Google’s CEO has warned workers that, following a round of layoffs that impacted 1,000 people, they should anticipate additional layoffs this year.
“Some roles may be impacted,” according to a memo sent to employees by Sundar Pichai on Wednesday. In it, he stated that divisions within the tech company were still undergoing changes.
Pichai’s memo confirmed last week’s reports of additional layoffs, which the Alphabet Workers Union, which represents employees at Google and its parent company Alphabet, claimed had impacted 1,000 people.
He promised to put money into the most important projects because they have lofty goals. The truth is that they will need to make difficult decisions in order to build the infrastructure to support this investment.
Job cuts in Google divisions like search, advertising sales, and YouTube were among the tough choices that Pichai said had to be made so far. Google has made AI a central part of its strategy, releasing new AI models like Gemini and Bard last year in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other similar offerings.
He claimed that the number of positions being eliminated would not equal the 12,000 laid off by Alphabet in January of last year. As of 30 September last year, the company had 182,000 employees, as stated in its most recent quarterly report.
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The overall impact
According to Pichai’s post, not every team will be affected by these role cuts because they are not as severe as last year’s reductions. He pointed out that during the COVID-19 pandemic, tech companies like Alphabet saw a surge in demand for their services, leading to a hiring frenzy. He acknowledged that Alphabet had grown too quickly and said the company had “hired for a different economic reality” than what it was dealing with now.
Tech companies have laid off 7,785 workers worldwide so far this year, according to layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job losses in the industry. Nearly 38,000 people had lost their jobs at tech companies by the same time last year.
On Wednesday, Pichai announced that additional role eliminations would occur and that the most recent round of layoffs had concentrated on reducing layers to streamline execution and boost velocity in certain areas.
Although many of these changes have already been announced, it is important to note that certain teams will still need to allocate resources throughout the year as needed and that some roles might be affected.
Forrester principal analyst Christopher Gilchrist said that when technology changes, such as with the advent of generative AI, businesses like Google realise that “the needle has moved” and need to adapt to remain competitive. As time goes on, the workforce will inevitably cluster around the most important tasks.
Previous layoff affected Google’s advertising team
On Tuesday, Google announced that it will be cutting “a few hundred” jobs from its worldwide advertising team in an effort to boost efficiency and creativity through the use of artificial intelligence.
Google claims that it will improve support for small and medium-sized businesses advertising on its platform as a result of the layoffs it has made to its “large customer” sales team.
Retailers can now benefit from new artificial intelligence tools announced last week by Google’s cloud computing unit, which will allow them to customise online shopping, modernise operations, and transform in-store technology rollouts to have a personalised effect.
According to Google’s cited research, 80% of US retailers should immediately implement generative AI in retail operations. A press release stated that new Google AI tools made it easy for merchants to incorporate virtual agents into their online stores or mobile applications in order to give customers tailored assistance and suggestions.
The search engine giant also revealed that its AI is helping with product image analysis and the creation of search-optimised descriptions and terms.
In response to inflation and increasing interest rates, Google cut about 12,000 jobs last year, or about 6% of its workforce.
Generative AI has since become a significant investment for the Silicon Valley company.