After 12,000 job cuts, Pichai says Google to move staff to 'more important areas'

Amid churning across scores of top tech companies across the world, Google Inc may be headed for another round of layoffs soon. The development comes days after the US-based search engine giant slashed around 12,000 jobs in January this year.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, during a recent interview with a global news daily, hinted the company is doing everything within its reach to cut down its cost base and is prioritising moving employees to its "most important areas". The measures are expected to increase Google's efficiency by more than 20%.

The company, so far, has not come up with any official statement on the matter. Notably, Google cut its total workforce by about 12,000 in January, about 6% of its total workforce, of which 450 employees were affected in its India offices.

The layoffs affected teams across the company i.e. from engineering to product to corporate and recruiting verticals. While announcing layoffs, Google had earlier said that over the past two years, the company saw periods of dramatic growth. "To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."

Tech majors have been shedding workforce at a rapid pace to contain costs amid changing global dynamics and weak demand globally. The year 2022 and the first three months of 2023 have witnessed massive layoffs across companies all over the world. The tech sector, especially, has been the most affected as companies grapple with cost-cutting measures amid dwindling revenues.

Just last month, Mark Zuckerberg-led social media giant Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced another round of mass layoffs in which 10,000 people were affected. This was another churning round after the company laid off 11,000 employees in November after a dramatic slowdown in revenue in 2022.

It's not clear to what extent the current round of layoffs will affect Meta's Indian unit. However, Mark asserted Meta's timelines for "international teams will also look different", and that local leaders will follow up with more details.

Another big tech major, Microsoft Corp, also announced a slashing of 10,000 employees — about 5% of its workforce in January. As per Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, the layoffs will result in a charge of $1.2 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. “We are taking a $1.2B charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces,” Nadella said.

In March 2023, Jeff Bezos-led Amazon announced layoffs of over 9,000 more positions after around 18,000 were laid off in January. A majority of role eliminations were in Amazon Stores and People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organisations.