Google parent Alphabet plans to cut 12,000 jobs, becoming the latest tech company to reduce its work force alongside Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Twitter.
The layoffs, the company’s biggest ever according to the Wall Street Journal, follow a hiring spree during the pandemic boost for online firms and concerns about a broader economic slowdown. The cuts amount to around six per cent of Google’s global workforce.
The cuts were announced by Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, in a memo which he also shared on his blog. In the note, Pichai appeared to concede that the company had hired too optimistically during the pandemic boom.
He said: “We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
Pichai appeared to remain optimistic about the future, although that may come as scant consolation to the newly unemployed staff. The CEO added: “I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services and our early investments in AI.”
Pichai further noted that he took “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
Google has two UK offices, in London and Manchester, employing around 5,500 staff according to Companies House data. It is currently advertising four open jobs across engineering/tech and sales and customer support across the two offices.
