Google's Pichai Asks Employees To Improve Productivity Amid Layoff Scare

Google, at its all-hands meeting last Wednesday addressed in a rather urgent tone concerns over layoffs, new hirings, where CEO Sundar Pichai sought inputs from its employees for the next steps ahead.

Reuters

Reported first by CNBC, Pichai at the meeting highlighted that the company¡¯s productivity as a company wasn¡¯t where it should be, even with the headcount it currently possesses.

Poor performance in Q2

This comes to post the weaker-than-expected second consecutive quarter revenue and earnings where revenue growth slowed to 13 percent in the quarter from 62 percent a year back.

Referring to the earnings report, Pichai stated, ¡°I wanted to give some additional context following our earnings results, and ask for your help as well. It¡¯s clear we are facing a challenging macro environment with more uncertainty ahead.¡±

Pichai added that the employees need to create ¡° a culture that¡¯s more mission-focussed, more focussed on our products, more customer focused,¡± while also thinking about how one can minimise distractions and raise standards on productivity as well as product excellence.

Pichai had recently announced that the company was slowing down hiring and investments throughout 2023 while asking employees to work with ¡°great urgency¡±.

At the all-hands meeting, Pichai spoke to its over 170,000 full-time employees and introduced a ¡°Simplicity Sprint¡± initiative to crowdsource ideas to help quicken product development. The company is asking employees to share their ideas through August 15 through an internal survey.

The survey involves questions such as ¡°What would help you work with greater clarity and efficiency to serve our users and customers? Where should we remove speed bumps to get better results faster?¡±

Reuters

What about layoffs?

Google¡¯s chief people officer, Fiona Cicconi further highlighted that while the company is still hiring and doesn¡¯t have plans for layoffs as of now, the possibility of that happening isn¡¯t ruled out.

She emphasised that the company continues to hire for critical roles and the fact that this still remains Google¡¯s biggest hiring year. In Q2 of 2022, Alphabet¡¯s headcount rose 21 percent to 174, 014 employees from 144,056 a year before.

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