At Google's all-hands meeting which took place last Tuesday (December 12), Sundar Pichai defended the decision of laying off around 12,000 employees (which is 6% of the workforce of the company). As per the reports of Business Insider, Pichai acknowledged that Google could have managed the layoffs in a much better way but after a lot of discussion and thought, the decision was made which has impacted the morale of the tech giant.
In the meeting, an employee further asked how this decision would be impacting the organisation, based on growth and morale, to which Pichai said, "clear big impact on morale".
In a quote, Pichai said, “It's reflected in the comments in Googlegeist and the feedback. Difficult for any company to go through. At Google, we really haven't had a moment quite like that in 25 years.”
Defending the layoff decision of Google
Pichai further explained that the decision was supposed to be made with 12,000 job cuts to adjust to the changing economic conditions and further set itself up for future growth.
“It became clear if we didn't act, it would have been a worse decision down the line. It would have been a major overhang for the company. I think it would have made it very difficult in a year like this with such a big shift in the world to create the capacity to invest in areas,” Pichai said.
The Business Insider report further said that Pichai acknowledged that Google did not handle the job cuts as it could have.
The 51-year-old, Sundar Pichai said that it was a "very, very difficult decision" to immediately lay off access to laid-off employees' work accounts.
Pichai further highlighted that it was not a good idea to notify all the laid-off employees at the same time, (no matter what the location of the employee is, based on the geographical borders), regardless of the time zone.
Pichai said, “Clearly it's not the right way to do it. I think it's something we could have done differently for sure.”
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