Summary
- Google’s CEO confirms it will experience more layoffs throughout 2024 to reach its “ambitious goals”.
- We don’t yet know the extent of the cuts, but Google’s CEO has said to expect “tough choices” across the company.
- Layoffs are not on the scale of last year and won’t impact every team across Google.
Google’s CEO has confirmed there will be more layoffs at the company throughout 2024. This comes after a week when Google cut jobs of over 1,000 staff across multiple divsions. The layoffs since the start of the year have seen cuts to Google’s Assistant, AR, Fitbit, and YouTube teams among others, but it seems the job cuts will continue throughout 2024.
An internal memo sent on January 17, as seen by The Verge, features Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai noting that more cuts are to come, so the company can reach its “ambitious goals” for 2024. Pichai says there are “tough choices” to make this year. He said, “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year. The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
It’s currently unclear where these cuts will impact the company, but Pichai’s wording seems to suggest they will be far-reaching as the company wants to remove “layers to simplify execution and drive velocity in some areas.” He continued, “Many of these changes are already announced, though to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted.”
It’s currently unclear which Google products will be affected by these cuts. It appears that the company is refocusing its efforts around products like Google Bard and its Gemini technology to better compete with the likes of ChatGPT. That may not impact the decisions made in the future, but it was involved in last week’s decision to make Google Assistant layoffs. A spokesperson confirmed to Semafor that Google was making the changes to help better focus on including the next generation of AI technology in Assistant.
In the latest internal memo, Pichai also referenced last year’s 12,000 jobs dropped from Google. He said, “These role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team. But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.” Those layoffs in 2023 saw the company drop 6% of its workforce. It appears the 2024 layoffs are impacting far fewer people than what we saw in 2023, but cuts will continue at Google nevertheless.
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