As much as I’d like to think, this will never end. And I fear the larger the company, the more we’ll here. Case and point, YouTube was being affected as I was writing the articles about the previous Google layoffs.
Cuts at YouTube
Yesterday, YouTube announced that it was letting go of folks handling the business part of things. The announcement was made internally by Mary Ellen Coe, YouTube chief business officer. She’s the boss over YouTube’s business operations, partnerships, and advertising.
Andrea Faville, a YouTube spokesperson confirmed that reporting done by Tubefilter was accurate. 100 jobs were cut from the creator partnership team. The remaining team will restructure “together under dedicated central leadership in each individual country.” These restructuring also appear to be happening for YouTube’s music and support teams.
What really bums me out about this is not only are people out of a job, but the roles cut will definitely have an impact on creators who were sold that they could be successful under the platform. I’m not entirely sure how successful they can be when there are now less people to work with to get things done.
Google CEO makes it worse
But we’re not done here. Neither is Google.
After what now has to be over 1,000 people getting the axe, Google CEO Sundar Pichai doesn’t paint a rosy picture for those still at the company. He sent out an internal memo bracing the remaining staff for more cuts.
We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year. The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team. But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
According to The Verge, Pichai states that the layoffs happening this year are about “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.”
Many of these changes are already announced, though to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai
I don’t know. I’ll grab my tinfoil hat and say that this seems to be the work of Google dogfooding its own products. Google has gone so far into AI that I would venture a guess to say jobs within itself are being made redundant. This might explain why ethical AI teams get cut. Google knows what’s happening but it doesn’t matter as long as the shareholders have money.
But I’ll wait for the next tech bro to tell me that AI isn’t about replacing jobs, its about supplementing them.
