Google CEO Sends an Open Letter to All Employees: Hiring Will Slow Down This Year
Affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, tech giant Google has also begun looking for ways to cut costs, and the first measure is to slow down recruitment. Google CEO Pichai has sent an open letter to employees to inform them of this decision.
Recently, under the influence of the epidemic, technology giants have also had a hard time.
On April 15, local time in the United States, Google's parent company Alphabet said,Google to cut costs in response to coronavirus pandemicThe first step will be to slow hiring for the rest of the year.
It's the most aggressive move by the tech giant since the coronavirus pandemic began to hit its advertising business.
Google 2020: Slowing down hiring and adjusting investment priorities
Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced the decision in an open letter to employees on Wednesday: "We believe now is the time to significantly slow down the pace of hiring. This means we need to be careful with ourPrioritize employees who can meet our greatest user and business needs.”
He also highlighted a number of other cost-cutting measures, saying the company was "Refocusing and pacing investments, including in areas such as data centers and servers, non-business essential marketing, and travel."
The open letter also added that remote work has limited the progress of onboarding and training new employees, so this may also be one of the reasons for the slowdown in hiring new people.
In addition, the company said in a statement that it would slow down its pace of hiring while also "maintaining momentum in a few strategic areas and moving employees who have received offers but have not yet started to work as quickly as possible."
As of the end of 2019, Alphabet had 118,899 full-time employees, of which 20,000 were newly hired in 2019. The company said,The number of newly hired employees in 2020 will also remain at 20,000.
Google's performance may be affected by the epidemic, and the advertising industry will bear the brunt
While the memo did not go into detail about how the pandemic had impacted Google’s financial results, Pichai wrote:"The entire global economy is hurting, and Google and Alphabet are not immune to the impacts of this pandemic."
Economic disruptions related to the pandemic have led to a drop in demand for advertising, which is Alphabet's main source of revenue. Last year, its advertising revenue totaled more than $100 billion, but the advertising industry has been hit hard this year.
Exactly how big of an impact it will have is unknown at this point and will only be revealed when Alphabet releases its first-quarter financial results in early May.
Google is not the only tech giant to reduce hiring amid the coronavirus pandemic.Microsoft has also suspended hiring for some positions.
Compared to startups that have laid off thousands of employees, giants like Google and Microsoft are actually relatively safe havens.
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