Back'Tough to predict the future': Google CEO Sundar Pichai on possible layoffs
Meanwhile, this is not the first time he has hinted of layoffs. Earlier in September, the CEO had hinted at possible layoffs in the company as he wanted to make the company 20 percent more efficient after years of rapid hiring
PremiumGoogle can likely be the next tech giant to lay off employees after CEO Sundar Pichai hinted at possible cuts. Tech industry saw thousands of layoffs from big tech giants including Meta, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft.
Recently, during an all-hands meeting, when employees asked CEO Sundar Pichai about layoffs, he said, it is tough to predict the future, as reported by Business Insider. He further added that he can’t honestly make forward-looking commitments about the same.
He also told employees the company has been trying hard to make important decisions, be disciplined, prioritize, rationalize where they can.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time he has hinted of layoffs. Earlier in September, the CEO had hinted at possible layoffs in the company as he wanted to make the company 20 percent more efficient after years of rapid hiring. While speaking at Code Conference in Los Angeles, Pichai spoke about how he’s thinking of making the company run more efficiently ahead of economic uncertainty and a broader slowdown in ad spending, of which Google has been the largest beneficiary to date, CNBC had reported.
Earlier in August, Pichai had said that although the business added 10,000 Googlers in the second quarter—it will be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year. The hiring pause is part of that slowdown, Google said, “to enable teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the rest of the year." It had nearly 164,000 employees at the end of March.
Also Read: When layoffs happen at tech companies, this position is the first to go
Prior to that in July, Google had reportedly warned its workers to either boost performance or prepare to leave as "there will be blood on the streets" if the next quarterly earnings are to come out in 2022 not good. According to a report by The New York Post, sales leadership had threatened employees with an "overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general."
Also Read: As Meta, Twitter, others carry biggest layoffs, JLR announces to hire over 800 tech workers globally
Speaking of tech sector, according to data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas cited by Bloomberg, the tech sector also shed 9,587 jobs in October, the highest monthly total since November 2020. The report further stated that the total job cuts announced by US-based employers for the past month, meanwhile, are also up, by a marked 13 percent - with 33,843 fired from various roles across dozens of companies.
Companies like Amazon plans to cut about 10,000 jobs. Meta laid off 11,000 employees, around 13 percent of its total workforce. Twitter Inc.’s shelved roughly half its jobs. Even Apple Inc., which has outperformed most of its peers this year, is slowing spending. Last month, Microsoft Corp laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions.
HP Inc. plans to cut as many as 6,000 jobs over the next three years as declining demand for personal computers cuts into profits. Intel Corp. is cutting jobs and slowing spending on new plants in an effort to save $3 billion next year.
(With inputs from agencies)
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