Friday, January 20th 2023
Google to Lay Off Around 12,000 Staff to "Set up for the Future"
Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai today uploaded a blog post titled "A difficult decision to set us up for the future." This message highlights the decision to lay off around 12,000 working staff from Google's fleet of employees. That includes the US and international teams represented in the figure mentioned above. While we don't have information about the specific headcount deficit per country, US employees are expected to be hit first and international employees second, as the company has to comply with local state laws in which it employs the staff. The figure represents about 6% of its total staff. Given the recent economic climate and a slight downturn in tech, Google is joining other big companies in cutting head counts to adapt to the new economy. Below you can read a piece of Google's announcement.
Source:
Google Blog
Sundar PichaiI have some difficult news to share. We've decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We've already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices. This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I'm deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.The rest of the announcement can be read in the Google blog post.
53 Comments on Google to Lay Off Around 12,000 Staff to "Set up for the Future"
I've never really understood the heavy usage of google stuff especially search
Startpage search is working out pretty good these days and my prior default I used ducky...
Would really like to see less google integrated in websites frankly it's really creepy :fear:
Though I gotta admit - severance packages seem to be in order. Unlike Twitter's...
Green line going up = keep 8 bajillion dollar executive compensation package : )
Red line going down = C suite purge : (
Speculative investment demands short term gains lest we witness a mass pants-shitting from investors who don't understand that a recession means they might lose money too.
Hopefully 12,000 people will go work for a better company than Google.
Remember that Stadia failed because it basically didn't have enough users and showed insufficient growth. More than likely Stadia had a hiring freeze a year ago and let headcount dwindle from attrition without refilling departed positions.
They shut down their in-house content division (the game studio) about two years ago, so that was already a big chunk of headcount long gone. By summer 2022 it was probably pretty obvious to Stadia staffers that their future was bleak. Typically the smarter employees are the first to leave because they have the widest range of opportunities elsewhere. Some probably headed to Menlo Park (Meta/FB), some to Santa Clara (NVIDIA/GeForce Now), Cupertino (Apple), and Los Gatos (Netflix). And other companies elsewhere. Plenty of startups in Silicon Valley and with telework, many of them probably can get jobs regardless of where the corporate HQ pays property taxes.Google never says anything about their back-of-the-house operational hardware. Why should they? That would just clue competitors into how they did things. There is no strategic advantage to showing their cards when they fold. And this isn't Google specific. Should Microsoft say what they did with their Zune/Groove Music servers? Twitter and their Vine hardware? Yahoo and their GeoCities hardware?
Many of the capital assets assigned to Stadia are probably 75-80% depreciated by now (assuming it took a year to set up the production system). It's probably up to some senior operations executive to decide where/if these assets can be repurposed elsewhere in the company, whether it be for a front-facing purpose or possibly something internal (including classified prototype projects).
One thing is pretty much guaranteed: they're not going to spell it out in a press release.
Yep already do for a long long time still though some websites are flooded with google sludge
TPU has minimal.
Probably cost google more to fire people in the eu than keep them :laugh:
www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/09/14/google-faces-record-4-billion-antitrust-fine-in-europe-after-losing-court-appeal/
9to5google.com/2021/10/21/stadia-hardware-upgrades-competition/
Plus, it reassured people interested in Stadia that they had "real gaming gear" behind the scenes, just like NVIDIA is now highlighting their 4080 tier for GeForce NOW.
Now that they're dismantling the Stadia racks, it's not in Intel and AMD's best interest to have attention directed to a failed project.
How enthusiastic do you think Ford is when people bring up the Pinto? (I know, I know, it's not the exact same thing...).
Anyhow, no one wants to be associated with a failed project.
It's just PR babble talk. It means nothing unless the Board of Directors takes action against Pichai. I don't think that will happen because he's saving the company money and that makes shareholders happy. Companies only care about their employees where they are forced to unfortunately. It's all about the Almighty Dollar.
Oh, wait I meant farm. Sorry, I'll see myself out.