It has been a bad week to be an employee with a Big Tech firm. Earlier this week, Microsoft brushed off reports of major job cuts as “rumor” before then confirming it will slash over 10,000 employees over the next three months. Now, Google is also announcing a major cut of its workforce, with 12,000 employees receiving their pink slip.
Google confirmed the job cuts on an official blog post. Essentially, the blog repeats word for word an email sent to employees from CEO Sundar Pichai. 12,000 employees makes up around 6% of its total global workforce.
Emails have already been sent to Google employees in the United States, with workers around the world getting the same email soon. I am sure that staff losing their jobs will take plenty of heart from the fact Pichai says he is taking full responsibility for the decision while staying in his multi-million-dollar role.
Either way, here is what the CEO has to say:
“Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.
I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI. To fully capture it, we'll need to make tough choices. So, we've undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we're eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.
To the Googlers who are leaving us: Thank you for working so hard to help people and businesses everywhere. Your contributions have been invaluable and we are grateful for them.”
Lay Offs
Employees in the United States who lose their jobs will get payouts for their 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time. Furthermore, the staff will receive pay for their full notification period (at a minimum of 60 days). Severance packages start from 16 weeks salary, while there is also six months of healthcare, job placement, and immigration support.
Away from the U.S., payment packages will be based on local norms.
Tip of the day: With a single registry tweak, it's possible to add a ‘Take Ownership' button to the right-click context menu that performs all of the necessary actions for you. You'll gain full access to all possible actions, including deletion, renaming, and more. All files and subfolders will also be under your name. The Take Ownership context menu will set the currently active user as the owner of the files, though they must also be an administrator. They can then enter the folder or modify the file as they usually would.
