Google has indicated that it is feeling the global financial pinch with an internal memo outlining its intention to slow hiring and pause some of its development work.
Company CEO Sundar Pichai issued the memo to staff on Tuesday, which was then relayed by The Verge.
In light of so-called “economic headwinds”, Pichai says that Google will be “slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year”, though the company will still be recruiting in “engineering, technical and other critical roles”.
This follows the company hiring 10,000 new staff in the second quarter of 2022 alone.
Pichai also urged his staff to be “more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus, and more hunger than we’ve shown on sunnier days”. In some cases, he suggests, that could mean “pausing development and re-deploying resources to higher priority areas”.
As the related report points out, Google isn’t the only megabucks-making global tech company to feel the heat of the current financial downturn. Both Meta and Uber have implemented their own hiring freezes, and have warned of difficult times ahead.
Mark Zuckerberg recently told staff that it was cutting new engineer hires by 30% for the year amidst “one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history”.
The likes of Twitter and Netflix have also laid off staff.
Google has a pretty product-packed year ahead of it, with the Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, and Pixel Watch all set to rollout in the second half of 2022.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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