Google President Sundar Pichai says “sustained cost reductions” are among the tech giant's key goals for 2024, even as the company surprises some employees with new layoffs. listed.
This month, Google has already confirmed layoffs in multiple regions of its empire. These include hundreds of layoffs in advertising sales teams, core engineering teams, Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit.
The company also mentioned its urgent plans for 2024 company-wide OKRs, a list of objective key results that Google shared with employees last Thursday.
According to the copy, one of the seven goals is to “improve the company's speed, efficiency, and productivity and achieve lasting cost savings.” Obtained by The Verge.
The goal at the top of Google's list was “Delivering the world's most advanced, secure, and responsible AI.” The memo also mentioned driving innovation through Google Cloud services and building “the most useful personal computing platforms and devices.”
Pichai acknowledged in a company-wide memo last Wednesday that further job cuts were underway, saying the company wanted to remove “layers to simplify execution and increase speed in some areas.” .
“While many of these changes have already been announced, we want to say upfront that some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year as needed and some roles will be impacted. may be affected,” Pichai said.
Google's top executive said the job cuts won't be on the “scale of last year,” when the company cut about 12,000 employees. Google had more than 182,000 employees worldwide as of last fall, according to filings.
Still, “many employees are nervous” at the apparent signs that further cost-cutting measures will be taken, The Verge reported.
Google representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
The Post reported that some current and former Google employees criticized the company for its response to a recent wave of layoffs.
“I don't mind being called an old-fashioned person, but when you find yourself in a situation where you have to let someone go, you have an obligation to meet them face-to-face, look them in the eye, and acknowledge their humanity. ” Kenneth Smith, the fired former Google engineering manager, wrote on LinkedIn.
The cost-cutting move comes as Google pours more resources into a fierce competition with Microsoft-backed OpenAI to develop advanced AI systems. In December, Google released Gemini, its latest large language AI model.
Pichai said he will take questions from employees at an all-hands meeting scheduled for later this month.
