- After multiple layoffs in the technology sector by giants like Meta, Amazon, and Twitter, Google has also decided to downsize its workforce.
- Google plans plan to lay off about 6 percent of the employees around 10,000 people.
- The basis of this layoff will be identifying those employees who have been performing below par CEO Sundar Pichai hinted.
The market is far from stable and the latest victim of this financial crunch is tech giants Google. They were the last of the few tech companies which haven’t laid off a major chunk of their employees owing to the financial crisis that has hit the world and market.
But they are soon about to lose that status following the plan to lay off about 6 percent of the employees or somewhere around 10,000 people.The basis of this layoff will be identifying those employees who have been performing below par according to some of the insiders of this multinational technology company.
They also added that despite their decision to lay off based on the performance of the employees, the main nucleus of this move still remains the worsening global financial situation which has hampered almost every big or small organization.
The initial plan was to axe 2 percent of the employees but that has changed and has been increased to 6. Team managers have been specially instructed to evaluate their staff by putting in place a new ranking and performance improvement plan.
How will the plan go through?
The layoff procedure was started with the sole purpose of not only weeding out underperforming employees for their incompetence but also for better performances and yielding better results.
The CEO of Google Sundar Pichai had dropped subtle hints of this incoming layoff. He had said that having fewer resources could actually be a blessing as it implies the right things are being prioritized and employees are being productive.
Pichai was also heard stating that although Google remained the only tech giant that didn’t lay off employees in the whole of Silicon Valley, things had to change.
Reports also state that the building outside pressure on increasing the productivity of workers and changing the existing system of evaluation to better the performance was also very key factors behind this drastic layoff decision being taken.
Following in the footsteps of Meta and Twitter
Google follows in the footsteps of the two other tech giants of the world, Meta and Twitter. The CEO of Facebook and Meta, Mark Zuckerberg announced a similar layoff of employees when he decided to cut 11,000 people from their jobs at his company which sums up to about 13 percent of the total workforce.
A similar drastic measure was taken by the new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk as well. After his acquisition of the company, Musk said that he will be laying off 6 percent of his older employees which sums up to about 7,000 people being cut from the organization.
Musk has stressed the fact that he doesn’t intend to run on losses and will take any step to reverse the condition and increase productivity. Twitter was losing around 4 million USD every day and Musk was heard saying that he is unhappy and felt that he overpaid for Twitter. Musk obtained Twitter for 44 billion USD this year.
Pressure from Investors
Google and its parent company Alphabet have been facing pressure from their investors too. Activist investor TCI Fund Management recently addressed the company to lower the headcount and put a brake on the cost per employee as it was too high.
It was also heard that the investors want the company to get used to an era of slower growth instead of expecting and trying to achieve faster results and a fast-increasing graph.
TCI has also said that Alphabet pays some of the highest salaries in the whole of Silicon Valley and the number of employees has only gone up since 2017. Such a high cost is difficult to maintain and thus a downsizing and cut-off in the number of employees were necessary.
