As Silicon Valley continues its cost-cutting measures, Google revealed it will let go of hundreds of employees who assisted in hiring and recruiting new workers.
The most recent job layoffs come after Alphabet, the parent company of Google, lost 12,000 jobs in January, or approximately 6% of its total workforce, as it struggled with the economic unrest that had a negative impact on the company’s bottom line in particular its main advertising division.
Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai stated during the company’s earnings call in July that the company was working to decrease “expense growth and pace of hiring.”
Few hundred employees throughout the globe will be impacted by the cuts, but the majority of the team will continue to work and recruit for important positions like top engineering talent, according to Google. The actual number of department layoffs was not disclosed by the corporation.
The hiring cuts are not a part of any broader layoffs, according to Google, and the impacted employees will receive severance offers and other perks.
Some Google recruiters noted they had been impacted by the layoffs in posts on LinkedIn for the company’s cloud, user experience, software engineering, and other departments.
Even while it doesn’t feel like it now, one affected Google recruiter stated, “My heart is heavy for everyone that was impacted alongside me, and I know better days are ahead for all of us.”
Beginning in 2021, Alphabet increased its employment by more than 50,000 workers as the pandemic’s rising demand for its services increased sales and profits. However, as advertisers cut back on their spending due to concerns about an economic slowdown or recession last year, the company’s core digital ad business declined.
In an effort to stabilize its operations, the corporation has put more emphasis this year on cost-cutting measures. Google announced in July that its revenues increased by about 15% year over year in the quarter that ended in June as its Search and YouTube advertisements businesses kept growing.
Alphabet has 190,234 employees as of the end of 2022, per a report with the Securities and Exchange Commission. According to its most recent filing, its headcount decreased to 181,798 by the end of June.
This year, a variety of other IT companies, including Meta, Microsoft, and, more lately, T-Mobile, undertook significant layoffs in an effort to reduce expenses in the face of economic difficulties.
One Google employee had to phone tech support on January 20 in the morning after trying to enter into their work system and receiving an odd error message.
When rumors of layoffs began to circulate, another employee had no one to contact because their manager was away.
A third person’s phone started to vibrate with texts asking, “Are you safe?,” as they were being awakened by their kid.
The three workers were among the 12,000 employees put off by Google on that day and talked to media outlets under the condition of anonymity. The manner the cuts were handled was more important than the astonishing number of layoffs, which were by far the greatest in the organization’s history.
