Google CEO Sundar Pichai promised extra layoffs at Google this yr, and the corporate is delivering. Enterprise Insider was the primary to report the most recent cuts are to “a number of groups” in Google’s actual property and finance departments. The report provides: “One present worker stated the modifications had been ‘fairly large-scale’ and that some roles are being moved overseas.”
CNBC has a replica of the memo that Google and Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat despatched out to workers concerning the layoffs. Porat blames AI for the layoffs, saying, “The tech sector is within the midst of an incredible platform shift with Al. As an organization, this implies we’ve the chance to make extra useful merchandise for billions of customers and supply quicker options to our prospects, but it surely additionally means we collectively should make powerful selections, together with how and the place we work to align with our highest precedence areas.” It isn’t clear how or if AI is definitely taking on roles in actual property and finance.
Google has been making cuts throughout a ton of departments since 2022, when Pichai declared Google was not productive sufficient. There was a giant set of 12,000 layoffs in January 2023, and an virtually uncountable variety of smaller cuts since then. Google’s cuts are aligned with a huge wave of layoffs throughout the tech trade.
Seeing the true property division get slammed just isn’t an enormous shock. One other main tech pattern recently is the work-from-home sea change led to by the pandemic. Premium actual property was once a foundational piece of those big tech firms, however with everybody realizing they will do the identical work from home, workplace house sits empty and unused. Google has responded by canceling actual property initiatives and exiting some workplace house offers.
