decisions I needed to make...The process was far from random,” said Pichai as per Bloomberg. He also reportedly added that since all the bonuses are tied to the company’s performance, all senior vice presidents would also see a significant reduction in their annual bonus this year as the idea is for everyone to be accountable.
Google layoffs, while they impacted just about 6 per cent of the total workforce, were huge in number as 12,000 jobs were axed. These layoffs came just a few weeks after other tech giants like Facebook parent Meta, Twitter and Amazon too, announced mass layoffs in a bid to cut costs.