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Google Axes 12,000 Jobs (apnews.com) 121

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbed. From a report: CEO Sundar Pichai informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company's news blog. The firings adds to tens of thousands of other job losses recently announced by Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook parent Meta and other tech companies as they tighten their belts amid a darkening outlook for the industry. Just this month, there have been at least 48,000 job cuts announced by major companies in the sector.

"Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth," Pichai wrote. "To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." He said the layoffs reflect a "rigorous review" carried out by Google of its operations. The jobs being eliminated "cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions," Pichai said. In a regulatory filing late last year, the company said that it employed nearly 187,000 people. Pichai said that Google, founded nearly a quarter of a century ago, was "bound to go through difficult economic cycles."
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Google Axes 12,000 Jobs

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  • Profits are high, economy's growing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @07:48AM (#63224666)
    Mass layoffs makes perfect sense. Seriously people, Jerome Powell said multiple times he's not lowering interest rates until there are mass layoffs. They're trying to cause a recession. Why the hell are we letting them do this to us? When did we become so immaculated and weak? Why won't anyone stand up for themselves?

    • Re:Profits are high, economy's growing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @08:00AM (#63224678) Homepage Journal

      When I see stories like this I always know that the vast majority of layoffs will be in the US. It's simply not that easy to lay people off in Europe. There needs to be more justification and the pay-out for doing it is much bigger. None of this at-will crap.

      Start there, with proper employment rights. Make laying people off unattractive, compared to weathering the storm for a year or two.

      • Re:Profits are high, economy's growing (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @09:15AM (#63224872)

        When I see stories like this I always know that the vast majority of layoffs will be in the US. It's simply not that easy to lay people off in Europe.

        Yup, and when it is time to hire again, the vast majority of new hires will be in the US, because it's simply not that easy to lay people off in Europe.

        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by Opportunist ( 166417 )

          So ... hmmm.... what would be better for me .... being fired among 12000 others and being hired again in 2 years among 12000 others or just work for those 2 years because I can't get fired...

          Decisions, decisions...

        • Re:Profits are high, economy's growing (Score:4, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @09:31AM (#63224930) Homepage Journal

          Unemployment in Europe isn't too bad. Worker's rights don't appear to have stopped companies from hiring staff during the good times.

          I believe this is because European companies are not chasing next quarter's stats so much, and tend to take a slightly longer term view. Not as long as Japanese companies, but still better than the US.

          • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

            by rookiebeotch ( 6202512 )
            Really? France unemployment rate is 7.3%, and that is a 14 year LOW. Its always been high compared to the US. Nobody is running to Europe to work. People have been risking their lives floating across the seas to come to America to get jobs because we are by far the most prosperous fair nation in history. and once again, Europe is threatened by Russia and who is footing the bill and doing most of the work? yes the US. European nations are worthless.

            • France unemployment rate is 7.3%, and that is a 14 year LOW.

              The median income is $46,625 in America and $28,146 in France. So Americans are not only more likely to have a job but are much better paid.

              France pays a high price for the right to keep their jobs despite their performance/competence.

              Median income [wikipedia.org]

              • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

                by serviscope_minor ( 664417 )

                So Americans are not only more likely to have a job but are much better paid.

                True, but Americans are also working many many more hours. You get 30 days of vacation in France, paid sick leave, 35 hours per week and a right to not get bugged outside of working hours. What's the difference in hourly wages, especially if you count work messages out of hours as time worked?

                Germany has a higher median income than France and fewer hours worked, and strong worker protections.

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by skam240 ( 789197 )

                France pays a high price for the right to keep their jobs despite their performance/competence.

                While from what I understand France's labor laws could use a bit of an overhaling a majority of that wage difference has more to do with the amount of government services they receive and cost of goods (especially rent). You see very similar wage differences comparing us to say Germany which is known for its successful economy and has fairly sensible labor laws.

              • It makes more sense to look at PPP figures by household. The figures are $66000 USA and $61000 per household for France in 2021. France is 10% down, but shorter working weeks, more time off, lower retirement age.
              • American economy is fine, but there are many measurements that are potentially interesting. If you look at GDP per capita by country, the US comes in seventh place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Income is probably more interesting than GDP though, but then you have to consider whether mean income or median income is more important. In the US 2020 mean income was 53,383 USD but median was 34,612 USD. https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review.com] And then you might look at PPP (purchasing power parity) that takes int

              • Sure, absolute numbers are different but they don't really show the whole picture. I worked in France for a number of years, and while my salary was less than half what I make here now, I feel like I had more disposable income there. A lot of that is due to many things being priced in line with prevailing wages, but there were just so many things you didn't have to worry about financially compared to the US.

              • France unemployment rate is 7.3%, and that is a 14 year LOW.

                The median income is $46,625 in America and $28,146 in France. So Americans are not only more likely to have a job but are much better paid.

                The French get a functional social safety net. This is probably because they aren't such little bitches as Americans. Right now they are protesting in the streets because France wants to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. The US raised it from 65 to 67 and hardly anyone even fucking noticed.

            • Well, many people might have gone to the US for work but in Europe we get plenty of inmigrants as well. The stricter labor laws probably make our job markets less dynamic than in the US but more protections also has other advantadges.

            • Really? France unemployment rate is 7.3%, and that is a 14 year LOW.

              Unemployment rates are not directly comparable, because the US pushes people off the unemployment counts much more than European countries do.

              Here is some reading for you:
              https://www.bruegel.org/blog-p... [bruegel.org]

        • That's not really a good thing (Score:5, Insightful)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @11:21AM (#63225306)
          America's constant cycle of boom and bust really fucks everything up. What ends up happening is people have to sell what little property they have during those bust cycles. They end up unable to build any wealth and in the meantime all the wealth ends up going straight to the top.

          That makes for a very unstable economy. If you're an American living in that unstable economy and you're not one of the jackals gnawing at the bones when people lose their houses that really sucks. Especially if you're a small business owner and every few years the demand for your product collapses.

          What I'm saying is stable employment is good for everyone. Except a very very very rich. Those guys want slaves

          • There is a degree to which the boom-and-bust can't be stabilized. Nobody can see the future and hence nobody can prevent the economic impacts of things like global pandemics and Russian invasions. There are also things like technological advances that upend old business models and plenty of other large-scale and hard-to-control influences to the economy. "The Economy" is the consequence of the collective actions of billions of people, after all.

            Of course, the government can certainly help to ease the sev

            • There is a degree to which the boom-and-bust can't be stabilized.

              Which we're nowhere near, as corporations are sitting on record cash reserves, and have been collecting record profits for years now making them even larger.

              Nobody can see the future and hence nobody can prevent the economic impacts of things like global pandemics and Russian invasions.

              Which are responsible for less than 50% of inflation, and 0% of the Fed's market manipulation.

            • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

              by Anonymous Coward

              There is a degree to which the boom-and-bust can't be stabilized. Nobody can see the future and hence nobody can prevent the economic impacts of things like global pandemics and Russian invasions. There are also things like technological advances that upend old business models and plenty of other large-scale and hard-to-control influences to the economy. "The Economy" is the consequence of the collective actions of billions of people, after all.

              The economy is unpredictable, but leaders have a choice in how they respond. How do you justify firing 12,000 people when the company could pay their salaries for 20+ years with the last quarter's profits alone? That's NOT OK.

              The way you stabilize the economy is simple.

              1. Ban tying CEO salaries to short-term stock performance, like Google's board did three weeks ago, so CEOs won't keep favoring short-term profits at the expense of long-term profits, company stability, and worker trust.

              2. Run all the soc

        • Thatâ(TM)s not true, i have been fired from practically every job I've ever had.

      • The job growth was thanks to uncle Joe, so the layoffs must be due to uncle Donald.

        • Re: Profits are high, economy's growing (Score:4, Interesting)

          by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @12:01PM (#63225450) Homepage Journal

          My theory is that the President doesn't have his hand on any of the levers of the economy. The executive branch doesn't decide the budget. It doesn't decide interest rates. It doesn't directly decide tariffs. I think people wrongly have their hierarchal view of the government, when from the beginning it was designed explicitly not to be hierarchal. Multiple branches of the government and the role of federalism in the domain of state's rights should demonstrate that.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dfm3 ( 830843 )
            The finger pointing is just a symptom of a political climate in which we always blame "the other team" and make excuses for "our side". If their president is in office, obviously it's his fault. If our guy controls the executive branch but they have a majority in congress, blame the legislature for obstructionism. Or if we have the majority at all levels, obviously this problem is bigger than just the USA and is worldwide, so we can't control it. The point is that economics is so complex, we can always find

      • Most Americans think they are God's gift to labor and therefore just way to awesome to get laid off. They hate unions and think they can do SOOO much better.

        A couple do. The rest get laid off and continue to vote for politicians that don't care about worker's rights at all.

        But hey, apparently most of the USA likes it this way. Not sure why.

        • Americans gripe about paying union dues. But are shocked when nobody is around to negotiate with the boss when a company makes you bring your own toilet paper into work. LOL

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GlennC ( 96879 )

      When did we become so immaculated and weak? Why won't anyone stand up for themselves?

      The Roman satirical poet Juvenal wrote said it best almost 2000 years ago:
      "... Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions-everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses."
      - Satire10. 77-81

    • But what if next quarter the margins would be 1 percentage point lower? Can't have that!

      Of course then they'll need to hire and onboard those people anyway which I'm sure will not waste anyone's time.

    • Well, we've given the powers that be the power to manipulate currency. I'm not an economics expert but there is an economic theory that pins the root cause of the entire boom / bust cycle on the ability to manipulate the supply of currency. Money is a commodity like any other, when you "print money" the value of the currency decreases because the supply has increased and we call that inflation; there's still the same amount of bread and milk, but there's more dollars and so the dollar's purchasing power rel

    • When did we become so immaculated...?

      At conception?

    • Apparently, most people have their attention focused on other issues. The only people who are going to get up and do anything about this are the people who really care about it.

      Like, you, it would seem.

      • I'm hoping for a downright depression. It's the only way housing will become affordable again. When there's blood on the street. Buy real estate.

        • I'm hoping for a downright depression. It's the only way housing will become affordable again. When there's blood on the street. Buy real estate.

          Problem is, the odds are that some of the blood will be yours. Depressions tend to only leave the largest fortunes intact, if them.

      • Restructuring maneuvers are in part due to Corp reporting rules. It is also a little more efficient en masse. Setup packages, timelines etc. Execs get a reprieve from nervous boards or major investors. Motorola did special charges for 12 quarters in a row when SEC took notice this is perhaps a continuing activity and reporting should be normal operations expense. Not long after Mot spin-offed or closed most divisions. Alphabet following the herd so easier to rationalize and minimize legal n admin costs. Wha

    • Maybe pick a more essential industry? No layoffs in my field. We're hiring in fact!!!

      A good chunk of tech is entertainment. The first to go.

    • Big Tech borrows money at nearly no interest. People are eager to invest in them and throw money their way. As a result, they can do extravagant things, like hoard tech talent and give insane perks. This is a competitive advantage, but every expensive. By starving the labor pool, upstarts can't find enough engineers to make the next Google/Android/Gmail killer. It also makes interesting companies more eager to be acquired.

      Now that capital markets are drying up and the economy is facing headwinds, B

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Mass layoffs makes perfect sense. Seriously people, Jerome Powell said multiple times he's not lowering interest rates until there are mass layoffs. They're trying to cause a recession. Why the hell are we letting them do this to us? When did we become so immaculated and weak? Why won't anyone stand up for themselves?

      What was "immaculated"? Must have intended "emasculated"?

      What aspect of that triggered the censor trolls? But I guess I need to requote you as an anti-censorship measure.

      My initial thoughts on the topic are along the lines that the google acts more like an evil corporate cancer all the time. Not every day for increasing the evil, but getting close to that schedule.

      The message of these layoffs are that the best people in the world can get fired at any time. For no faults of their own. Nothing personal there.

    • People only believe what the media tells them. Since the media has declared there to be no recession, the public believes there is no recession. The media has never told the public there is any problem with the federal reserve, therefore most people (sheep) do not believe there to be a problem.

    • Simple: the state is too powerful to stand against. How would you (or Alphabet) stop it from raising interest rates.

      If Powell says he's not lowering interest rates until there are mass layoffs, and high interest rates are worse than mass layoffs for companies, it makes sense for companies to do mass layoffs to attempt to influence Powell. Though in Google's case, a Twitter-proportion reduction in force would probably be good for the company too, they've been warehousing engineers for a long time.

    • If you don't want them to do this, then you all need to stop spending money so the retailers are forced to lower prices.

    • You are not entitled to a job, and the only thing that makes you employable that you produce more for your employer than you are paid. Google and other tech companies make money off ads and ad related analytics. This area is seeing a downward trend in spend meaning they need to cut back in staff. Are the companies profitable? Yes but that doesnâ(TM)t mean they have the right amount of staff.

  • PR not downsizing (Score:5, Insightful)

    by haggie ( 957598 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @08:03AM (#63224686)

    12,000 employees at a company with over 150,000 employees?

    That wouldn't even be newsworthy if Google didn't make it newsworthy. This is to appease a certain very loud investor.

    Look at all of the recent layoffs at huge corporations. That are all laughable numbers. 10,000 people at Amazon? They have 1M employees. They probably fire/hire 10,000 people a day!

    These are PR layoffs. Not downsizing.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I'd imagine that a lot of these people were on the Stadia team, which just got disbanded.

      I wouldn't be surprised if some of the rest were on the Google Home/Nest assistant team. The quality of that product has really gone down the shitter lately.

      • Didn't they spend a ton of money to buy Nest? Seems like a waste to let it go downhill. It's not like Stadia where they built it from whole cloth themselves. They paid good money for that. Then again I suppose there's such a thing as throwing good money at bad...

        • It's Google we are talking about. Besides search and selling ads, everything else they do should be considered a temporary side thing that you shouldn't bother with or at least not rely on.

      • No, it's not nearly that focused or logical.

    • For any company with hundreds of thousands of employees laying off 8% of them in one day is front page news everywhere, not just dead slashdot.

      • But also Google is all over the US and the world. When people hear "12,000 jobs" they may make a leap into thinking it's all in one place, or all Silicon Valley, or one state, etc. But they're likely to be all over. It may be hard to lay off in some countries but if they shut down the entire operation then there's not much that country can do. So local impacts in various places won't necessarily be very large.

        At the same time in the last couple of years Google had done a lot of hiring. So there are a l

    • Well, have you seen the news lately? People don't just accept any slave job offered and kiss your feet for letting them work for 60 hours a week for 10 grand a year!

      We have to show them that jobs are something they should BEG us for! Here's another 10,000 people fired, how much more does it take for you to realize that you better kiss my foot again?

      We must create that feeling that there are many more unemployed now, so these serfs stop being so uppity that they actually want decent money for their work.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by bn-7bc ( 909819 )
        60h / week is just plain unreasonable IMH, the standard for a full time position here in Norway is arround 37.5h/week ( this is what people in the us refers to as a 0-5 job)if you works shifts( esp night shifts) the hoers drop. And there is limited overtime as well ( ie employers can't use "unlimited overtime"to avoid hiring more staff) i find this a much fairer system, beople don't live to work they work to live, we alkso have 5 weeks of mandated vacation every year of which ay keast 3 has to be taken ou

        • Of course it's unreasonable. But that's what they got away with in the past and they want that back.

          • That's what some have gotten awa with in the past. And much of this is because employees let them get away with it. No boss in the US can tell you that you *must* work 60 hours without additional overtime pay, it would be illegal in most states. Instead they have continuous crunch time with applied pressure so that the workers think they need to do the extra hours in order to stay caught up, but also pushing out the myth over and over and over that "60 hours is normal for this industry". If someone says

            • That any job can be done from Bangalore is a myth. First, the time difference. You're literally half a world away. Unless you get them to work from 9pm to 5am, you will always have a fairly large delay for everything you need. Then there's the security aspect, you have ZERO control over the person over there. If they steal your technology or even sell it out to someone else, you're dependent on some foreign, often enough hostile, nation to aid you. Good luck with that.

        • Are you aware of how much google engineers are paid?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Junta ( 36770 )

            While that mitigate sympathy for folks, high compensation is hardly useful if you never have free time to actually use it.

            • I happen to feel the same, but that's why I didn't go for the startup / silicon valley grind. That has always been the deal - we'll pay you like a king in exchange for fanatical devotion to the cause. Those onsite services they have like laundry and giving you dinner? Let's think about why you would be eating dinner at work...

          • I have a couple of friends who used to work for google. Their salaries were not nearly so astronomical as many people claim. The salaries are good, but claims that the average tech worker can make half a million dollars a year with options and grants doesn't happen to the rank and file. Otherwise why would anyone work beyond age 35?

            • OK but half a million total comp per year for rank and file is an awfully high benchmark to fall short of! I do wonder how they're handling pay when stock options lose their luster. It's not like a worker bee can make the share price immune to a tech recession.

      • We must create that feeling that there are many more unemployed now, so these serfs stop being so uppity that they actually want decent money for their work.

        Cue More than a feelin' [shadowstats.com].

    • Not all employees are the same. Amazon does not have 1M employees that qualify them as being newsworthy in the tech sector. When they talk about reducing 10000 people, they do so talking about a small subset of their employees, likely programmers, engineers, and other office based people, nothing at all to do with the hundreds of thousands of warehouse employees they have around the world.

      I'd be very surprised if Amazon had as many technical employees as Google did and for neither company will those be in t

    • I agree that the percentage of the overall organization makes the Google layoffs insignificant. It's sad that Slashdot rushes to post this headline.

      Meanwhile, Slashdot has yet to post a negative headline concerning Elon Musk's (mis)management of Twitter. Musk follows 69 accounts on Twitter [businessinsider.com], and Slashdot is one of them. These headlines are in Musk's Twitter feed and he sometimes retweets them and comments on Slashdot's tweets, which benefits Slashdot by raising its profile within Twitter algorithms and driv

    • Re:PR not downsizing (Score:4, Interesting)

      by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @10:08AM (#63225050)
      The article says: "Regulatory filings illustrate how Google's workforce swelled during the pandemic, ballooning to nearly 187,000 people by late last year from 119,000 at the end of 2019."

      So in 2 years, headcount grew by 68,000. So, shrinking by 12,000 isn't nothing but it's less than 1/5 of what they hired in the last 24 months.

      I would expect hiring and firing to be more fluid in the era of remote work since it reduces moving expenses.

    • 8% of your workforce is still pretty large.

      That said, let's assume you're right. Why the hell do we let companies do this to us? "PR Layoffs"? As in, you're actively making money for the company, but you still get fired to appease some ultra rich ****wad?

      It's 2023 and we as a species still let people rule over us like they was Kings or something. Christ.

      • If you were making more money for the company then your compensation package was, then you wouldn't be laid off, now you would.

        • No, there are plenty of instances where people making a profit for their companies are let go. If a company decides to strategically realign priorities then entire divisions can be shuttered. Some of that business might be sold to a competitor, but that doesn't mean that all people in all locations are retained; frequently they are not.

        • If you were making more money for the company then your compensation package was, then you wouldn't be laid off

          Who told you that? And why did you believe it? You clearly have no relevant direct experience.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      How is a large employer laying off almost 10% of their staff not notable news?

    • These are PR layoffs. Not downsizing.

      If these layoffs are for PR, what is the positive PR arising from this?

      These layoffs, as all layoffs from a long time ago, are for boosting stock prices by cutting operating costs. 10k people may be a small percentage, but the total operating cost difference is definitely material to the stock price.

      Corporations are incentivized to do layoffs (and stock buybacks). After all, the decision makers are always completely safe from losing their jobs, and stock price appreciation directly affects executive compe

    • That's about 8% of the workforce. That seems like a rather significant figure.

    • Across the street Google has leased a set of buildings. This is not the cheap area of town. They all moved in last month and on day one the parking lot was full. Even today it's full, it has its own shuttles (despite mass transit being half a block away). Where did all those employees come from? Were they all working from home and then suddenly they had an office to go to? Did they migrate people over from another building? At the time I was a but confused because rumors of upcoming Google layoffs were

  • Self-fulfilling prophesy (Score:3)

    by gti_guy ( 875684 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @08:39AM (#63224748)
    Laying off 6% of your workforce based on conjecture about economic future is the one sure way to ensure a dismal outcome for the economy.

    • I don't think anything can ever be that cut and dry. There are plenty of indicators of a recession, and if not outright recession, then a stalling of growth. Considering Google went on a hiring spree during the Pandemic, it could just as easily be viewed as moving back to a pre-Pandemic footing.

  • This is a slow start, 12000 is a drop in a bucket compared to what will happen in the coming months and in the next few years. The government as the collective has failed by creating a gigantic disbalance in economic production vs the expectation of what the governments are supposed to provide. Basically the economy cannot keep providing without producing, the government used the Fed and the Treasury to create this huge disbalance. Things will have to rebalance, governments, companies, individuals will

  • The problem here, is many of those careers that were eliminated, were being paid less than they were supposed to be paid, simply because they were working towards climbing a ladder.

    In the same way that the intern sometimes makes the coffee and deals with it for a few years before getting into a position to relax and have people make coffee for them.

    They put in their part and then, right when it was their turn, you pull the rug out from under them and kick them out.

  • Instead of 12,000 workers, lay off the managers (Score:3)

    by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @09:35AM (#63224946)
    .. who came up with and approved and cancelled all those short-lived projects.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by nwaack ( 3482871 )
      You could've just stopped at "lay off the managers." Every company I've worked for in my 20+ years of professional employment could've easily had 20% of middle and upper management disappear overnight and barely anyone would've noticed. I suspect most of you are in the same boat.

  • Check out the hiring graphs here (Score:5, Informative)

    by david.emery ( 127135 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @09:57AM (#63225008)

    https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/1... [cnbc.com]

    The graphs showing percent growth at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and and especially Meta show the uptick in hiring over the last couple of years. Apple by contrast is shown to be more "slow and steady." (That being said, I've complained for many years that Apple -should throw more bodies- at its Software QA operations. This is where Brook's Law holds less strongly than other areas in software.)

  • What about all the coder jobs promised? (Score:3)

    by fredrated ( 639554 ) on Friday January 20, 2023 @01:17PM (#63225668) Journal

    Gone already?

  • from engadget.com

    Google is reportedly preparing to show off at least 20 AI-powered products and a chatbot for its search engine this year, with at least some set to debut at its I/O conference in May.

    The company is doubling down on AI just as it lays off 12,000 workers.

    I didn't say it.

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