Brand Spur Nigeria learnt that Google is slowing down hiring processes for the rest of 2022.
As sighted in memo signed by CEO Sundar Pichai to employees, Google will still support its “most important opportunities”, and focus on hiring engineering, technical and other critical roles”.
Pichai’s memo comes weeks after Meta announced similar measures since the company failed to achieve its revenue targets.
Historically, Google has remained relatively immune to economic uncertainties, and in fact, its sister brand YouTube did well in Q4 2020 – first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was reported that its ad revenue hit $6.9 billion – up by 46 per cent quarter-on-quarter. Pichai, in his memo, also highlights that the company hired approximately 10,000 employees in the second quarter of this year, and has a “number of commitments for Q3”. He adds that Google will pause the hiring process for the rest of the year.
“For the balance of 2022 and 2023, we’ll focus our hiring on engineering, technical and other critical roles, and make sure the great talent we do hire is aligned with our long-term priorities,” he reportedly wrote in the memo.
The Alphabet and Google executive also indicated that the company will re-deploy resources to higher priority areas and pause ongoing projects during this period. He said, “Making the company more efficient is up to all of us – we’ll be creating more ways for you all to engage and share ideas to help, so stay tuned.”
Similarly, Snapchat parent, Snap made a similar announcement in May on slowing down the hiring process. Earlier this week, it was reported that Microsoft laid off a portion (1 per cent) of its 180,000-person workforce amid rising inflation. This came after the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant slowed hiring in Windows, Teams and Office. Microsoft showed strong earnings in its third financial quarter, but the company revised its Q4 revenue and earnings in early June, citing the impact of foreign exchange fluctuations.
