Google laid off hundreds of employees across multiple teams today in an effort to reduce expenses and streamline operations. The majority of the sacked staff worked on voice-based Google Assistant and the augmented reality hardware team. The layoffs also affected employees in the company’s core engineering organisation, according to a statement.
The job losses are part of continuing organisational adjustments that have been in the works since the second half of 2023, with the goal of increasing efficiency and aligning resources with the company’s top product goals.
What Google spokesperson says?
“Throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams implemented adjustments to improve efficiency and productivity, as well as to match their resources with their top product goals. “Some teams are still making these kinds of organisational changes, including some role eliminations globally,” a spokesperson for Google .
The IT giant also underlined the need of organisational reforms in increasing efficiency and concentrating on critical product goals.
Layoffs Trend continues
The cuts reflect a pattern of tech layoffs that began last year when huge businesses such as Google, Meta, and Amazon let off hundreds of employees. Ten days into the year, more businesses have announced job layoffs. Earlier Wednesday, Amazon let off hundreds of employees from its Twitch streaming service, Prime Video, and MGM studios. This month, Xerox said that it will reduce 15% of its 23,000-person workforce, while video game software developer Unity Software announced that it would lose 1,800 jobs, or 25% of its workforce.
Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, has pushed the company since July 2022 to tighten its focus and slash costs as global economic circumstances deteriorated. In January 2023, Google laid off 6% of its workforce, or 12,000 individuals, in the company’s greatest layoffs ever. Since then, the company’s leadership have stated that they want to dramatically lower expenses as it concentrates on the developing subject of generative artificial intelligence.
Google, which had 182,000 workers as of Sept. 30, said the layoffs on Wednesday were part of a series of reorganisations that occurred in the usual course of operations.
Union’s Reply
The Alphabet Workers Union, which represents more than 1,400 employees at Google’s parent firm, Alphabet, called the layoffs “needless.”
“Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions of dollars each quarter,” the group said in a post on the social media platform X.
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