As per reports, Google is bracing itself for a massive layoff in 2023. No assurance was offered by Alphabet Inc. and Google CEO Sundar Pichai to the worried employees. Insider reports that rather in a company-wide staff meeting, he said, “it’s really tough to predict the future, so unfortunately, I can’t honestly sit here and make forward-looking commitments”.
Company says
Pichai said what Google is trying to do “is to make important decisions, be disciplined, prioritise where we can, rationalise where we can, so that we are set up to better weather the storm, regardless of what’s ahead”. He further added, “I think that’s what we should focus on and try and do our best there.”
Job cut by other companies
Other tech giants like Twitter, Meta, Intel, Cisco, HP, and Amazon have either cut jobs or planning to do so. Only Apple and Google have not announced anything yet officially about any job cut worldwide.
Execution of the plan
Pichai said the company would slow down on hiring and make it 20% more efficient. However, as per a report published last month, Alphabet is planning to lay off around 10000 ‘poor performing’ staff or about 6% of its workforce.
The way Google would do that is by introducing a ranking and performance improvement plan as per a report in The Information. The new system would entrust the managers to categorize 6% of staff members as low performers in terms of their impact or contribution to the business.
Alphabet has about 187000 employees working for them, so 6% is roughly 10000 employees. Google has already frozen hiring and reported has told certain employees to ‘shape up or ship out’ if failed to meet expectations.