“Googlers, I have some difficult news to share. 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.”
These were the opening words of the email that was sent to numerous Google employees by their CEO Sundar Pichai in January 2023. Following the coronavirus pandemic, several big businesses including the leading tech companies suffered massive losses on the economic front and could see a recession approaching. In order to survive the impending recession, companies like Meta, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Twitter (now X) laid off innumerable employees from the beginning of this year.
Recently, at an all-hands meeting, Sundar Pichai addressed the massive layoff that happened at Google at the beginning of 2023. He said that the company hadn’t had a moment like that in 25 years.
“This is difficult for any company to go through. At Google, we really haven’t had a moment quite like that in 25 years. It became clear if we didn’t act, it would have been a worse decision down the line. It would have been a major overhang on the company. I think it would have made it very difficult in a year like this with such a big shift in the world to create the capacity to invest in areas,” Moneycontrol quoted him saying.
According to him, it was not the right way to do it and they could have done something differently instead.
“Clearly it’s not the right way to do it. I think it’s something we could have done differently for sure,” he added.
If not a massive layoff, how else do you think Google could have handled the impending recession at the time? Share with us!