Google parent Alphabet Inc. on Wednesday laid off hundreds of employees from its global hiring team. This comes as an attempt by the tech giant to slow down the hiring process.
Notably, Alphabet Inc. was the first “tech giant” to lay off employees this quarter, while others, such as Meta Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Amazon Inc., aggressively laid off in early 2023.
It cut staff by about 6 percent in January, amounting to 12,000 jobs. The move in January marked Google’s first “major” layoff in the company’s history. The NY Times reported that as of June 30, the company had 181,798 employees.
Several employees who were laid off took to LinkedIn on Wednesday to share their feelings. Among them, many mentioned how Google has always been a dream company for them. They worked for it, worked hard for it, however, finally, it was over.
While Alphabet Inc. will try to recover the economy from the move and it’s fair for the company to avoid harm to keep the business running, employees working at the tech giant have lost their jobs any time. And, that way, they’re looking for another job.
After previous layoffs, Google shifted its focus to developing its own A.I. to rival competitors, and it’s just expensive. Most products have been updated with this technology and even the chatbot, Bard, has been introduced to compete with OpenAI’s choice of ChatGPT.
Alphabet’s president and chief investment officer Ruth Porat said in July that the company is committed to restructuring costs to create space for investments that deliver the highest returns.
