Layoffs in all Alphabet divisions, in all countries where it employs staff
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Google's parent company, Alphabet, has announced that it plans to cut about 12,000 jobs, reducing its workforce by 6%.
Such a move will mark the largest round of layoffs in the company's 25-year history, which is facing a worsening financial outlook.
Redundancies will be made in all Alphabet divisions, in all countries where it employs staff. The company's non-core hiring departments and project teams will be most affected.
The cuts follow similar “waves” of mass layoffs at other tech companies in recent months — at Microsoft, Amazon, Twitter and Meta.
The cuts come as part of a broader shift to protect profits, marking the “end of an era” for the tech industry's “growth at any cost” mentality.
Google executives have warned in recent months that the company will reduce operating costs.
“The last two years have seen periods of tremendous growth. To fuel this growth, we've been hiring for a different economic reality than we're experiencing today,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a message to employees on Friday.
A few days earlier, Alphabet had announced that it would cut more than 200 jobs from its health services division Verily Life Sciences – about 15% of the total positions at the unit. Before that, one of the last big cuts Google made was in 2009, when it decided to cut 200 jobs from its sales and advertising teams.
195,000 jobs lost
The cuts at Google's parent company come just days after Microsoft announced it would cut 10,000 jobs due to the global economic downturn. In January, Amazon also announced 18,000 job cuts.
In the past 12 months, tech companies have cut a total of nearly 195,000 jobs — not including the jobs that will be lost at Alphabet, according to with estimates from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks media reports and related company announcements.
A Google spokesman said the cuts would not only affect Google, but also other Alphabet subsidiaries, without specifying the percentages. Alphabet's subsidiaries include Verily and self-driving car unit Waymo.
Support Packages
Alphabet said it will offer US-based workers notice two months, as well as 16 weeks' compensation, along with an additional two weeks' compensation for each year worked.
The company will also offer access to specialist job-finding and mental health resources to those who have been made redundant, the spokesman said. of the company.
Tech companies in the US often employ foreign workers on employment-related visas. Google has pledged to help its former employees who will face problems with their US residency status because of their layoff.
Source: Wall Street Journal
