Google Layoffs: Firm taking time to do it correctly and well, says CEO Sundar Pichai

Google CEO Sundar Pichai when questioned about the massive layoffs that has been going on in the company since last year said that Google is "taking the time to do it correctly and well." According to a report from CNBC, Google's Pichai faced questioning from employees during an all-hands meeting.

Sundar Pichai questioned

While criticised for his leadership and the culture around layoffs, the Google top boss said that as a leader of such a large company, he makes "fewer consequential decisions, but they need to be clear."

He further mentioned that the majority of the layoffs would happen in the first six months of 2024. "Assuming current conditions, the second half of the year will be much smaller in scale," Pichai told the employees present in the meeting. He added that Google must be "very, very disciplined" about hiring more employees throughout the year.

As per Bloomberg, he told that Google is simplifying teams and moving people to focus on new areas while in a few cases, the company is also removing some teams entirely to “improve velocity”

Layoffs by Google

In 2023, Google had laid off about 12,000 people while many have been laid off from core engineering and hardware teams in 2024. Last month, in a restructuring effort tech giant Google has cut some jobs and announced that a small part of the impacted jobs will move to hubs the company is investing in, including India, Chicago, Atlanta and Dublin

Sundar Pichai had said that Google is "reallocating people" to its "highest priorities."

“There’s a lot of demand to do new things and, in the past, we would have just done it reflexively by growing headcount. We can’t do it now through the transition we are in", adding, "We see opportunities where we can re-allocate people and get things done", he said.

Last year, in a memo, Sundar Pichai expressed apologies for layoffs and said that the firm hired for a different economic perspective.

"Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today," he had said.

Also watch: Google cuts more jobs, plans to shift some roles to India amid cost cutting efforts