Anwesha Dash, Pune
Google CEO, Sundar Pichai laid out the upcoming goals of 2024 for the tech giant and stated “durable cost savings” as one of them, while employees are on the edge of their seats anticipating another round of lay-offs.
Sundar Pichai, while talking about the next step ahead for Google warned that there will be more job cut-offs and possible lay-offs. This development comes up when the tech giant’s office is already teeming with fresh employee layoffs. Starting in January itself, several hundred people have been fired as a result of the job cut-offs across several departments. Especially the sales and engineering teams have had to take the brunt of this action, as around 1000s of workers were laid off from these departments.
Pichai has stated that one of their “durable cost savings” goals is the reason behind this purposeful reduction of workforce. Apart from effective savings, the other main objective of Google is to enhance their AI technology. They are looking for ways to present the “world’s most advanced, safe and responsible AI”. Apart from AI, the conglomerate will also be working on Google Cloud services to build a “helpful computing platform.”
The cost savings are being acted upon through lay-offs as Google spends more on AI. In the race for technological advancement, Google and Microsoft are competing head to head as the former surges more investment in AI to compete with Microsoft’s OpenAI. As of last year 12000 employees were fired from the company as Google revealed Gemini it’s new AI model.
Though Pichai has assured that the reduction won’t be at such a huge scale as last year, he has warned of more job cuts. The CEO said that they were “removing layers” to ensure better execution in certain departments. “Many of these changes are already announced”, said Pichai and continued that departments will be making specific changes with respect to their resources and their allocation throughout the year.
Apart from the cost savings, the other goals mentioned were improving efficiency, productivity and company velocity. Google employees were informed of these goals through the “2024 Objective Key Results” handed to them.