Google lays off hundreds of “core” employees, moves jobs to India and Mexico | Wilnesh News

Just before the blowout first-quarter earnings were released on April 25, Google CNBC has learned that the company laid off at least 200 “core” team employees in a restructuring that included moving some positions to India and Mexico.

Google said the core division is responsible for building the technical foundation behind the company’s flagship products and protecting users’ online security. website. The core team includes key technical units from information technology, Python development team, technical infrastructure, security foundation, application platform, core developers and various engineering roles.

At least 50 of the jobs being cut at the company’s Sunnyvale, Calif., office were in the engineering department, documents show. Many of the core team will hire positions in Mexico and India, according to internal documents seen by CNBC.

Asim Husain, Google’s vice president of developer ecosystem, announced the layoffs to his team in an email last week. He also spoke at a town hall, telling employees it was the largest layoff his team had planned for the year, according to an internal document.

“We intend to maintain our current global footprint while expanding in high-growth workforce locations around the world so that we can be closer to our partners and developer community,” Hussain wrote in an email.

Alphabet has been cutting jobs since early last year. Due to the downturn in the online advertising market, the company announced plans to lay off about 12,000 employees, accounting for 6% of its total workforce. Despite a recent rebound in digital advertising, Alphabet continues to downsize, with layoffs across multiple organizations this year.

Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat announced in mid-April that the company’s finance department would be reorganized, including cutting jobs and moving positions to Bangalore and Mexico City.Prabhakar Raghavan, the company’s head of search, told employees at an all-hands meeting in March that Google planned to build teams closer to users in key markets such as India and Brazil, where labor is cheaper than in the United States.

The latest layoffs come as the company is enjoying its fastest growth rate since early 2022 and improving profit margins. Last week, Alphabet reported a 15% annual increase in first-quarter revenue and announced its first dividend and $70 billion in buybacks.

“Announcements like this may leave many of you feeling uncertain or frustrated,” Hussain wrote in an email to developers. He added that his message to developers is that the changes “serve the broader goals of our company.”

The team involved in the reorganization has been key to the company’s developer tools, an area that Google is streamlining as it integrates more artificial intelligence into its products. In February of this year, Google announced a major rebrand of its chatbot, changing its name from Bard to Gemini, the name of the suite of artificial intelligence models that powers it.

Alphabet is preparing for Google I/O, its annual developer conference on May 14, where the company traditionally showcases new developer products and tools it has been developing over the past year. Hussain said in a memo explaining the changes to developers that generative AI is at an “inflection point.”

“Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence across the industry, including Google’s Gemini, are changing the nature of software development as we know it,” Hussain wrote.

Pankaj Rohatgi, Google’s vice president of security engineering, told his team in a separate email, “To optimize our business goals, we are expanding our efforts to additional locations, which will result in the elimination of some roles and proposed role eliminations.”

The core cuts also include the governance and protected materials teams, which will be at the heart of the regulatory challenges the company faces, especially as global lawmakers focus more on the development of artificial intelligence. The EU Digital Markets Act came into effect in March and aims to combat anti-competitive behavior in the technology sector.

Evan Kotsovinos, Google’s vice president of governance and data protection, spoke about the coming changes last week.

Cotsovinos said in an email that the team’s success means responding to “escalating regulatory focus” and depends on “faster action.”

Raghavan, Google’s senior vice president of search, recently cited increased competition, a more challenging regulatory environment and slower organic growth as the company’s “new operating reality.”

When reached for comment, Google confirmed the core restructuring and layoffs, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that employees will be able to apply for open positions within Google and receive outplacement services.

“As we say, we are investing responsibly in the company’s most important priorities and significant opportunities ahead,” a spokesperson said in an email. “Many of our teams have made changes to increase efficiency. , work better, eliminate layers and realign resources to the most important product priorities.”