For the second time this year, Google is laying off a large number of employees. The round of layoffs mainly affects the finance and real estate departments of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.
The layoffs follow an earlier major round of layoffs this year. Last year, Google and other Alphabet subsidiaries also laid off employees. Like other tech companies, Google wants to spend more on AI development. To do so, it needs the relevant staff and to fund such positions, it is cutting jobs that do not contribute to technological innovation.
According to Reuters, it is unknown how many employees are involved. However, an internal source calls the layoffs “pretty large-scale” to Business Insider. The laid-off staff would be able to apply for other positions within the company. Some positions for which people have been laid off are moving to other Google locations in the U.S. and abroad, including Atlanta, Chicago, Bangalore, and Dublin.
Reducing layers of bureaucracy
“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” said a Google spokesperson. “Through this, we’re simplifying our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers.”
Earlier, we wrote that AI seems like a good excuse for layoffs. We quoted Fabian Stephany of the Oxford Internet Institute as saying that the technology plays an ‘ambiguous’ role in the labor market. The advance of AI may indirectly lead to layoffs by redistributing expenses, but an algorithm does not replace anyone immediately.
He observed, “Fighting against robots is a nice cover story. But if you have a closer look, it’s often old school, simple economic dynamics like outsourcing or lead management cutting costs to increase salaries in other places.”
According to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, companies have inflated themselves too much to maintain all their employees.
Another reason for firing employees is unwanted activism on company premises. Yesterday, Google fired 28 employees who had participated in sit-ins at Google offices in New York and California’s Sunnyvale. They did so in protest of an agreement with the Israeli government to provide cloud computing services, The New York Times reports.
Read more: AI is often just a good excuse for layoffs