Google has confirmed it has laid off hundreds of employees across multiple divisions within the company. In what the company is terming as a move to “enhance efficiency and better allocate resources”, it has eliminated various roles within the Google Assistant, Engineering and Hardware divisions.
According to The Verge, Courtenay Mencini, Google Spokesperson, has confirmed the layoffs stating that the elimination of various roles globally is a result of “organizational restructuring,”
The layoffs have majorly affected the augmented reality hardware team and Google Devices and Services employees working on Pixel devices, Google Nest and Fitbit – which Google acquired in January 2021. As part of the “restructuring”, Fitbit’s senior leaders including the co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are also leaving Google.
Various roles within the Google Assistant team have also been terminated as the company seeks to supercharge the virtual assistant “beyond voice” by incorporating the latest generative AI technology. The latest round of layoffs makes it the second time in less than a year that the Assistant team has faced some job cuts; Google also let go some members of the team following the Google Assistant revamp.
In September 2023, we reported that the tech giant’s parent company, Alphabet, was cutting hundreds of jobs in its global recruitment team as it continued to “slow down on its expense growth and hiring pace.” Similar to that round of layoffs, the exact number of workers affected this time is unknown.
It appears that the unfortunate tech layoffs and hiring freezes are here with us once again with companies such as Amazon also planning to cut hundreds of jobs over the coming days and Salesforce entering an indefinite hiring freeze.
