Google CEO Sundar Pichai levelled with his employees this week, telling them to brace themselves for more job cuts as the company continues to streamline.
In the internal memo shared with Google employees on Wednesday, Pichai said: “to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted.”
The news comes just days after over a thousand Google employees were laid off across multiple teams, starting from January 10 this year.
Pichai informed employees in the memo that the layoffs were about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.”
The Tech Layoff Trend Continues
A memo from Google CEO Sundar Pichai has confirmed employees, worth fears – more job cuts are on the horizon.
In an internal memo, seen by The Verge, Pichai reassures employees that the cuts will not reach anywhere near the 12,000 job-cutting spree that took place at Google last year – reducing their global head count by 6% – but says he understands it will be a difficult time for impacted teams.
The job cuts so far this year at Google have seen several departments downsize significantly, including Google’s hardware, ad sales, search, shopping, maps, policy, core engineering, and YouTube teams.
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Just weeks into the new year and 2024 doesn’t appear to be bucking the trend of 2023 dubbed the “year of efficiency”.
Almost 8,000 jobs have been slashed by tech companies so far in 2024, according to job cut tracking website Layoffs.fyi. Discord, Meta, Salesforce, Amazon and Duolingo have all confirmed redundancies this year.
Is AI Already Replacing Jobs?
Has AI already started coming for tech worker’s jobs? Speculation over whether job cuts at Google will continue have seemingly been confirmed by this memo, as tech firms pivot towards a leaner workforce which leverages artificial intelligence software and automation.
Google has not confirmed nor denied that it is in fact replacing human employees with AI technologies but it is investing heavily in its artificial intelligence arm of the business, DeepMind.
No tech company wants to be left behind in the race to monetise AI, and as Pichai states in the memo – “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,”
The memo continues, “the reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
Following the ad sales team layoffs this week primarily from the Large Customer Sales team, Google explained that they are part of a restructure that will help facilitate the “best possible service to our Ads customers,” specifically helping small and medium sized businesses.
However a Google exec had tipped off The Information that Google is planning to reorganize its 30,000-employee ad sales unit by using machine learning to assist Google Ads customers with purchasing more of the business’s main cash-cow – its advertising products on Search and YouTube.