Responding to questions on second round of mass layoffs at an interview, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized that the company is ‘prioritizing to move people to most important areas’.
“We’re very, very focused on this set of opportunities we have, and I think there’s a lot of work left,” reports quoted as Pichai saying referring to the company’s ongoing work with its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot Bard, new Workspace features in Gmail and Google Docs, and others.
He added that the company at present was deploying forces to incorporate the AI trend in its search Engine arena. Mr Pichai said that the company is “literally looking at every aspect of what we do” in an effort to re-engineer its cost base permanently in response to the question about how the company expected to enhance efficiency by 20 per cent. He emphasised that even if there has been improvement, more things need to be done.
In its first round of layoff, the company in January, announced that it was cutting 12,000 jobs. Reports however made rounds next month of another 450 employees sacked in what is called the second round of Layoffs. However there is no clarity yet on the Feb layoffs.
In 2023 alone, 1,68,918 employees at 570 tech firms, including Google, Meta, and Amazon, received pink slips.