Google CEO Sundar Pichai indicated in an internal document that the group would make further job cuts this year, after a first wave of layoffs in 2023.
The manager clarified that this new turn of the screw would “not be of the same magnitude as last year’s reductions” and would not affect all the teams at the Alphabet subsidiary, according to an internal email obtained by AFP.
At the start of 2023, Google launched a social plan providing for the elimination of around 12,000 positions worldwide, or a little more than 6% of its workforce, in order to adjust the workforce after two years of frantic post-pandemic growth.
“To find the means to make these investments, we have difficult decisions to make”
The group intends to make significant investments this year, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI), explained Sundar Pichai.
“To find the means to make these investments, we have difficult decisions to make,” he wrote about the job cuts.
“Many of these changes have already been announced” internally in the teams concerned, continued the general manager, while adding that additional adjustments could take place during the year.
At the end of September 2023, Alphabet employed some 182,000 people, around 7,800 fewer than at the end of 2022, according to documents published by the group.
According to several media, Google laid off around a thousand people last week.
On Tuesday, the group mentioned to The Verge the elimination of several hundred additional positions, mainly in the advertising space sales department to large companies.
On Wednesday, around 100 employees of the YouTube streaming platform were informed of their upcoming departure, according to several American media.
Most tech giants, with the notable exception of Apple, have reduced their workforce since 2022. Meta has cut more than 20,000 positions and Amazon, 27,000.