Tech Woes: Google Cutting 12,000 Jobs

The outlook for big tech has gotten off to a rocky start in 2023. Google and parent company Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai sent an email to employees on Friday announcing plans to eliminate around 12,000 jobs.

Pichai wrote, “I have some difficult news to share,” indicating that the jobs being slashed “cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels, and regions.”

“Over the past two years, we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” the message continued.

The cuts at Google are part of a larger trend amid concerns that the American economy is teetering on the edge of an unpredictable recession. The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates aggressively over the last several months in an attempt to stem the inflation that has hammered Americans since Joe Biden assumed office and has overseen massive federal spending.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote to employees on Wednesday that the firm is cutting its workforce by 10,000 jobs by the end of the third quarter.

Nadella wrote: “This represents less than 5 percent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today. It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we will continue to hire in key strategic areas.”

Those reassurances are sure to be cold comfort to the 10,000 soon-to-be ex-Microsoft employees.

Retail and tech giant Amazon is also slashing jobs. CEO Andy Jassy sent a message to employees on January 4 advising that the company would be eliminating a total of more than 18,000 “roles.” The cuts at Amazon are coming in the Devices and Books division and the “People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization.”

The company is also scaling back its brick-and-mortar retail Amazon Stores operations.

After closing on the purchase of Twitter last October, new CEO Elon Musk cut more than half of the platform’s workforce. Musk said the cuts were essential to eliminating redundancies and inefficiency.

The bad staffing news and increasing interest rates have caused many inventors to sour on tech stocks, which have been very popular since the 2008 financial crisis. Over the last 12 months, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite index has fallen more than 19%.