Cuts to come in Australia after Google culls 12,000 in the US
After Google’s parent company, Alphabet, last week made 12,000 jobs redundant in the United States, it is understood cuts are to come to the Australian team.
The global tech giant is taking a country-by-country approach, after its global CEO, Sundar Pichai told staff in an email on Friday that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”.
Cuts likely to follow at Google Australia
Locally the company has over 2000 ‘Googlers’, which if it were to follow the US in cutting six percent of its staff would represent 120 jobs.
Google Australia did not make any comment when approached by Mumbrella.
While the first cuts were made in the US, Pichai said the process takes longer globally due local laws and practices.
“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” said Pichai. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
Google follows its major tech counterparts, Meta and Amazon in making major cuts to its workforce, with the pair respectively cutting 13,000 and 18,000 respectively.
Pichai told staff the decision ‘weighs heavily’ on him
Meanwhile, despite major cuts to the majority of its workforce, Twitter’s local boss, Angus Keene insisted this month that the remaining Australian team would be carrying on.
Pichai added that the company is using this opportunity, “thanks for the strengths of our mission, the value of our products and services, and our early investments in AI”.
“To fully capture it, we’ll need to make tough choices. So, we’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.”
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Calum Jaspan was news editor at Mumbrella, based in Melbourne. He was also the producer and host of the Mumbrellacast. He left Mumbrella in May 2023.
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“Eliminating”. Sensitive choice of language. That’s the true Alphabet corporate culture peeping through.
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