In July 2022, Google CEO Sundar announced a hiring slowdown due to economic uncertainty. In December, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, approved a performance-linked award for CEO Sundar Pichai, with incentives tied to Alphabet’s performance against other S&P 100 companies. According to Yahoo, Google CEO Sundar was granted two sets of performance-based stocks worth $63 million and an additional $84 million in restricted stock units. This structure is designed to encourage the CEO to make decisions that improve the company’s performance and ultimately benefit the shareholders.
In January 2023, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced that it would cut 6% of its global workforce, impacting around 12,000 employees. In his memo, Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that Alphabet had expanded too quickly during the pandemic when the demand for digital services surged. It must now refocus on core products and technology such as artificial intelligence.
The New York Times reports the decision is part of Google’s efforts to prepare for increased competition from rivals that offer new ways to search for information online, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Pichai stated that affected employees would receive support and resources during the transition. However, Google employees wrote an open letter to CEO Sundar Pichai to handle layoffs better and let staff say goodbye to their coworkers in person—the letter, signed by more than 1,400 workers. In London, Google workers staged a walkout on April 4th in protest over the job cuts, demanding Google allow workers full union representation, engage in the consultation process and treat its staff with respect and dignity.
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