Google to Lay Off 12,000 Employees Worldwide

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced this morning that the company has decided to lay off 12,000 employees, which represents approximately 6% of the company’s global workforce. This is the latest big company to announce a big round of layoffs after Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta announced 10,000, 18,000, and 11,000 job cuts, respectively.

In his memo to Google employees sent earlier today, Sundar Pichai gave pretty much the same explanation as other tech CEOs who recently announced layoffs: Google’s workforce grew too fast during the pandemic, and the time to make some difficult adjustments has come.

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“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,” explained Pichai.

Following an in-depth review of its core priorities, Google will be eliminating roles across various product areas, functions, levels, and regions. Pichai emphasized that this was an important moment “to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.”

Google will be holding a town hall on Monday to share more details about the job cuts with employees. In the meantime, the company said that it will offer severance packages starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google. The company will also pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time, plus 6 months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support for its US employees affected by the layoffs.

Even though the economic slowdown has had quite an impact on Google and other big tech companies, Pichai believes that Google’s early bet on AI should continue to pay off. “We have a substantial opportunity in front of us with AI across our products and are prepared to approach it boldly and responsibly,” the exec said today.

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