Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet and Google, at a recent all-hands meeting, acknowledged that the massive job cuts at the tech giant in 2022 had a "clear big impact on morale”.
At Google's all-hands meeting on Tuesday, December 12, Pichai defended the decision to lay off 12,000 employees (6% of the company's workforce), Business Insider reported.
The report, citing an obtained audio, said that Pichai also acknowledged the company could have managed the layoffs much better.
At the meeting, an employee asked how this decision impacted the company's growth and morale. Pichai replied that it had a "clear big impact on morale".
“It's reflected in the comments in Googlegeist and the feedback,” the report quoted Pichai as saying.
He went on to say that this is “difficult for any company to go through. At Google, we really haven't had a moment quite like that in 25 years.”
Defending the company's decision, Pichai explained that it had to make 12,000 job cuts to adjust to changing economic conditions and set itself up for future growth.
“It became clear if we didn't act, it would have been a worse decision down the line. It would have been a major overhang for the company. I think it would have made it very difficult in a year like this with such a big shift in the world to create the capacity to invest in areas,” Pichai said.
According to the Business Insider, the executives were even asked about any reflections on the way the layoffs were executed.
To this, Pichai acknowledged the company did not handle the job cuts as well as it could have.
The 51-year-old noted that it was a "very, very difficult decision" to immediately cut off access to laid-off employees' work accounts.
Pichai highlighted that it was not a good idea to notify all the affected employees at the same time, regardless of the time zone. “Clearly it's not the right way to do it. I think it's something we could have done differently for sure,” he said.
