Google CEO Sundar Pichai has told his employees in a memo that the tech giant will slow down hiring at the company through the rest of the year and 2023, while also keeping a check on investments for the same period of time. However, he clarified that Google was not freezing its hiring process. This comes as the United States is bracing for a potential recession, with the country’s inflation touching a four decade high of 9.1 per cent in June. Pichai cited the “global economic outlook” as the reason to justify his decision,
“The uncertain global economic outlook has been top of mind. Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds. Something I cherish about our culture is that we’ve never viewed these types of challenges as obstacles. Instead, we’ve seen them as opportunities to deepen our focus and invest for the long term,” the Alphabet-owned company’s chief executive said in the memo, as reported by Bloomberg.
“Because of the hiring progress achieved so far this year, we’ll be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year, while still supporting our most important opportunities,” he said. However, Pichai added that Google was not freezing its hiring process, and the company would ” focus our hiring on engineering, technical and other critical roles, and make sure the great talent we do hire is aligned with our long-term priorities.”
The Google CEO also said that the company was still trying to hire as many employees as possible to battle with the current scenario and help the society. “In Q2 alone, we added approximately 10,000 Googlers, and have a strong number of commitments for Q3 start dates which reflects, in part, the seasonal college recruiting calendar. These are extraordinary numbers, and they show our excitement about long-term opportunities, even in uncertain times,” he said.
Pichai further added that in order to brace for the economic headwinds, Google may have to streamline investments.
“Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days. In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes. In other cases, that means pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas. Making the company more efficient is up to all of us — we’ll be creating more ways for you all to engage and share ideas to help, so stay tuned,” he said.
IT companies have been bearing the brunt of a bearish market, with Alphabet stocks being down by 21 per cent so far during FY22-23. Google missed its estimates in the first quarter of the financial year, as the growth during this period slowed to 23 per cent as compared to the 34 per cent on a YoY basis. It must also be noted in this regard that Google is not the only company to put an axe on hiring. Other IT giants including Microsoft, Meta, Twitter, Netflix and others are either slowing down hiring or laying their employees off.
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