Tech giant Google has laid off its entire Python team for cheap labour, reported Free Press Journal. As per the report, the firm is planning to hire cheaper labour outside the United States to reduce costs for the company.
As per a post by Social.coop on Mastodon (via Hacker News), a former Google Python team member stated that he is deeply saddened by the decision and called it “by far the best job” in his 20-year career.
Another Google employee said, "it's a tough day when everyone you work with directly, including your manager, is laid off -- excuse me, ‘had their roles reduced’, and you're asked to onboard their replacements, people told to take those very same roles just in a different country who are not any happier about it. (It's almost like capitalism isn't actually good and you shouldn't want to live in the US.)”.
As per Free Press Journal, Google is building a new team from scratch in Munich, Germany. The US Python team that reportedly has less than 10 members oversaw a large part of the Python ecosystem at Google. The responsibilities of the team included maintaining a stable version of Python at Google, updating thousands of third-party packages, and developing a typechecker.
As per Business Insider, Google has also made job cuts across its real estate and finance departments. The report mentioned that the finance teams affected include Google's treasury, business services, and revenue cash operations. Google's finance chief, Ruth Porat, sent an email to staff saying the restructuring includes expanding growth to Bangalore, Mexico City, and Dublin.
Since January the firm had let go of hundreds of workers across multiple teams including its engineering, hardware and assistance departments as Google is looking to ramp up investment and build its artificial intelligence offerings.
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