According to information from EXAME, certain employees in the sales and product divisions experienced blocking of their access to the company’s systems. Google and were notified that they would be terminated. During the morning, these employees also received information that they would participate in a meeting, whether in person or virtually, to address issues related to layoffs or job reallocations.
The impacted workers, when interviewed by the report, described the process as chaotic. No precise times were defined for the dismissal meetings, and employees have little information about what will actually happen to them, making it necessary to seek clarification among colleagues about the future in the company.
Every year we go through a rigorous process to structure our team to offer the best service to our Ads advertising service clients. We map customers to the right specialized teams and sales channels to meet their service needs. As part of this, a few hundred roles around the world are being eliminated, and affected employees will be able to apply for open positions on the team or elsewhere at Google, the company said in an official statement.
Google has not treated the cuts as a generalized “layoff”, delegating the choice of the number of layoffs to each area. The downsizing of operations would be linked to the efficiency gain chosen by each team’s command.
Despite the turbulent process, many were already expecting this situation. “Google’s culture has changed drastically over the last year with its first major round of layoffs,” reported an engineering director with 18 years at the company, in a note publicly released on X, formerly Twitter.
Veteran employees understand that decisions come from senior management. In the waves of layoffs, teams such as Maps/Geo, shopping, ads and trust and security were also affected. According to Bloomberg, there were impacts even on the positions of vice presidents and directors. Spyro Karetsos, former compliance director, one of those fired.
Some restructuring seems logical, such as the Devices and Services group, now with a functional organizational model. The AR team was ultimately shut down given waning interest in the technology, and the Bard product group gained strength at the expense of the Assistant organization, which produced the company’s longtime voice assistant.
Even after the last week, there are no illusions that the layoffs are over. With more than 50,000 people on Google Cloud and around 30,000 in the ad sales group, further reductions may occur. Globally, employees also anticipate more departures during the performance review cycle. The HR department made it easier to assign low grades in evaluations, speeding up dismissals. At the end of the third quarter, Google had 182 thousand employees.
*With information from EXAME
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