- Google has laid off 10% of managers, directors, VPs
- More than 1,300 Googlers have already lost their jobs in 2024
- The company is facing threats from rivals and regulatory bodies
Google has reportedly cut 10% of its manager, director and VP roles in an ongoing effort to boost efficiency and improve the running costs of the company.
The news (via Business Insider) comes at the end of a troubling year for the company – although layoffs have been nowhere near the 13,000+ plus seen during 2023, hundreds have lost their jobs at the company as part of several rounds of layoffs, including 1,000 at the start of 2024 and a further 300 in May (via layoffs.fyi).
The most recent staffing change, believed to have been confirmed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a recent all-hands meeting, is hoped to simplify the organizational structure.
Google is laying off its own managers
Employees familiar with the matter shared some managerial roles were being cut altogether, while others would transform into non-managerial roles. This commonly used technique is designed to reduce layers in a company’s organizational structure in an effort to boost efficiency.
The reality is that this is just another move forming part of the company’s overall ambition to be more efficient. Pichai set a goal in September 2022 to become 20% more efficient – his next major round of layoffs, affecting 12,000 in one fell swoop, likely addressed a big portion of that.
However, this may not be enough for Google, which has come under threat in more than one area. Its artificial intelligence efforts have already been dampened by OpenAI’s immeasurable success with ChatGPT, and now, that tool is threatening the market dominance of Google.com. Separately, Google’s search market dominance has recently come under fire, with other areas of the business also open to potential regulatory action.
Google told us that this was not a new announcement or change, but rather the continuation of efficiency changes that have been ongoing since 2023, including efforts to remove layers and align resources.
A company spokesperson confirmed: "We’ve simplified our structures to give employees more opportunity to work on our most innovative and important advances and our biggest company priorities, while reducing bureaucracy and layers. As part of this, some team reorganizations transitioned managers to individual contributor roles and in some cases, there were role eliminations."
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