Last updated on March 23rd, 2024 at 07:56 am

Sundar Pichai’s memo acknowledges that additional job cuts are expected on top of the round of layoffs reported last week

Google’s CEO has informed employees to anticipate additional job cuts this year following a recent round of layoffs that impacted 1,000 staff. Sundar Pichai mentioned in a memo to employees on Wednesday that “some roles may be impacted” as various divisions within the tech giant continue to undergo changes. Pichai’s memo acknowledged another round of job cuts reported last week, which the Alphabet Workers Union stated had affected 1,000 workers.

“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our major priorities,” he wrote in the memo reported by the tech news website The Verge. “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”

Pichai mentioned that the tough choices so far included job losses in Google divisions such as search, advertising sales, and its YouTube platform. Artificial intelligence is a major strategic focus for Google, which last year unveiled its competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard, and a new AI model called Gemini.

He noted that the role eliminations would not reach the level of the 12,000 redundancies across Alphabet in January last year. The company employed 182,000 people as of 30 September last year, according to its most recent quarterly results.

“These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team,” wrote Pichai. “But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”

Announcing the job cuts last year, Pichai said Alphabet had undergone a hiring spree as tech firms experienced a boom in demand during the Covid-19 pandemic. Admitting the company had overexpanded, he wrote that Alphabet had “hired for a different economic reality” than the one it faced today.

Pichai’s memo on Wednesday was sent to employees amidst ongoing tech layoffs, although not on the scale seen 12 months ago when Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon, and Meta made tens of thousands of job cuts as they adjusted to a post-lockdown economic reality. In December, Spotify announced it was cutting 17% of its global workforce, while Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees in its Prime Video and studios units, as well as about 500 employees at its live-streaming platform, Twitch.

According to a website tracking tech industry job losses, layoffs.fyi, the sector has made 7,785 redundancies globally so far this year. By the same period last year, tech firms had laid off far more workers – about 38,000 staff.

On Wednesday, Pichai stated that the recent job cuts were aimed at “removing layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas,” with more role eliminations expected to occur.

“Many of these changes have already been announced. To be transparent, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year as needed, and some roles may be affected,” he added.

Christopher Gilchrist, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, said that in times of technological change, such as the emergence of generative AI, companies like Google have recognized that “the needle has moved” and must change to stay competitive.

“Over time, the workforce naturally organizes to areas with the highest priority,” he said.

Google declined to comment.