Google CEO Sundar Pichai admitted to employees he could not rule out mass layoffs at the company, after Twitter, Amazon and Facebook all culled thousands of staffers in recent months.
Pichai fielded questions from employees on Thursday, including one that brought up the possibility.
“It’s really tough to predict the future so unfortunately I can’t honestly sit here and make forward-looking commitments,” Pichai said.
“What we’ve been trying hard to do, and you’ve seen the messaging for the past many, many months, is we are trying to make important decisions, be disciplined, prioritise where we can, rationalise where we can, so that we are set up to better weather the storm regardless of what’s ahead.
“I think that’s what we should focus on and try and do our best there.”
It seems unlikely that Google will be able to survive the tech crash without shedding any staff.
Google announced a hiring slowdown earlier this year, but has not announced any staff reductions.
Since May, Google managers have been directed to use a new performance management tool, named GRAD, to categorise its employees.
Inside the GRAD system, six per cent of the company’s employees — amounting to roughly 10,000 people — are required to be classified by their management as “low performers”, in regards to their overall impact on the business.
These systems have left employees nervous, given this ranking system clearly has a purpose.
