Google’s parent company Alphabet recently announced layoffs of 12,000 employees, or about 6 percent of its workforce, globally. After the announcement, it joined the Big Tech league of Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft which had also gone for layoffs.
However, the announcement made by Google CEO Sundar Pichai is different from other companies.
To understand the difference, the layoff announcements by various companies need to be analysed.
Google: I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected.
Microsoft: Today, we are making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3. This represents less than 5 percent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today.
Amazon: On January 4, the company CEO Andy Jassy said in a statement that they were not done with the annual planning process as earlier mentioned, and “I expected there would be more role reductions in early 2023”.
“We typically wait to communicate about these outcomes until we can speak with the people who are directly impacted. However, because one of our teammates leaked this information externally, we decided it was better to share this news earlier so you can hear the details directly from me,” said Jassy.
Meta: Mark Zukerberg’s message to all Meta employees mentioned, “There is no good way to do a layoff, but we hope to get all the relevant information to you as quickly as possible and then do whatever we can to support you through this.
Everyone will get an email soon letting you know what this layoff means for you. After that, every affected employee will have the opportunity to speak with someone to get their questions answered and join information sessions.”
The one thing which is different in Google’s way of layoffs is letting affected employees know before the announcement of the collective fate.
In the layoff, it is always better to clearly communicate about it with the affected employees before the general announcement instead of making them wait to know their fate.
