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Journalism of Courage
With several big tech companies announcing job cuts, 2023 looks like a tough year for those working in the tech industry. While most companies are blaming economic conditions for the layoffs, some have admitted that they just hired too many people during the Covid-19 pandemic, which promised a digital acceleration that just didn’t hold up. Here, we will be taking a look at two of the biggest layoffs in tech this year – in Google and Microsoft – and the divisions in these two giants affected by them.
Google was the last to officially join the list of tech giants announcing massive layoffs amid poor macroeconomic projections. The company’s parent, Alphabet Inc, eliminated close to 12,000 jobs, which is over 6 per cent of its global workforce. Laid-off employees include those who had previously received high-performance reviews or held managerial positions with annual compensation packages of $500,000 to $1 million. These employees hail from various departments including strategy, recruiting, and go-to-market teams.
Jeff Dean, the executive who leads Google’s AI and research efforts, said that apart from a “modest number” of layoffs across the research unit, the company had determined it had over-invested in its data platform for healthcare teams, called Google for Clinicians. He also said that the robotics unit will see consolidation across Alphabet and Google.
Another department seeing job cuts was Google Cloud, which had gone on a hiring spree recently. An email addressed to employees from Thomas Kurian, Google Cloud’s CEO, revealed that impacted positions were non-customer facing, non-engineering, and operational in nature. Google Cloud is a suite of public cloud computing services offered by Google.
Google’s Fuchsia division was particularly hit by the layoffs, seeing 16% of the 400-strong staff get fired. Initially released in May 2021, Fuchsia is an open-source OS that’s being built from scratch, unlike Google’s Linux-based operating systems ChromeOS and Android. There’s still not a whole lot known about the OS other than the fact that it’s meant to handle IoT, and maybe even one day replace Android. Also, it is unclear how these layoffs will impact its development.
Meanwhile, Google parent Alphabet’s British AI subsidiary DeepMind will see the closure of its Edmonton and Alberta offices. It will also lay off some operational staff in the UK, according to an internal memo spotted by Bloomberg. The Canadian office will also be shut down, according to the report.
DeepMind’s website says it works on “cutting-edge computer science, neuroscience, ethics, and public policy to responsibly pioneer AI systems.” Among its achievements is technology the company unveiled back in 2020 that could predict the shape of proteins.
Another division hit hard by the layoffs is Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator for new projects. Area 120 offers select employees the opportunity to work on small startups inside Google. It’s basically a division that handles experimental apps and products. An example product is GameSnacks — an HTML5-based platform that allows users to load and play games quickly even on poor connections and cheap smartphones. Following these layoffs, three projects in the incubator will be merged with Google. While the managing partner of Area 120 will remain with the company, all other workers who weren’t involved in the three projects have been fired, according to a Bloomberg report.
Microsoft has laid off 10,000 employees or 5% of the company’s workforce amid looming recession fears and changing demand years for digital services. These reductions will be complete by the end of the company’s third fiscal quarter this year, which ends in March.
According to reports from Bloomberg and Reuters, the engineering and human resources departments are expected to be hit the hardest by these job cuts. Known divisions include the company’s HoloLens goggles business. The Hololens is Microsoft’s take on augmented reality, which the company calls a “fully untethered, see-through holographic computer.”
Bethesda Game Studios, the video game publisher that Microsoft recently acquired is also seeing layoffs. The game studio has published several critically-acclaimed gaming titles, with the highly-anticipated action role-playing video game Starfield on the way. Halo studio 343 Industries was also impacted, as was Coalition, the creator of the Gears of War games.
Microsoft has also shut down its AltspaceVR, the virtual reality-based social platform it acquired in 2017. The virtual events platform was originally founded in 2013.
