Google CEO Sundar Pichai Hints At Second Round Of Layoffs After Firing 12,000 Employees In January
After firing six per cent of its total workforce or 12,000 employees in January, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google, has hinted that there may be a second round of layoffs. Pichai hinted the same during an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
When Google announced in January that it was cutting 12,000 jobs, it came as surprise and shock to many employees even though the speculation about layoffs had been looming large at the tech giant’s offices.
“We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices,” Mr Pichai said in a statement at that time.
During the interview with the WSJ, Pichai spoke about Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard, new Workspace capabilities in Gmail and Google Docs and other projects.
“We’re very, very focused on this set of opportunities we have, and I think there’s a lot of work left. There’s also an important inflection point with AI. Where we can, we are definitely prioritizing and moving people to our most important areas, so that is ongoing work,” he said.
Pichai added that the company is “literally looking at every aspect of what we do” in an effort to re-engineer its cost base permanently in response to the question about how the company expected to enhance efficiency by 20 per cent. He emphasised that even if there has been improvement, more things need to be done.
“We are trying to accomplish that across many different ways. We’re literally looking at every aspect of what we do, and as we said on our last earnings call, we’re thinking about how to re-engineer our cost base in a durable way. We are definitely being focused on creating durable savings. We are pleased with the progress, but there’s more work left to do,” he said.
In February, Business Standard reported quoting sources that Google has laid off 450 employees across verticals in India as part of its global plan to reduce its workforce by 6 per cent or 12,000 employees.
