A month after announcing its plan to lay off 12,000 employees, or 6% of its staff globally, Google on Thursday issued pink slips to over 450 employees across departments such as sales, marketing, partnerships, among others, in India, according to people aware of the matter.
“This evening (Thursday), we notified all Googlers in India whose roles have been impacted, as part of the workforce reductions announced in January,” said Sanjay Gupta, country head of Google India, in an email to employees.
Google did not respond to FE’s queries on the reported layoffs.
“Over the past two years, we have seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet had said last month, indicating that the company over-hired, especially amid the pandemic when there was a huge spurt in the adoption of online activities.
The affected employees in India will receive a severance package basis the length of their services. The company also laid off 70% of the employees from its newly acquired subsidiary SimSim, which is India-based video e-commerce platform.
According to some employees, there were speculations regarding layoffs in the last 2-3 weeks and even the top performers have been asked to leave across divisions. Most of the employees who were fired also took to social media to announce their plight, asking for new opportunities.
When Google parent Alphabet announced layoffs globally last month, starting from the US, Pichai said, “the fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weigh heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”.
At that time, Pichai had said that in other countries the process for layoffs will depend on the local laws and practices. “We have undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company. The roles we are eliminating reflect the outcome of that review. They cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions,” Pichai added.
Apart from the startups, lately big companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, among others, also have laid off many employees.
