"Difficult But Necessary": Google CEO Sundar Pichai On Layoffs
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet has spoken out about the tech giant's 12,000-employee layoff last year. Alphabet laid off approximately 12,000 employees in 2022, the largest layoff in the company's history.
"That was clear at Google's latest all-hands meeting on Tuesday (December 12), where CEO Sundar Pichai defended the decision to cut 6% of the company's workforce," according to a Business Insider report citing audio from the meeting.
During the meeting, an employee asked Sundar Pichai, "It has been almost a year since we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce. What effect did this decision have on our growth, profit and loss, and morale?"
The Google CEO responded by saying that the decision had a significant impact on employee morale, calling it one of the "most difficult decisions for the company." He went on to say, "At Google, we really haven't had a moment quite like that in 25 years."
The decision was described as "difficult but necessary" by Sundar Pichai. The CEO of Alphabet stated that if the company had not cut those jobs last year, it would have been "a worse decision down the line.”
"It would have been a significant burden on the company." "I think it would have been very difficult to create the capacity to invest in areas in a year like this with such a big shift in the world," he said.
While Sundar Pichai defended Google's decision to cut 12,000 jobs, he said it was a "bad idea" to deny all laid-off employees immediate access and to notify all fired employees at the same time, regardless of time zone.
