Google’s China division has started laying off employees after company CEO Sundar Pichai announced plans to let go 12,000 workers globally in January.
According to the Beijing-based media company Pandaily, the current round of layoffs at Google China office mainly affects high-paid senior employees “in an effort to reset the salary standard and reduce operating costs while improving overall work efficiency.”
The report adds some staff members will receive last month’s salary, stock and annual leave discount, CNY 30,000 (Rs 3.5 lakh) in cash and medical insurance if they leave before March 10.
Some workers are also being provided a “three-month buffer period” where they will receive salaries but no need to work.
This could be due to China’s laws to protect workers from unfair termination.
Before China, Google started laying off employees from the India division. Last month, the company abruptly sacked nearly 450 employees from different divisions.
Google India’s major office hubs are located in Gurugram, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad.
Around the same time, Google’s Singapore office was letting go of some employees.
At the time, Google India VP Sanjay Gupta, in a letter to employees, said that the company undertook rigorous review across product areas and functions.
He said, “We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected.
In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”
Former programme manager at Google, Nicole Tsai, alleged that the layoffs “felt really random” and “no one was consulted on this decision, and everyone was just finding out about the layoffs at the same time.”
In January 2023, Google CEO Sundar Pichai published a letter that announced the company’s decision to lay off 12,000 employees.
The first round of layoffs impacted workers in the US, and as a part of the compensation, the company was providing pay for the full notification period (minimum 60 days),
severance package, payment for used vacation time, 2022 bonuses, and 6 months of health care.
In the letter, Pichai added that Google is a 25-year-old company and it is “bound to go through difficult economic cycles.”
The letter also highlights Google’s growing focus on generative AI (artificial intelligence), which has immensely become popular following the public release of ChatGPT.
The company did unveil its own ChatGPT rival, dubbed Bard AI, though it is yet to be available to a wide audience. Microsoft has released Bing AI, its Bard rival.