Pink slips: “Removing layers,” Pichai says as Google to sack more employees
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Google continues to lead technology giants in sacking more and more employees this year.
On Wednesday, its Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai was quoted as saying that Google is “removing layers,” hinting at more layoffs in 2024, according to the media reports.
His remarks came a day after the technology behemoth handed pink slips to nearly 1,000 employees in the advertising sales team in the first layoff wave of 2024.
Terming it as part of a larger restructuring plan, Pichai, in an internal memo to Google employees, said, “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year…the reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
Referring to the “tough decisions,” he said, “These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions and will not touch every team.”
His remark referenced Google’s 2023 layoffs when the tech giant fired about 12,000 employees, the biggest layoff in the company’s history in a single year.
According to the report, Pichai said the layoffs this year were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.”
Google said the eligible employees would receive severance pay. It also offered that the affected employees could re-apply for open positions in other departments. However, it clarified that those unable to secure a position at the company would have to exit by April.
The developments followed about a week after Google announced to lay off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and the company’s Devices and Services teams.
Apart from Google, Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, the e-commerce giant, also announced last week to fire several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations.
Neither company has specified the number of job cuts they are planning in 2024.
