Google Parent Alphabet Has Laid Off Nearly 500 People In India

Almost 500 employees in India from the legal, sales, marketing, and other departments have been let go by Google's parent company Alphabet. According to sources reporting to a news agency, the terminated workers were locked out of their work systems at about 9:20 p.m. on Thursday and informed by personal email.

The job cuts at Google India were anticipated following the search engine giant's January layoffs of 12,000 employees or 6% of its total. Although Google did not specifically state how many employees in India would be affected, sources have told that approximately 500 of the jobs Google said in January would be terminated are in India.

Sanjay Gupta, the country head of Google India, wrote in an email to staff members “This evening, we notified all Googlers in India whose roles have been impacted, as part of the workforce reductions announced in January. Managers will soon receive details of their impacted team members,” 

According to an internal memo, Google India said that severance payouts will be  “personal and based on factors like length of service”,  as part of its assistance plans for the impacted employees.

The remaining bonuses for 2022 as well as accrued but unused vacation time will also be given to the affected employees in addition to this. The company added that, among other things, it will help with healthcare insurance and job placement services.

Google is the latest major tech company to announce job cuts. The other companies are Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, all of which have recently cut thousands of jobs. A layoff tracker called Layoffs.fyi reports that 379 IT businesses worldwide have declared 1,07,930 job layoffs just in 2023.

Employees at Google India are feeling uncertain since, according to sources speaking to Business Insider India, the business has warned them that non-performance will be dealt with.

But more than that, staff members who talked with a media agency, claimed that Google could have hired better to prevent this disaster in the first place.