Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai spoke about the layoff of nearly 12,000 employees last year by the tech giant. Alphabet laid off around 12,000 employees in 2022. It was the biggest-ever downsizing in the company's history.
"That was clear at Google's latest all-hands meeting on Tuesday (December 12), where CEO Sundar Pichai defended the decision to cut 6% of the company's workforce," said a Business Insider report, quoting an audio obtained from the meeting.
During the meeting, an employee asked Sundar Pichai, "It has been almost 1 year since we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce. How did this decision affect our growth, P&L, and morale?"
The Google CEO said that there was a big impact on the morale of the employees, terming it as one of the "most difficult decisions for the company". He said, "At Google, we haven't had a moment quite like that in 25 years."
Sundar Pichai termed the decision “difficult but necessary". The Alphabet CEO said that if the company hadn't cut those jobs last year, it would have been “a worse decision down the line."
"It would have been a major overhang on the company. I think it would have made it very difficult in a year like this with such a big shift in the world to create the capacity to invest in areas," the Google CEO said.
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While Sundar Pichai defended the decision to cut 12,000 jobs in Google, he said that it was a "bad idea" to cut the immediate access of all the laid-off personnel and to inform all the fired employees at the same time, regardless of the time zone.
"Clearly, it's not the right way to do it. I think it's something we could have done differently for sure," Sundar Pichai said.
