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More Google employees to lose jobs Investor tells CEO Sundar Pichai to fire 20 per cent workforce

Google 1 year ago

Google just fired as many as 12,000 employees which left people in shock, but it seems that one of the company's investors is not happy with the number of reductions that were done. Chris Hohn, who reportedly holds about $6 billion stake in Google's parent company Alphabet, advised Google's CEO Sundar Pichai to fire thousands of more employees as the latest job cuts were not as deep to control expenses.

In a letter sent to Pichai, the investor says that the management should reduce the headcount to around 1,50,000, which requires Google to fire 20 per cent of the total workforce. The company has already sacked 6 per cent of employees. This suggests that the investor expects the company to remove 14 per cent more workers.

This is not the first letter from the investor and one was sent before the 12,000 job cuts were made. The previous letter stated that Alphabet's headcount has increased by huge numbers as it added over 1,00,000 employees in the last five years.

n the first nine months of 2022, around 30,000 employees were added to the company's workforce, he said, adding that the latest decision to cut 12,000 jobs "is a step in the right direction, but it does not reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022." He also wrote that "ultimately management will need to go further," and the letter ends with the investor saying he "hopes to have further dialogue with (Sundar Pichai) on these matters." All this suggests that Google might consider firing more employees in 2023.

Hohn also appreciated Google's first move to cut thousands of jobs to help control Alphabet's cost base and the investor also wrote that he understands the decision of letting go of people is pretty hard. But, he suggested that Google should aim to cut more jobs and align the workforce with Alphabet, which he indicated is currently down to 1,50,000.

This is not it as the investor also suggested that Google's CEO Sundar Pichai should also consider reducing each employee's compensation because he feels that the competition in the technology industry has dropped. He wrote in the letter that the median salary for a Google employee was quite high at $3,00,000 a year and the average salary was also "much higher."

It now remains to be seen whether Google will announce more job cuts or not in 2023. The company has promised to pay severance to 12,000 employees who lost their jobs at Google.