Google’s efficiency drive continues as CEO reveals plans to cut management roles
Google has announced a new wave of cuts across a number of managerial roles in the latest expansion of its ongoing efficiency push.
CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the plans during an all-hands meeting ahead of Christmas, confirming that the company intends to cut 10% of manager, director, and VP-level positions.
A Google spokesperson clarified that some of the positions under threat would be transitioned into nonmanagerial roles, whereas others would be eliminated entirely.
Google’s efficiency drive has been in full swing since Pichai said he was targeting productivity improvements in 2022 in a bid to make the company 20% more efficient.
Pichai announced the strategy in September 2022, explaining that this evolution would involve streamlining in the company’s organizational structure through cuts, as well as merging certain product areas.
At the start of 2023, Google laid off 12,000 employees, accounting for roughly 6% of the firm’s global workforce.
Pichai defended the decision in a memo distributed to Alphabet employees at the time, insisting that the firm faced a “different economic reality” compared to the pandemic-era hiring frenzy.
“As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles. These are important moments to sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” Pichai told staff at the time.
Google cuts have run deep
Later in 2023, Google continued with further cuts, announcing several smaller rounds of layoffs across its recruiting, Google News, and Google Assistant teams.
According to the parent company Alphabet’s financial results for 2023, the layoffs cost the firm around $2.1 billion.
This trend continued in 2024, with around a 1,000 jobs cut from the company’s core engineering and hardware teams including its Pixel, Fitbit, Nest, and Google Assistant products.
The news broke after affected employees received an email from Google containing the following passage announcing the elimination of their role.
“Due to changes in business needs, Google has decided to restructure operations at certain of its facilities, including at the facility (if any) at which you work. This restructuring is scheduled to start on January 10, 2024.”
“Based on this decision, we have had to make some difficult decisions about ongoing employment of some Google employees and we regret to inform you that your position is being eliminated. We recognize how much this impacts you and regret the need to move in this direction.”
At the time of writing, the firm has laid off roughly 13,300 employees since Pichai announced Google’s new efficiency effort.
The push to drive down overheads has been linked to increasing pressure on the search giant from new competition, including that from OpenAI.
OpenAI integrated web search functionality into its ChatGPT interface in October 2024, positioning itself to go toe-to-toe with traditional search engines like Google.
Google has been investing heavily in generative AI since ChatGPT burst onto the scene in 2022, and the ongoing layoffs look to be a way to enable further focus on this area of the business.
In December 2023, insiders revealed the company was embroiled in a ‘code red’ in relation to the rapid AI innovation coming out of competitors Microsoft and others.
In an internal memo distributed to staff explaining the January 2024 cuts, Pichai explained that layoffs were aimed at “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas”, namely generative AI.
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