CEO Sundar Pichai in a recent all-hands meeting, revealed the rationale behind slashing 10 per cent of its staff in recent times. The affected employees were mostly in managerial roles including directors and VPs. The development comes at a time when the Alphabet Inc company is focussing more on its AI offerings, especially considering the dominance of rivals like OpenAI. The job cuts are not the first time the company has restructured its workforce, nor is it recent. The tech giant has been working towards streamlining its operations for the past few years. Pichai spoke about the layoffs at the meeting that took place on Wednesday. Some reports also suggest that while some roles changed to the position of individual contributors, some were completely eliminated. In January 2023, Google laid off close to 6.4 per cent of its global workforce, while this year there were hundreds of employees who were handed over the pink slip. The ongoing restructuring at Google is part of a broader trend seen in the tech industry, where big tech names are aligning their operations according to the changing demands and rising significance of AI. During the all-hands meeting, Pichai also clarified what the word ‘Googleyness’ meant. The word was once used to ascertain if a prospective candidate was a good fire for the tech giant. However, the definition evolved over the years. Reportedly, during the meeting, the CEO told the staff that the definition of ‘Googleyness’ had become too broad and that he is obliged to clarify it. The Business Insider cited two employees who were privy to the meeting, Pichai defined the term with expressions such as ‘mission first,’ ‘make helpful things,’ ‘be bold and responsible,’ ‘stay scrappy,’ ‘hustle and have fun,’ and ‘team Google.’ The term ‘Googleyness’ has always been vague. Google’s former head of people operations, Laszlo Block in his book had listed qualities of the term as intellectual humility, enjoying fun, and comfort with ambiguity.
