Google CEO Sundar Pichai explains why he's not doing layoffs in one fell swoop, but in stages

• Google is conducting waves of ongoing layoffs intentionally, according to Sundar Pichai.
• Sundar Pichai said the company is "taking the time to do it correctly and well" in a Bloomberg interview.
• The company started 2024 with thousands of cuts, particularly from engineering and hardware teams.

Google has conducted multiple layoffs this year — and the slow burn is intentional.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Bloomberg reporter Emily Chang that the company is "taking the time to do it correctly and well."

While Pichai has received criticism of his leadership and the culture around layoffs, he said that as a leader of a large company, he makes "fewer consequential decisions, but they need to be clear."

Pichai said in some cases, Google is simplifying teams, and in others, it's moving people to focus on new areas. The company is also removing some teams entirely to "improve velocity."

Google cut about 12,000 people in 2023 and started off 2024 with thousands more laid off from core engineering and hardware teams.

At the time, Pichai said more layoffs were to come — and they did.

In April, the company laid off more staff from several finance and real estate teams. It also announced it would move roles to Bangalore, Mexico City, and Dublin to build out its "growth hubs."

Google did not respond to a request for comment about the number of roles impacted.

Pichai said in the interview that Google is "reallocating people" to its "highest priorities."

The cuts are an attempt to cut back on costs as it advances AI and ramps up efforts with a series of cloud advancements. Some of these include an Arm-based CPU, the general availability of TPU v5p, the new release of Gemini 1.5, and various changes to Google Workspace.

In his 2023 layoff announcement, Pichai said Google experienced "dramatic growth" over the last two years, which led to hiring "for a different economic reality than the one we face today."

"A number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, remove layers, and align their resources to their biggest product priorities," a Google spokesperson told BI in April before the latest layoffs were announced.