Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised more layoffs at Google this year, and the company is delivering. Business Insider was the first to report the latest cuts are to "several teams" in Google's real estate and finance departments. The report adds: "One current employee said the changes were 'pretty large-scale' and that some roles are being moved abroad."
CNBC has a copy of the memo that Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat sent out to employees about the layoffs. Porat blames AI for the layoffs, saying, “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's not clear how or if AI is actually taking over roles in real estate and finance.
Google has been making cuts across a ton of departments since 2022, when Pichai declared Google was not productive enough. There was a big set of 12,000 layoffs in January 2023, and an almost uncountable number of smaller cuts since then. Google's cuts are aligned with a massive wave of layoffs across the tech industry.
Seeing the real estate division get slammed is not a huge surprise. Another major tech trend lately is the work-from-home sea change brought about by the pandemic. Premium real estate used to be a foundational piece of these huge tech companies, but with everyone realizing they can do the same work at home, office space sits empty and unused. Google has responded by canceling real estate projects and exiting some office space deals.
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