A recent report has revealed that tech giant company Google has laid off at least 200 employees including key teams and engineering talent from its “Core Teams”, following a reorganization process.
As part of its reorganization, the company will hire corresponding roles in Mexico and India. Google’s core team is responsible for building the technical foundation behind its flagship products, protecting users online safety, and maintaining global IT infrastructure.
Also, these core teams include key technical units from information technology, Python developer team, technical infrastructure, security foundation, app platforms, core developers, and various engineering roles.
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Announcing the layoff, Vice President of Google Developer Ecosystem Asim Husain wrote via an email,
“Announcements of this sort may leave many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated. We intend to maintain our current global footprint while also expanding in high-growth global workforce locations so that we can operate closer to our partners and developer communities”. He added that his message to developers is that the changes are in service of the company’s broader goals.
In a separate email, Pankaj Rohatgi, Google’s security engineering vice president, disclosed to his team that in order to optimize for business goals, there will be an expansion of work to other locations, which will result in some role eliminations.
Google has been slashing its headcount since early last year, when the company announced plans to eliminate about 12,000 jobs, which is about 6% of its workforce, following a downturn in the online ad market. Even with digital advertising rebounding recently, the company has continued downsizing, with layoffs across multiple sections this year.
The latest cuts at the company’s core team comes as it enjoys its fastest growth rate since early 2022, alongside improving profit margins. Last week, it reported a 15% jump in first-quarter revenue from a year earlier and announced its first- ever dividend and a $70 billion buyback.
Notably, CEO Sundar Pichai told employees in January that more job cuts were likely coming in 2024, though he did not specify which teams would be affected. Meanwhile, Chief Financial Officer Ruth Forat last month April, said via a memo that Google is restructuring its finance organization, a move that will include layoffs and relocations, as the company pushes resources to favor investments in artificial intelligence.
Part of the memo reads,
“The tech sector is in the midst of a tremendous platform shift with Al. As a company, this means we have the opportunity to make more helpful products for billions of users and provide faster solutions to our customers, but it also means we collectively have to make tough decisions, including how and where we work to align with our highest priority areas.”
It is understood that the broader cuts by Google to downsize its workforce and allocate resources to key areas is to accommodate further investment in new technologies such as AI as advertising growth slows. The company intends to spend over $100 billion in investment in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Google laid off 200 employees from its “Core” division, moving some roles to Mexico and India, reports CNBC. The division is responsible for Google’s online safety, the technical foundation for flagship products and maintaining the company’s global IT structure, according to its website. At least 50 of the jobs cut were engineering roles at the company’s offices in Sunnyvale, California. The latest in a series of layoffs this year comes amid parent company Alphabet’s fastest pace of growth in more than two years. Last week, Alphabet announced its first ever dividend after a 15% year-over-year revenue jump.