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Companies across the tech industry have announced layoffs, affecting thousands of workers in the first few weeks of 2023. Company officials have often cited economic uncertainty and fears of a recession in their job-cutting, cost-cutting decisions.
It follows a volatile 2022, which was also marred with layoffs by the thousands across major tech brands.
Alphabet Inc., the parent company of Google, said it will cut roughly 12,000 jobs from its global workforce on Friday, Jan. 20.
The decision will impact approximately 6% of the company’s employees.
“This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with,” said Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai in an email to Google employees on Friday morning.
“I’m deeply sorry for that. The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
Pichai told employees the company is “bound to go through difficult economic cycles” and will “reengineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities.”
Microsoft said on Jan. 18 it will lay off 10,000 employees this year, affecting nearly 5% of Microsoft’s global workforce.
