Google Makes At Least 100 Job Cuts Across Cloud Unit: Report

Layoffs have been rampant in the past year, and it doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon. Alphabet is now laying off employees from several teams in Google's cloud unit, which is the company's one of the fastest growing businesses. The company internally announced last week about the cuts with roles being eliminated in sales, consulting, “go-to-market” strategy, operations, and engineering, according to internal correspondence. At least 100 positions were cut, reports said.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the credits are incremental across teams and were exercised to better align its go-to-market organization.

According to the spokesperson, Google will continue to invest in areas that are critical to the business and customer satisfaction. According to reports, people who have lost their jobs had worked on the company's annual Google Cloud Next that took place in mid-April. This is not the first time that Google is laying off. The company has been conducting layoffs since the start of 2023. Employees have long complained about their demands that they work on tighter deadlines with very few resources. 

In May, Google reportedly cut more than 200 jobs from its core team which included key teams and engineering positions. According to Sundar Pichai, the CEO of the company, the company is looking at conducting fewer layoffs in the second half of the year. Asim Husain, Vice President of Google Developer Ecosystem, informed in an email that the tech giant will be moving some positions to India to save cost and "maintain the current global footprint, while also expanding in high-growth global workforce locations so that we can operate closer to our partners and developer communities."

Layoffs have been extremely common in the tech industry with companies like Amazon, Apple, as well as Meta laying off the past year. Experts like Jeff Shulman, a professor at the University of Washington's Foster School of Business believe that the driving force is reduced demand because everybody is doing the same thing. "They're getting away with it because everybody is doing it. And they're getting away with it because now it's the new normal," he said. "Workers are more comfortable with it, stock investors are appreciating it, and so I think we'll see it continue for some time," he said, via NPR. 

Some experts also believe that layoffs are a contagious phenomenon. Pfeffer who is an expert on organizational behavior says that these tech giants are simply downsizing because everybody else is also doing that same and they fear that the board will soon question why they are not doing the same. 

Additionally, other experts feel that companies are too scared of what has happened post-pandemic and are now conducting layoffs even before the problems begin. "It's kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy in some sense,"  Shulman of the University of Washington told NPR. "They panicked and did the big layoffs last year, and the market reacted favorably, and now they continue to cut to weather a storm that hasn't fully come yet."

Additionally, AI is also one of the driving reasons why companies are laying off from other departments to hire employees with AI-related skills.