Getting a job at Google has long been synonymous with a stable career and luxurious perks. The tech giant is known for providing its employees with generous salaries and lavish amenities like on-site laundry rooms, massages, and gyms at the Googleplex headquarters and other office sites.
Over the last 25 years, the company has built a culture of pride among its employees and has undergone few rounds of layoffs. But recent years show that Google is far from immune to the economic pressures and workforce adjustments in the tech industry.
Google is one of many tech companies to implement layoffs in 2023 and 2024. Here is a timeline of Google’s job cuts and where the company is headed with layoffs and hiring.
Google laid off over 12,000 employees in 2023
Google layoffs in 2023 affected about 6% of the company’s global workforce, or about 12,000 people, starting in January.
Google also conducted several smaller rounds of layoffs in divisions related to recruiting, Google News, and Google Assistant later in the year.
The tech giant paid staff during the 60-day minimum federal notification period, severance of at least 16 weeks salary, and two weeks for each additional year at the company.
Laid-off employees were also offered accelerated restricted stock units vesting, 2022 bonuses, and remaining vacation days. Google also offered six months of healthcare, job replacement services, and immigration support if needed.
The layoffs affected Google’s earnings, costing the company $2.1 billion, according to the fourth-quarter report from parent company Alphabet.
Hundreds more were laid off in January 2024
Google layoffs kicked off 2024 also, beginning January 10. The company cut thousands of jobs across core engineering and hardware teams.
The company encouraged some impacted employees to apply for open positions at Google. According to the email, April 9 was the last day for those unable to secure a new position.
Google did not respond to Business Insider’s inquiries about how many of those employees have found new positions at the company.
More layoffs are coming in 2024
In January, CEO Sundar Pichai warned of more Google layoffs in 2024.
The upcoming cuts, he said in an internal memo to employees, are about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.”
The “role eliminations” would not reach the same scale as 2023. Teams in sales, advertising, product, and in the YouTube division are set to be impacted by the cuts.
Future changes can be expected as teams take steps to focus on the company’s priorities. These decisions will be made at the team level.
Google did not specify the number of jobs that would be affected.
Why so many job cuts in 2023 and 2024?
Google’s layoffs aren’t necessarily a signal that the company isn’t doing well. The company’s market cap has nearly quadrupled since 2015, reaching $1.7 trillion.
Like many other tech companies, the layoffs are rooted in two main areas: over-hiring during the pandemic and restructuring for the AI boom.
In his 2023 layoff announcement, Pichai said the company experienced “dramatic growth” over the last two years. To match that growth, Google hired “for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” he said.
“A number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” a Google spokesperson told BI.
The spokesperson said the changes give employees a chance to work on Google’s most innovative advances while reducing bureaucracy, which 45% of employees said was slowing down their work in a 2023 companywide survey reviewed by BI.
Google continues to hire talent, even amid the layoffs, and currently has a number of open listings on its site, most of which are in engineering and technology.
But it’s clear Google is shifting priorities — the main one is advancing AI.
With 80% of Google’s parent company Alphabet’s revenue still coming from advertising, the company is at a critical inflection point of solidifying other revenue sources.
Google has been developing AI for over a decade, slowly incorporating it into its search engine, ad products, and YouTube recommendations.
But Google has still trailed behind competitors like Microsoft and Amazon, particularly when it comes to Google’s chatbot Gemini and AI voice assistant Google Mic.
Now, Google is ramping up its AI efforts with a series of cloud advancements, like an Arm-based CPU, the general availability of TPU v5p, the new release of Gemini 1.5, and a swath of AI changes to Google Workspace.
Pichai admits Google could have handled its layoffs better
Leaked audio from a Google’s all-hands meeting in December 2023 revealed Pichai saying it was not the best idea to inform all employees impacted by the layoffs simultaneously.
“I think it’s something we could have done differently for sure,” he said.
He also said the decision to cut off access to work accounts immediately after announcing the cuts was very difficult.
Google continues to support impacted employees in line with local requirements outplacement services, and severance offerings in its most recent round of layoffs. Specific details like severance vary by role and location.
A shift in company culture
As of its last earnings call, Alphabet has over 182,000 employees globally. And some of those employees say Google’s year of efficiency has shifted the company culture at Google.
After thousands have been laid off in the last two years, some employees are questioning the family-like culture the company preached.
Pichai has acknowledged that the layoffs had a “clear big impact on morale,” which was reflected in feedback and comments on the “Googlegeist,” the company’s internal survey that measures employee satisfaction.
Most Google employees are still proud to work at the tech giant, according to over three-quarters of respondents from a 2023 companywide survey obtained by Business Insider.
But some are pushing back.
One Google software engineer, Diane Hirsh Theriault, even took to LinkedIn in January to complain about the company’s leadership, referring to its management as “profoundly boring and glassy-eyed.”
Another ex-Googler wrote a letter on his blog in 2023 slamming the company. The former employee said Google lacked visionary leadership and was destroying transparency between staff and executives.
The Alphabet Workers Union also planned protests in January at five Google campuses across the US to challenge Google’s rationale in decision-making.
Pichai has also received criticism for his leadership.
After Gemini’s image generator released inaccurate racial depictions of historical figures in 2024, industry leaders called for Pichai’s removal as Google’s CEO.
Many critics, including industry experts, laid-off Googlers, and even some of Google’s very first employees, have assailed Pichai’s pace in the AI race and called for him to step down because he hasn’t acted quickly enough.
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