Tech giant Google has once again come under fire after conducting another round of mass layoffs in January to streamline operations and allocate more resources to artificial intelligence (AI).
The job cuts, which affected a thousand employees, included hundreds of workers in the voice assistant sector, hardware teams responsible for Pixel, Nest and Fitbit products, augmented reality, engineering and ad sales teams. The layoffs seek to restructure the ad sales team to focus more on the Google Customer Solutions team rather than the Large Customer Sales unit. The former deals with smaller business clients, while the latter is responsible for selling ads to large businesses.
However, employees criticized the Big Tech company for conducting "unnecessary" mass layoffs despite its financial success.
"Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter. We won't stop fighting until our jobs are safe!" wrote the Alphabet Workers Union on X.
In a recent financial report, Google stated that there has been a $20.4 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2023, which marks a substantial 52 percent increase from 2022. The employees noted that the financial success appears incongruent with the decision to shrink the company's workforce by four percent.
Moreover, a leaked memo from CEO Sundar Pichai reveals that the primary focus of Google in 2024 will be delivering the world's most advanced, safe and responsible AI, with improved knowledge, learning, creativity and productivity and the most helpful personal computing platforms and devices.
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Google software engineer Diane Hirsh Theriault took her frustrations to LinkedIn. Theriault accused the company of being "glassy-eyed" for pointing in the vague direction of AI while "killing their golden goose." (Related: Wendy's and Google replacing employees with AI chatbots.)
Employees fear AI will replace them in the tech industry
The continued investment of Google in advancing AI technology, coupled with the recent layoffs, has significantly affected employee morale.
According to several reports, the workforce fears that the push toward automation and AI could lead to further job replacements. Employees feel a growing sense of cynicism and burnout stemming from the fear of being replaced by the very technologies they are helping to create.
This fear casts a shadow over the tech industry as Amazon, Microsoft, Discord and eBay have also laid off tens of thousands of workers over the past 12 months to invest in AI.
For instance, Amazon and Google both laid off hundreds of workers in January, shortly after confirming multi-million-dollar investments in AI startup Anthropic. Microsoft cut around 10,000 jobs a year ago and recently eliminated 2,000 positions in its gaming unit. Additionally, Discord, a messaging app for gamers, reduced its workforce by 17 percent.
There have been more than 5,500 people who lost their jobs by the second week of January.
Data from the tracking website Layoffs.fyi reveals that since May 2023, over 4,600 jobs have been lost due to AI, totaling nearly 41,800 employees across 159 tech companies in the first few weeks of 2024. Cost-cutting measures and redirection of funds toward AI talent and GPU computer chips, crucial for training AI software, have prompted job losses.
"These companies, in general, are reducing numbers of employees associated with product lines or divisions that have not been successful because they want to reposition themselves for AI," said Art Zeile, CEO of DHI group, which owns the tech recruiting platform Dice.
Visit EvilGoogle.news for more stories about layoffs at the search engine giant.
Watch Gregory Mannarino warn of waves of corporate layoffs amid the world economy's rapid decline below.
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