In Leaked Audio, Sundar Pichai Opens Up About Google Layoffs: 'Clearly It's Not The Right Way To Do It'

Google GOOGL GOOG CEO Sundar Pichai reflected on the company’s layoffs from last year, acknowledging the adverse impact on employee morale and conceding that the process could have been executed better.

What Happened: Pichai reflected on Google’s decision to lay off 6% of its workforce at a recent all-hands meeting, Business Insider reported on Wednesday. The CEO admitted that the layoffs had a “clear big impact on morale,” as indicated in Googlegeist, the company’s internal survey.

The layoffs were not handled optimally, Pichai admitted, specifically citing the decision to notify all impacted employees simultaneously, irrespective of their time zones, as a mistake. He also commented on the tough decision to immediately cut off access for those laid off.

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Since the initial layoffs, Google has conducted several smaller strategic rounds of layoffs in areas such as recruiting, Google News, and Google Assistant. Despite the criticism, Pichai emphasized that inaction would have led to worse outcomes for the company, limiting its ability to invest in new areas.

Why It Matters: Google’s massive layoffs were part of a broader trend of downsizing in the tech sector, which began in early 2023, with Alphabet Inc. announcing layoffs of 12,000 employees. The decision was met with heavy criticism from former staff members. The company continued to slash jobs in the subsequent months, notably in its global recruiting department, as part of a larger-scale hiring slowdown. These actions reflect Google’s strategic adaptations in response to global shifts and its internal objectives

As other tech giants, including Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, also scaled down their workforces in late 2022 and into 2023 due to economic conditions and past overhiring, Google’s layoffs have become a topic of industry-wide discussion.

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Photo by World Economic Forum on Flickr