It was nice being able to talk about other things for a bit. But it wouldn’t be a tech and gaming website if I didn’t get back to covering layoffs. Google has now placed jobs on the chopping block as has been reported from multiple sources last week along with some more today.
Last week, it was confirmed from Google that a lot of teams got hit by “post pandemic” layoffs this year. The Google Hardware team, who are in charge of Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit, were initially hit. Other chunks were taken out of Google’s core engineering team along with it’s Assistant team.
A Google spokesperson confirmed that “a few hundred” roles were cut from each department. However, the spokesperson stopped short of saying how many total jobs were lost. But, let’s put our thinking caps on. There were 3 teams who were affected. A few (to me) means anywhere from 3 to 5. So, 300-500 people per team. And we’re looking at somewhere between 900-1500 employees, give or take.
Today, more layoffs came from the advertising sales team. Another spokesperson from Google stated, yet again, that “a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated. So, let’s just throw another 300-500 people on that list for a new total of 1200- 2000 people without jobs.
Every year we go through a rigorous process to structure our team to provide the best service to our Ads customers. We map customers to the right specialist teams and sales channels to meet their service needs. As part of this, a few hundred roles globally are being eliminated and impacted employees will be able to apply for open roles or elsewhere at Google.”
Chris Pappas, Google spokesperson
As I’ve said before with Meta’s recent layoffs, it’s good that they are allowing people to apply for other roles at the company before giving them the complete axe. That being said, the fact that the company just now wants to be “efficient” rings hollow to me.
Google should have just stayed in its lane.
