Google CEO Sundar Pichai has come under fire from employees as they express concern over cost-cutting measures, as the company tries to navigate an unfamiliar environment of slowing growth and cost-cutting.
At a meeting held at the company, Google’s CEO was faced with tough questions from employees as they asked questions relating to cuts, travel and entertainment budgets, managing productivity, and potential layoffs.
It was reported that Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, spent much of the meeting addressing concerns from its workers about the company’s cost-cutting actions.
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In a response to the questions asked, the CEO however denied that the company is embarking on “aggressive cost-saving” but rather told its employees that they should not “equate fun with money” at an all-hands meeting this week.
The company’s spending came under scrutiny at the company-wide briefing in New York where Sundar Pichai said growth would be constrained going forward.
In response to a question asked from one of its employees that asked why the company was slashing travel budgets and making cuts in other areas even while the company was making and reporting profits and sitting on large cash reserves.
He said, “Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it’s important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this.”
He further disclosed that the company was acting responsibly during one of the most difficult economic periods this decade and urged that staff pull together to help weather the storm.
What he said on cost-cutting
On cost-cutting, he said: “I remember when Google was small and scrappy. Fun didn’t always — we shouldn’t always equate fun with money. I think you can walk into a hard-working startup and people may be having fun and it shouldn’t always equate to money.”
On why the company has shifted from “rapidly hiring and spending to equally aggressive cost saving”, Pichai said, “I’m a bit concerned that you think what we’ve done is what you would define as aggressive cost saving. I think it’s important we don’t get disconnected. You need to take a long-term view through conditions like this.”
He further disclosed that Google was still pursuing investments in long-term projects like quantum computing and that it’s important to be “to be smart, to be frugal, to be scrappy, to be more efficient” in uncertain times.
Following the global inflation that ravaged economies of Nations, Google isn’t the only company that had to cut costs and slow hire, as several other tech companies massively laid off their employees.
It was reported that a total of 20,009 tech workers were laid off between May and June 2022 by global technology companies that are grappling with the ongoing economic meltdown. So far in 2022, tech companies worldwide have laid off a total of 35,000 workers.