Posted on 01/20/2023 6:28:46 PM PST by SeekAndFind
And a Happy New Year to the “Don’t be evil” crowd, huh? It’s shaping up to be a barn burner.
Google parent Alphabet Inc. said it plans to eliminate roughly 12,000 jobs, reducing its staff by 6% and marking the company’s largest-ever round of layoffs as it copes with a darkened economic outlook.
The reductions will cut across Alphabet units and geographies, the company said, though some areas, including recruiting and projects outside of the company’s core businesses, would be more heavily affected.
The cuts follow a wave of layoffs at other technology companies in recent months, including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.
Those cuts have been part of a broader pivot toward protecting profit and cementing the end of a growth-at-all costs era in technology. Google executives have in recent months said the company would be tightening its belt, reflecting a new period of more disciplined and efficient spending. But the company hadn’t announced cuts as deep as those of its Silicon Valley peers.
Well, now it has. YOICKS
Google just announced to layoff 12,000 ppl, or 6% of its staff. This is the largest-ever job cut in it's history.
According to the reports, the reductions will cut across all of Alphabet's units & company's core business would be more heavily affected. #Google #layoffs pic.twitter.com/Ma023sTcID
— Kamlakant Tripathi (@kkt_tweet) January 20, 2023
That heady pandemic hiring boom is being blamed for a good portion of the lay-offs, which have added up to almost 40,000 jobs since just the first of the year and over 70,000 since this past fall. You’d think such smugly smart people would know these sorts of boomtimes don’t last, but apparently not. The employees getting the boot will have to make do with handsome severance packages and a (possibly heartfelt), “Sorry, my bad.”
… “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Mr. [Alphabet CEO Sundar] Pichai wrote. The corporate mea culpa for overhiring has become a recurring message in recent months at tech companies as executives realized that some of the hiring they undertook to keep pace with soaring demand for all-things-digital early in the pandemic left them overstaffed as the business environment soured.
They will be offering some company assistance on pesky things like health insurance and squaring away the new immigration status, etc.
…The company will also offer former employees access to resources to help them with their immigration status, job placement and mental health, the spokesman said. Tech companies in the U.S. often have employees on work visas tied to their employment.
Shoot. In this bold new “Biden’s America” day and age? Work visa? You don’t need no stinking visa! Who are we kidding?
They didn’t really waste time on a touchy-feely goodbye for any of their longtime employees, either.
It's hard for me to believe that after 20 years at #Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email. What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face.
#layoffs— Jeremy Joslin (@jcj) January 20, 2023
NO CAKE FOR YOU!
The thoughts below are also true.
Where are the reporters that are sitting outside the HQ of these companies, interviewing the newly laid off workers, like they were Twitter?
I am fine with doing that. What I am not fine with is these so called journalists only doing it when it is politically expedient.
— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 20, 2023
All this news came on top of yesterday’s announcement that Google was delaying paying a portion of everyone’s Christmas bonus. I’ll bet that red flag started people sweating. Tons of folks have that spent before it ever hits the bank account.
Google executives are deferring a portion of employees’ year-end bonus checks, according to documents viewed by CNBC, as the company moves toward permanently pushing back payouts.
In past years, employees received their full bonuses in January. However, Google will pay qualifying full-time employees 80% of their bonus checks this month and the remaining 20% in March or April, the documents say.
Google described the January payout as an “advance” in correspondence to employees. Leadership said it will be a one-time change due to “transition” of its employee-evaluation system and the altered timing for future bonuses.
Leave employees an”Oopsie” Post It note…
…“We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Mr. Pichai said in a note to employees posted on the company’s website.
They’ll get over it.
So the business goes and working for the woke is no protection. Whoda thunk it?
This can't be.. they have the biggest DEI department on the planet
pic.twitter.com/P9K8a1T0PL— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) January 20, 2023
It almost sounds evil.
Google stock was up 6% today. Go figure.
Die, Google! Die!
I wrote this about Microsoft’s layoffs. I haven’t looked at Google’s hiring figures for 2021 and 2022 but I believe the situation is the same as Microsoft’s.
Here’s Why laying off 10,000 workers at Microsoft is almost meaningless.
You can see in just 1 year, Microsoft hired 40,000 workers in 2022 (Goodness, how do you hire 40,000 people in just 1 year? That means employees just spent time interviewing and not working in 2022).
So, cutting 10,000 is meaningless as Microsoft will probably cut another 10,000 by end of summer 2023.
Notice each year prior from 2019, 2020, Microsoft only hired 20,000 each year. So, hiring 40,000 people in just 1 year is an outlier and points to the company over hiring by 20,000.
I suspect the same issue applies to Google and the other big tech firms.
“Well, the world needs ditchdiggers, too.”
Sell on the rumor, buy on the news.
less employees = lower expenses = more profit
Judge Smails
When one company in a specific industry announces layoffs, the others have to follow suit or the analysts will pester them. It is a good time to get rid of the dead weight.
A law needs to be written that forces employers to lay off all foreign nationals working for them before firing their first American citizen. Fire the H-1B visa workers first!!!
‘Tech wreck’ sweeping Silicon Valley wipes out jobs paying $12BN amid ‘richcession’ - as Google plans to cut 12,000 roles-— Amazon-18000, Alphabet-12000, Meta-11000, Microsoft-10000.
Think that will blow a hole in their illegal-alien welfare budget???
naaaa... lucky they can file for Unemployment online.
I live near Frisco, TX (McKinney). The Indians have completely taken over the city. When you issue an H-1B, each person brings a hundred of them over (no, I am not kidding). Do you think they don’t get government assistance? Hell yeah they do. We have so many homeless people in need and our politicians allow this to happen. Pure madness.
I wish Eastern Europe had a repatriation program because maybe euro Americans need to “go home” and take their wealth with them. I think it would be a dream to live in a basically all caucasion country away from the woke madness. I know send me your address and I will mail you a ticket. Right...
Amen...a lot of us are going Galt.
America is becoming unlivable.
20 years at Google and they get laid off GEEZE!!! Why would someone with 20 years on the job get laid off??
If you are not a millionaire, you are screwed. The “posh” CEOs of all of these mega corporations have theirs and because of that, they push this “woke” crap on all of us to makes them “feel” good and protect them from criticism. What they fail to understand is that future generations will have to pick up the pieces. Everyone thinks they are “owed” something now from some imaginary slight from past generations. When the money runs out and the music stops there will be chaos. You can only milk a segment of society before there is nothing left.
Getting near retirement age? It happens in a lot of places.
Learn how to flip hamburgers.
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