Google Chief Executive Officer, Sundar Pichai, has warned the company’s workforce about upcoming job losses as Google moves investments toward new technologies, such as AI, according to a memo called, “2024 priorities and the year ahead,” CNBC reported.
“The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices,” Pichai said in the memo as per media reports.
These reductions are part of the “tough choices” the company is having to make to realize its “ambitious goals.” However, Pichai acknowledged that it is “very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”
The reduction in workforce will help the company to “simplify execution and drive velocity,” said Pichai in the memo, as per media reports. The memo also mentions that Google will be sharing its AI goals for this year later this week. It will also publish Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for this year soon.
If it is some assurance, Pichai said that the layoffs will not be of the last year’s scale and will not impact all the teams. However, he didn’t specifically mention the teams that are likely to be impacted.
The tech giant started slashing jobs in January last year when it reduced its global workforce by as much as 12,000 jobs or 6%. Later in September, Google let go of employees from its recruitment teams as well.
Since the start of this year, Alphabet has let go of about 1000 employees from several teams, including Pixel smartphones, hardware, ads, and services. It also let go of 100 employees from the YouTube team.
Google revealed its generative AI software model, Gemini, last month as it looks to take a leadership position in the AI space. OpenAI disrupted the tech industry when it launched the conversational generative AI tool, ChatGPT, in November 2022. Supremacy in the AI ecosystem is possibly one of its ambitions as the AI ecosystem develops at breakneck speed.
Google is not the only company that is letting its people go. Several prominent tech companies, including Qualcomm, Broadcom, Meta, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and Red Hat, among others, have announced layoffs recently.
The main reason for layoffs is extensive hiring during the pandemic when the demand for digital products and solutions skyrocketed in all geographies. The economic uncertainties last year didn’t help.