Google is likely to join the club of companies planning to lay off employees to combat the global economic slowdown. Multiple sources reported that the tech giant is planning to cut down its employee bandwidth by letting go of almost 10,000 staff.
This development comes after hedge fund billionaire Christopher John said Alphabet should reduce its employee numbers. The UK-based investor also pointed out toward the high salary structure of the tech giant, Mint reported.
He is not the first to sound this note of caution. TCI Fund Management too had suggested Alphabet undertake cost-cutting and aggressive action to remain profitable, a New York Post report cited.
In August, Google's chief executive officer Sundar Pichai had hinted towards a possible layoff. Dissatisfied with the performance of the company, he said in a statement that Google had more people than work and had indicated a possible slowdown in the hiring process.
Sources are now claiming that Google is set to implement a performance improvement plan. The managers have beeninstructed to identify 6 per cent of staff as poor performers, which means that close to 10,000 employees are likely to get the dreaded pink slips.
In 2022, nearly 1,35,000 employees working in the tech and start-up segment lost their jobs. Twitter fired almost 7,500 employees after Tesla chief Elon Musk took over the company.
Mark Zuckerberg-led Meta also laid off 13 per cent of the entire workforce, while Jeff Bezos-led Amazon wrote about the possible termination of 10,000 employees in a blog post.
Google had been resisting this unwelcome trend, but seems to have finally bitten the bullet.