Google’s layoff campaign continued into the new year, with the tech giant cutting hundreds of its central engineering division and hardware team positions.
Throughout 2023, the search engine giant shed 12,000 jobs, equivalent to 6% of its workforce. In January 2024, those cuts continued.
Last month, The Dallas Express reported that employees in multiple divisions were affected, including hundreds of individuals working on Google’s voice-operated virtual assistant. The layoffs occurred amid a wave of headcount reductions across the tech sector, partly blamed on the growth of artificial intelligence.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, said it is attempting to reduce costs to help invest in its own AI growth. The company is also trying to eliminate bureaucracy roadblocks, allowing employees to focus on priority projects, Courtenay Mencini, a spokeswoman for Google, told the New York Times.
“The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment [in artificial intelligence], we have to make tough choices,” CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a note to employees on January 17, reported the NYT. “This means reorganizing and, in some cases, eliminating roles.”
Pichai told employees that further cuts could still be forthcoming.
Employees who work for Google and who spoke with the NYT say the workplace mood has soured. They say that the company’s drive to grow its AI prowess has sidelined some of the humans who built the company into what it is today.
According to a survey of business leaders by Resume Builder, 38% of companies expect layoffs to occur this year. Critically, 4 in 10 said layoffs are a result of workers being replaced by AI.
