- Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced layoffs involving 12,000 jobs at the Google owner on Friday.
- Some employees earning as much as $1 million were also laid off, The Information reported.
- Pichai told staff in the memo that he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that got us here.”
Some of the 12,000 employees whose roles were eliminated by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday included both high performers and seven-figure earners, The Information reported.
Google managers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told the paper that some who lost their jobs included those with high scores on performance reviews or in managerial positions earning between $500,000 and $1 million a year.
The average salary for a manager at the tech giant in the US was about $165,000, according to employment website Indeed.
In January 2022, Insider reported that four executives received a $1 million raise as well as more stock options after complaining about wages and inflation.
Google did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
“We were hiring for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Pichai said in an email to all employees on Friday, and took “full responsibility for the decisions that got us here.”
Insider’s source, whose employment at Google has been confirmed, said the company last month enacted a new “support ticket” policy that they described as “a sympathetic-sounding euphemism for a performance warning label on your personal file.”
A source told Insider that the new rating system came down to a “conversation” between managers and employees: “It’s a sign that you need to improve or start looking for another job soon.”
They added that someone in human resources described it as “tough love,” prompting the employee to comment, “It implied that the company is like a family to us and that they discipline us like parents.”
According to the report, Google told managers to place more employees in low-performing categories during performance reviews.
The system particularly penalized new recruits, said an employee who spoke to Insider. Some who had only been with the company for three months already had a “support check” to make up for not meeting all their expectations, the employee added.
A spokesperson for the Alphabet Workers’ Union told Insider earlier this month that there had been no complaints from the new hires. She did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment seeking an update on her mood after the firing.