The wave of layoffs in Silicon Valley still has no end in sight. On Wednesday, Google announced that it is laying off employees, but did not disclose the specific size, only emphasizing that this layoff is not across the entire company.
A Google spokesperson pointed out that affected employees will be able to apply for internal positions, and a small portion of positions will be transferred to overseas centers that Google is investing in, such as offices in India and Dublin, as well as domestic offices in Chicago and Atlanta.
The spokesperson added that from the second half of 2023 to 2024, many teams at Google underwent changes to improve efficiency, eliminate hierarchy, and focus resources on the most important products.
And this layoff is the latest in Silicon Valley after a series of layoffs last year, which has heightened concerns about the company continuing to lay off employees in response to economic uncertainty.
News of layoffs keeps coming and going
According to two current employees, multiple teams in Google's finance and real estate departments have been affected and are of considerable scale. They stated that they had received news of layoffs this week, with one employee further pointing out that the affected finance teams include Google's finance, business services, and revenue cash operations teams.
At the beginning of this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned employees that although layoffs will not affect every team, they will continue throughout the year.
This is also related to Google's artificial intelligence business. As the company increased investment and developed artificial intelligence products, Google laid off hundreds of employees from multiple teams in January, including engineering, hardware, and assistant teams.
In addition, several large companies have recently announced layoff plans. For example, Alphabet's subsidiaries, including Verily, are laying off employees. Electric vehicle company Rivian recently announced its layoff plan.
Due to reduced demand for Rivian vehicles and lower than expected production forecast for 2024, the company has laid off 10% of its employees. Electric vehicle giant Tesla also announced this week that it will lay off more than 10% of its workforce globally.
According to Layoff. fyi's data, nearly 75000 employees from 257 technology companies including Tesla, Dell, Cisco, and SAP have been unemployed so far this year.