Google announced this morning in an email from CEO Sundar Pichai that it plans to eliminate 12,000 jobs, 6% of its workforce, as it continues to face new economic challenges. Microsoft also announced 10,000 jobs will be cut earlier this week, also citing global economic slowdown and weakening demand.
The job cuts at Alphabet and Google represent its largest ever, and at Microsoft, the largest since 2014, when 18,000 employees lost their jobs. At the time, Microsoft made the decision to pull out of the smartphone and other non-core businesses.
Earlier this month, Alphabet announced it would cut more than 200 jobs from its Verily Life Sciences healthcare business, 15% of its workforce.
The last major cuts Google announced was in 2009 when the company said it was reducing jobs in sales and marketing by 200 globally.
Amazon announced earlier this month it would cut 18,000 jobs. Salesforce also announced it would cut 7,000 jobs and close several offices.
Within the past year, over 195,000 jobs have been cut in the tech sector according to Layoffs.fyi. This estimate is before taking into account Alphabet and Google’s announcement today.
Disclaimer: The author of this article is a current employee of Google. This article does not represent the views or opinions of his employer and is not meant to be an official statement for Google or Google Cloud.
