What you need to know
- Google lays off about 12,000 jobs, which is 6% of the company's employees.
- The company would be "tightening its belt, reflecting a new period of more disciplined and efficient spending."
- Google says these cuts will affect not just Google, but also other Alphabet subsidiaries, but didn't specify what levels.
Google's parent company Alphabet is cutting 12,000 jobs, which is 6% of the company's employees, a letter from CEO Sundar Pichai reads.
The Wall Street Journal was the first to report that the company was planning to make the cuts.
This will be the largest round of layoffs the company has seen during a time of economic downturn. WSJ says that job cuts will be across all Alphabet units and geographies. It added that jobs in recruiting and "projects outside of the company's core business, would be more heavily affected."
These cuts happen as other companies like Microsoft (10,000 employees) and Amazon (18,000 employees) have been also laying off their employees.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Pichai wrote in a message to employees that was released on Friday morning.
"I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI. To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions," Pichai adds in the note.
Layoffs have been taking place at these companies as they pivot to protecting profit and "cementing the end of a growth-at-all-costs era in technology," the WSJ reports that this means the company would be "tightening its belt, reflecting a new period of more disciplined and efficient spending."
Android Central has reached out to Google for a statement but did not get a response at the time of publishing.
To the WSJ, a Google spokesperson said that Friday's cuts would affect "not just Google, but also other Alphabet subsidiaries, but didn't specify what levels."
The company notes it will offer U.S.-based employees two months' notice, plus 16 weeks of severance pay, along with two additional weeks for each year an employee being laid off has worked there. The company will follow the rules of other countries separately. Google also says it will offer help to those with immigration status requirements, job placement, and mental health, the spokesperson told WSJ.
