Google parent Alphabet is cutting around 12,000 jobs, or around 6 percent of its global workforce, it wrote in a company-wide email sent to employees. CEO Sundar Pichai wrote that he was “deeply sorry” to employees that will be let go and that it was a “difficult decision to set us up for the future.” The layoffs will be felt globally and across the entire company, and Pichai said he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.” 

Alphabet went on a hiring spree over the last few years during a period of “dramatic growth,” but Pichai said that “we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” Over the past few weeks Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others instituted equally painful and dramatic job cuts due to economic conditions. 

Google is the last of those to hold out before instituting layoffs, thanks in part to its powerful ad and cloud-computing divisions. However, the company saw a 27 percent drop in profit last quarter compared to the year before. At that point, the company said it would cut expenses and reduce hiring. However, activists and analysts called for more aggressive cuts, noting that the company’s headcount had gone up 20 percent since 2017, according to Bloomberg.

Pichai said that that employees would be paid during the full notification period of 60 days minimum. Alphabet will also offer severance packages starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google “and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting.” 

Developing…

Source: Engadget – Google is laying off 12,000 employees