Twitter’s job cuts in November under Elon Musk’s leadership may have become notorious, but it kicked off a cascade of firings across the tech world. Companies are now facing the stark reality that the industry’s explosive year-on-year growth had not, in fact, been sustainable.
Soon, Meta, Amazon and Microsoft announced layoffs of their own, and they’ve now been joined by Google. Reuters reported that parent company Alphabet has cut more than 12,000 jobs today, amounting to six per cent of its overall workforce.
In a staff memo, CEO Sundar Pichai explained that the firm hired rapidly in recent years “for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” adding, “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
The move affects teams across Alphabet globally (and are effective immediately in the US), including recruiting and certain engineering and product teams, along with “some corporate functions,” Reuters reported. Pichai said in the memo that the company has already emailed affected employees, with the process taking longer in other countries due to local employment laws and practices.
Microsoft had laid off 10,000 employees just days before; both companies have recently invested in generative AI, with Microsoft in particular pouring money into OpenAI, the creator of DALL-E and ChatGPT.
“I am confident about the huge opportunity in front of us thanks to the strength of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI,” Pichai said in the memo.
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