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Tech giant Google is carrying out a fresh round of layoffs in an attempt to cut costs and optimise operations across its finance division, multiple reports said on Thursday.
Sources told Business Standard that the current layoffs were a part of a continuous restructuring drive that happens throughout Google, and the impact of it on India was minimal.
“This is an ongoing exercise which is a part of Google’s internal reorganisation. This has hardly any impact,” said the source.
An email sent to Google seeking details on the layoffs didn’t elicit any response till press time.
According to a Reuters report, the layoffs were not company-wide and that affected employees will be able to apply for internal roles, without specifying the number of employees who were sacked, said a Google Spokesperson to the news agency.
“A small percentage of the impacted roles will move to hubs the company is investing in, including India, Chicago, Atlanta and Dublin,” said the spokesperson according to the report.
The layoffs come during a period of sluggish hiring across the tech sector.
According to data from the layoff tracker layoffs.fyi, 85 technology companies including giants like Microsoft, Google, and SAP, have already handed pink slips to around 24000 employees in 2024.
“The layoff round of last year was significant exercise, and now it is over, this is just an internal team reorganisation,” said the source while referring to Google’s layoff exercise in January this year where the tech giant had sacked hundreds of employees across its verticals such as engineering, hardware and other teams in order to focus on building its artificial intelligence capabilities.
In January this year, Google had handed over pink slips to hundreds of employees calling it a part of a larger restructuring plan.
Further, in January 2023, Google CEO Sundar Pichai had announced job cuts affecting 12,000 employees, which made up over six per cent of its global workforce. While CEO Sundar Pichai announced the job cuts last year, this year’s reductions have been communicated by lower-level leaders, including vice presidents and human resources.
Earlier this year, Microsoft too sacked 1,900 employees across its gaming division - Activision Blizzard and Xbox.
