'Difficult but necessary': Sundar Pichai opens up on laying off over 12,000 employees
The Google CEO characterised layoffs as a necessary step to navigate economic shifts and position the company for future growth
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has finally opened up about the tech giant’s decision to lay off 12,000 staff members last year, defending the move in a recent all-hands meeting at the company.
Pichai termed the 12,000 job cuts, representing 6% of Alphabet’s workforce, as a necessary step to navigate economic shifts and position the company for future growth. Acknowledging the toll on affected employees, he argued that the alternative - delaying the layoffs - would have hindered the company’s ability to adapt and invest in critical areas.
“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.
An employee asked Pichai during the meeting, “It has been almost one year since we made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce. What impact did this decision have on our growth, P&L, and morale?”
The Google CEO responded by saying that there has been 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 really haven’t had a moment quite like that in 25 years.”
Dubbing the decision as “difficult but necessary”, Pichai said if the company hadn’t cut those jobs last year, it would have been “a worse decision down the line”. He said, “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.”
While Pichai defended the move to slash 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,” Pichai said.