Google’s parent company Alphabet announced that it is laying off 12,000 employees which amount to around 6 percent of its workforce. The tech giant’s move has shocked the affected staff of the concerned company and techies outside. They have now started flooding social media with posts questioning the decision of the company.
On January 20, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that he is “deeply sorry” for reducing the workforce by approximately 12,000 roles and further said that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”.
However, Pichai’s statement has not gone down well with techies outside and the affected employees. They said that if Pichai was responsible for the layoff decisions then ‘why should he continue at Google’.
Vishal Singh, Director Of Engineering at YourDOST wrote in a LinkedIn post, “Why should Sundar Pichai continue at Google? If he made wrong bets he should pay for it.”
Singh further urged that ‘the board should fire him and the same holds for Satya Nadella at Microsoft and Amazon’.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella last week said that the company will be “making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3 (third quarter)”.
“Even politicians are expected to resign after a screw-up,” Singh wrote in his post.
“There has to be some cost to the leaders, they just cannot send letters explaining difficult decisions. That is getting away very lightly. They should pay for their wrong decisions. The buck stops at top leadership,” he added.
On 20 January, Pichai in an email to the fired staff of Google said he had some difficult news to share. “I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” he wrote in the email.
A user, who was shocked at the tech giant’s decision, wrote if Google can do this, then what one can expect from the others?
Pulkit Pahwa, who was working as a program manager at Business Operations department at Google and was recently laid off, said that she and other employees of Google would fear that it was coming like any other company’s staff, but would just brush it off, thinking “Google wouldn’t do it, but they did”.
“Yesterday was a day of disbelief finding out friends and colleagues you worked with for years were laid off,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Alphabet Workers Union (AWU) slammed the company’s layoff decision saying that this is unacceptable behaviour for a company that made $17 billion in profits last quarter alone. Alphabet is the parent company of Google.
“While Alphabet leadership claims ‘full responsibility,’ that is little comfort for the 12,000 workers who are now without jobs. This is unacceptable behavior for a company that made $17B in profits last quarter alone,” the union said in a statement.
“Workers have never been able to rely on Alphabet for secure employment—evidenced by the vast subcontracted workforce—but it is increasingly clear that tech workers must build majorities and force employers to bargain with workers collectively to protect their livelihoods,” the union said.
“It’s appalling that our jobs are first on the chopping block so shareholders can see a few more points in a chart next quarter,” the union said.
“Today once again affirms that tech workers are workers—and we must organize at a massive scale to protect ourselves on the job. We are proud to be the first wall to wall union in big tech. We now have over 1,100 members and have secured some powerful wins over the past year or so—check out our most recent win below,” union further added in its statement on January 20.
