In a fresh round of layoffs, Google’s parent company Alphabet has handed over pink slips to more than 100 of its workforce at its Self-driving company Waymo. Reports said that Waymo has laid off 137 employees in the second round of layoffs as part of the cuts to “focus on commercial success.” The report suggests that job cuts have been made across engineering roles. This year, Waymo has sacked nearly 209 employees in 2 rounds of sacking.
As per Reuters, the job cuts at Waymo are part of wider layoffs across the auto and tech industry, including at Rivian Automotive Inc, General Motors Co and Meta Platforms Inc. Companies, in general, have found that developing fully autonomous vehicles (AVs) that can go everywhere has proven harder and more expensive than expected, and prospects of a profitable robotaxi business likely remain several years away.
Google Layoffs
Earlier this year, Google, in a mass layoff, sacked 12,000 employees. Besides, more than 450 Indian employees were let go last month. The action impacted workers across functions such as sales, marketing and partnerships.
List of Companies That Announced Biggest Layoffs in 2023
Amazon: Amazon has sacked nearly remove 18,000 employees. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, in an email to staff, cited “uncertain economy” and “rapid hiring” as reasons behind the job cuts.
Meta: In January, Meta announced to fire 11,000 employees from its offices across the globe. In February 2023, the company hinted towards another fresh round of layoffs.
Microsoft: Joining the bandwagon, Microsoft too announced its plans of sacking employees in January 2023. The company might reduce its workforce by 10,000 people.
Salesforce: An American cloud-based software company announced that it planned to cut about 7,000 jobs or 10% of its workforce. In the start of February 2023, the company even let go 4,000 of its workers and is planning to fire more in future.
IBM: Joining the ‘layoff drive’, IBM fired 3,900 employees earlier this year.
Over 1.2 lakh employees SACKED in Jan-Feb alone
The year 2023 is set to become the worst year for tech employees as in just two months, 417 companies have laid off more than 1.2 lakh workers globally. In comparison, 1,046 tech companies — from Big Tech to startups — laid off more than 1,61 lakh employees in 2022, as per the data by layoffs tracking site Layoffs.fyi.
In January alone, close to 1 lakh tech employees lost jobs globally, dominated by companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Salesforce and others. In total, nearly 3 lakh tech employees have now lost jobs in 2022 and till February this year.
