Highlights:
- Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is likely to lay off 10,000 employees by early 2023.
- The decision has been taken as a part of a performance improvement plan.
- Hedge Fund billionaire Christopher Hohn holds that the company’s workforce is excessive compared to current hiring trends.
Christopher Hohn, a renowned Hedge Fund billionaire, penned a letter to Google’s parent company, Alphabet advising them to incorporate staff cuts in the organisation. The UK investor had also raised the concern that the organisation exorbitant salaries to employees in comparison to other tech companies.
In a bid to implement a performance improvement plan, tech mammoth Google is on the path to laying off 10,000 employees. Reports from insiders suggest that employees who are underproductive and performing below expectations will be asked to resign. However, the problematic and deteriorating global financial situation is at the heart of the anticipated downsizing, according to tech news portal The Information. The purge might start in a matter of weeks. i.e., by early 2023.
Google instructed its managers to identify 10,000 employees, or 6% of the workforce, whom they considered to be underperforming. Supervisors were directed to bring down the inflated ratings at an earlier notice.
The managers of the tech behemoth might use performance evaluations to reduce employee benefits like bonuses and stock options in addition to utilising them to reduce the workforce.
According to Hohn, the company’s workforce is “excessive” in comparison to previous hiring trends and does not correspond with the present business environment. He claims that many fewer highly compensated specialists could manage Google just as effectively. Managers were required to place 2% of the workforce in that category under the former performance assessment system.
CEO Sundar Pichai had hinted at the impending doom a few months back. According to what he remarked, Google as a firm “believes that when you have fewer resources than before, you are prioritising all the correct things to focus on, and your people are incredibly productive.”
Several big tech companies had placed their bets on the upsurge in online activity during covid to continue, but unfortunately, that did not happen.
Facebook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had earlier this year announced a cut of 11,000 employees, which was approximately 13% of the organisation’s workforce. Elon Musk, who recently took the reigns of the social platform, Twitter, has laid off nearly 60 per cent of the 7,000-odd staff in a bid to restructure almost everything.
