Happy New Year the Google Way
January 31, 2025
We don’t expect Alphabet Inc. to release anything but positive news these days. Business Standard reports another revealing headline, especially for Googlers in the story: "Google Layoffs: Sundar Pichai Announced 10% Job Cuts In Managerial Roles.” After a huge push in the wake of wokeness to hire under represented groups aka DEI hires, Google has slowly been getting rid of its deadweight employees. That is what Alphabet Inc. probably calls them.
DEI hires were the first to go, now in the last vestiges of Googles 2024 push for efficiency, 10% of its managerial positions are going bye-bye. Among those positions are directors and vice presidents. CEO Sundar Pichai says the push for downsizing also comes from bigger competition from AI companies, such as OpenAI. These companies are challenging Google’s dominance in the tech industry.
Pichai started the efficiency push in 2022 when people were starting to push back against the ineffectiveness of DEI hires, especially when their budgets were shrunk from inflation. In January 2023, 12,000 employees were laid off. Picker is also changing the meaning of “Googleyness”:
“At the same meeting, Pichai introduced a refined vision for ‘Googleyness’, a term that once broadly defined the traits of an ideal Google employee but had grown too ambiguous. Pichai reimagined it with a sharper focus on mission-driven work, innovation, and teamwork. He emphasized the importance of creating helpful products, taking bold risks, fostering a scrappy attitude, and collaborating effectively. “Updating modern Google,” as Pichai described it, is now central to the company’s ethos.”
The new spin on being Googley. Enervating. A month into the bright new year, let me ask a non Googley question: “How are those job searches, bills, and self esteem coming along?
Whitney Grace, January 31, 2025
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