Turbulence in the technology industry: now Google will lay off 12 thousand employees

After Amazon, Goal Y Microsoftit was the turn of Alphabet, the parent company of Googlewhich announced a vast social plan that includes the abolition of 12,000 jobs, close to 6% of the entire workforce.

“In the past two years, we have experienced spectacular periods of growth”, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees.

“To support and drive this growth, we hire for an economic reality that is different from the current one.”, he added, noting that the economy was forcing the company to reduce its workforce.

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Alphabet had nearly 187,000 employees worldwide at the end of September 2022.

Job cuts will happen”across all departments, functions, levels of responsibility and regionsPichai said without elaborating.

US employees affected by this plan have already been notified. In other countries, the process will take longer depending on local labor laws.

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In the United States, laid-off employees will receive at least 16 weeks of salary, their 2022 bonus pay, vacation pay and six months of health coverage.

Non-US employees may also receive legal assistance if they wish to remain in the United States.

Wall Street reacted with satisfaction to the layoff plan: Alphabet shares were up 3.5% in electronic trading before the stock market opened.

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precedents

On Wednesday, Microsoft’s plan to cut 10,000 jobs between now and the end of March was revealed. Earlier, Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Amazon and Salesforce also reported massive layoffs among their workforces.

The technology industry is facing a period of turbulence, caused by high inflation and the continuous increase in interest rates, after the bonanza they enjoyed with the covid-19 pandemic and the consequent lockdowns.

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According to the technology website Layoffs.fyi, almost 194,000 technology workers have lost their jobs in the United States since the beginning of 2022, not including those affected by the Alphabet announcement.

The technology companiesThey have been hiring at a rate that was unsustainable and the deteriorating macroeconomic environment is now forcing them to lay off employees.r,” said Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.

“The midnight of hypergrowth has come, when tech companies were spending money like rock stars in the 1980s”, added the analyst.

Source: Elcomercio

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