Google is laying off hundreds of employees across its Pixel, Nest, Fitbit, and Assistant divisions, the company said in a statement on Thursday. Google’s augmented reality team was also hit with layoffs, according to a report by 9to5Google.
“To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”Â
The Alphabet Workers Union, the organization representing Google employees and contractors, said the layoffs were “needless” and accused Google of continuing to “fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter.” It recommitted to its goal to protect workers.Â
Some of these layoffs could be due to organizational changes, and it’s likely that affected employees could reapply for open positions at Google.Â
Google’s layoffs come as the tech industry saw massive firings early last year. Not only did Google lay off a significant amount of employees, so too did Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter. There were 263,000 people laid off in tech last year alone, according to Fortune. The reasons for the layoffs were numerous, with some companies downsizing after sizing up extensively during the pandemic while others were looking to prioritize other product categories.
2024 is already showing that the tech layoff trend will continue. This month,…
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