Google plans to decrease its recruiting pace for the rest of the year, the latest hint of major businesses contemplating personnel during a market slump that has hit Silicon Valley especially hard.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet and Google, confirmed the announcement in an internal message on Tuesday, citing "the uncertain global economic picture." Google verified the letter's validity to CNN Business but declined to say further.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Pichai stated in the email, "Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper concentration, and more desire than we've demonstrated on brighter days." "In certain circumstances, this means combining investments and simplifying procedures."
According to a regulatory filing, Alphabet had 163,906 workers as of the end of March, a rise of more than 20,000 over the previous year.
The Google letter is the latest sign that the once-flying tech sector is facing a new reality check after experiencing a rise in demand due to changed consumer behavior during the epidemic. Inflationary pressures, increasing interest rates, and worries of a recession have prompted a flood of IT businesses to declare that they are halting or eliminating hiring.
A rising number of digital businesses, including Netflix and Coinbase, have announced layoffs. GoPuff, an ultra-fast delivery business, recently informed investors of its intention to lay off 10% of its worldwide staff and liquidate dozens of US facilities. Microsoft also stated earlier this week that it was reducing a limited number of employees while continuing to hire.
Other firms, such as Uber, Lyft, Snap, Twitter, and Apple, have all indicated plans to slash expenses in the future.
The layoff is not happening in Google only but in addition to this, many other companies including Edtech firms have slowed down their pace of hiring.
Vedantu, an ed-tech unicorn, announced the layoff of 424 full-time and contractual employees, or around 7% of its workforce, to increase its financial runway.
The company has decided to lay off another 424 staff as the decline in demand for online learning has begun to harm ed-tech enterprises.
According to the spokesman, around 150 employees, most of whom are based in the United States, have been laid off, and Netflix has also decreased its expenditure on contractors.
The changes come only a few weeks after Netflix reported losing customers for the first time in more than a decade.
"With our revenue growth decreasing, we also need to limit our firm's spending growth," the spokesperson added.
Google will reduce hiring for the rest of the year
Google has proved largely resistant to the technology sector's economic downturns. The internet giant froze recruiting following the financial crisis more than a decade ago but has subsequently hired waves of new personnel for its primary advertising business as well as unprofitable sectors like cellphones, self-driving cars, and wearable gadgets.
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, which employed over 164,000 employees as of March 31, has hired mostly in recent years for Google's cloud business and new industries such as hardware.
