“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
Google cuts about 12,000 roles across Alphabet, and US staff learned by email. Sundar Pichai takes “full responsibility” for the decisions that led here, and keeps his job. Severance starts at 16 weeks of salary plus two weeks per extra year. The same memo pivots straight to the “substantial opportunity” in AI, so the cut pays for the next bet.