TECHNOLOGY

Google, Microsoft To Cut Over 20,000 Jobs Worldwide

January 21, 2023January 21, 20233 min read africa

Google’s parent company Alphabet announced about 12,000 job cuts globally on Friday, becoming the latest US tech giant to enact large-scale restructuring.

“We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles,” Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an email to employees, adding that the cuts were in response to a changing “economic reality”.

The move comes a day after Microsoft said it would reduce staff numbers by 10,000 in the coming months, following similar layoffs by Facebook owner Meta, Amazon and Twitter as the previously unassailable tech sector faces a major economic downturn.

“We’ve undertaken a rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our

“The roles we’re eliminating reflect the outcome of that review.

“The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”

Microsoft To Lay Off 10,000 Employees

Microsoft plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures, the company said in a securities filings yesterday, making it the latest tech company to reduce staff because of growing economic uncertainty.

Speaking before the layoff announcement at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the company was not immune to a weaker global economy.

“No one can defy gravity and gravity here is inflation-adjusted economic growth,” he told WEF founder Klaus Schwab in a live streamed discussion. In a memo to staffers Wednesday, Nadella also cited changing demand for digital services years into the pandemic as well as looming recession fears. “We’re living through times of significant change, and as I meet with customers and partners, a few things are clear,” he wrote.

“First, as we saw customers accelerate their digital spend during the pandemic, we’re now seeing them optimise their digital spend to do more with less.” Microsoft had approximately 221,000 full-time employees globally as of June 30, 2022, according to a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing, with some 122,000 of those staffers based in the United States.

Nadella said the job the cuts represent less than 5 per cent of the company’s total workforce and the reductions will be complete by the end of its fiscal third quarter this year, which ends in March.

said the company will incur a $1.2 billion charge in its second quarter related to “severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation.” “These decisions are difficult, but necessary,” Nadella wrote. Multiple tech companies have made deep cuts to their workforces since the start of the year, as inflation weighs on consumer spending and rising interest rates squeeze funding. The demand for digital services during the pandemic has also waned as people return to their offline lives. Amazon announced that it plans to lay off 18,000 people and Salesforce said it is cutting 10% of its staff. Facebook parent Meta also recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. In October, Axios reported that Microsoft had laid off under 1,000 employees across several divisions