Google announces another round of job cuts

Redundancies made across Google’s recruiting division

Google conducted a further round of job cuts on Wednesday, all of which are in the company's recruiting group. Recruiters had already been targeted since Google announced a 12,000 strong reduction in global workforce at the start of the year but these cuts are reported to be additional to the 12,000.

A recording of the internal meeting, chaired by Google's recruiting vice president Brian Ong, was obtained by broadcaster CNBC. In it, Ong can be heard saying that the layoffs were "not something that was an easy decision to make, and it definitely isn't a conversation any of us wanted to have again this year… Given the base of hiring that we've received the next several quarters, it's the right thing to do overall."

Employees declaring via social media that they were heartbroken begged to differ.

Courtenay Mencini, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement, "We've made the hard decision to reduce the size of our recruiting team," because the volume of requests for the company's recruiters has gone down.

"As we've said, we continue to invest in top engineering and technical talent while also meaningfully slowing the pace of our overall hiring."

Whilst it's wholly understandable that those in line to lose their job will likely feel shocked and upset by the news, few will be surprised by Google's latest round of redundancies. CEO Sundar Pichar said at the start of the year that the company would be focusing on getting the most out of its investment in AI. Speaking in January, Pichar said:

"To fully capture it, we'll need to make tough choices. So, we've 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."

He hinted at further reductions in the workforce in April.

Google appears to have heeded criticisms of the way Google staff who were axed at the start of the year found out that they were being cut. Some staff found that their badges no longer worked when they turned up at work as usual. Not helped by Pichar's message about "taking full responsibility" for the job cuts he was making, many former employees questioned the metrics used to decide who was surplus to requirements.

This time round, possibly wary of another dose of terrible PR, those being made redundant will keep their office access for a few days and have access to online services. In the US, health care cover is a critical employment benefit so employees are being provided with the opportunity to make arrangements elsewhere before insurance is removed.