Google parent company Alphabet announced it would be laying off 12,000 employees, becoming the latest tech company to make big job cuts.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a companywide email Friday telling employees that layoffs will start in the U.S. now and will begin the process internationally, which might “take longer due to local laws and practices,” CNBC reported.
The 12,000 jobs represent a 6% cut in Google’s workforce, according to The New York Times. Pichai referenced the “dramatic growth” the company experienced during the pandemic in the company memo.
“To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Pichai wrote in the email memo, per CNN.
Google becomes the latest victim in tech company layoffs, after many experienced a similarly rapid increase in demand the last two years. According to layoffs.fyi, a company that tracks company layoffs, 133 tech companies have laid off 38,815 employees so far in 2023.
Some of the large tech companies who made big layoffs in the last year
Here’s a timeline of big tech companies who announced job cuts in the last year, reported by the Deseret News.
- Aug. 3, 2022: Tech investment platform Robinhood cut back 23% of its workforce.
- Oct. 18, 2022: Microsoft cut just under 1,000 jobs nationwide.
- Nov. 4, 2022: Twitter slashed 3,700 employees.
- Nov. 9, 2022: Meta laid off 11,000 workers.
- Nov. 23, 2022: HP cut 6,000 employees.
- Nov. 30, 2022: AMC Networks downsized its workforce by 20%.
- Jan. 5: Amazon cut back 18,000 jobs, which is 6% of its workforce.
- Jan. 18: Microsoft announced another round of layoffs of around 11,000 jobs.