Bad News For Techies! Google Takes Big Decision!

Alphabet and Google CEO told employees in an e-mail that the company will be slowing down their hiring process and consolidate some of their overlapping investments for the rest of 2022 and 2023 in the background of global macro-economic conditions that continue to hit industries across the spectrum.

In an internal memo, SundarPichai wrote to employees, that the company will “need to be more entrepreneurial” and work with “greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we have shown on sunnier days”.

Google, which has historically invested heavily in research and development, will show greater particularity about where it spends money during this period of economic uncertainty.

Alphabet shares are down 21% so far this year, in alignment with the rest of the tech industry, as investors rotate out of the stocks that drove the bull market of the past decade. The company missed analyst estimates for the first quarter, and Chief Financial Officer Ruth Porat warned another rough period could be ahead.

Growth in the first quarter slowed to 23% from a year earlier, down from 34% growth in the first 3 months of 2021, when the economy was reopening from the pandemic. Still, Pichai said in the letter that the company has hired 10,000 employees in the 2nd quarter.

“For the balance of 2022 and 2023, the company will focus on hiring on engineering, technical and other critical roles.”, he added.

In other instances, it will mean “pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas,” he said.

Pichai ended the note by telling employees that “scarcity breeds clarity” and emphasizing that “I’m excited for us to rise to the moment again.”