Under the tide of global technology layoffs, Google can't stand it.
According to multiple media reports, Google's parent company Alphabet has confirmed that the company's life sciences division Verily has cut 15% of its workforce, involving procedures and process operation positions, with a total of more than 200 layoffs.
Verily announced the layoffs in an announcement on January 11 and announced the adjustment plan of the company's internal personnel structure and business projects.
Original text of the announcement: https://verily.com/blog/one-verily-forward/
"We are making changes to refine our strategy, prioritize our product portfolio, and streamline our operating model," Verily CEO Stephen Gillett said in the post. We will push for fewer initiatives with more resources."
Gillett said the company will also discontinue Verily Value Suite, a medical software program, and retire some of its earlier products, such as microneedles used to deliver medications.
Some of the staff on the projects that were cut off will be reassigned to other teams, and others will leave Verily, he said.
At this point, Google has joined a large number of layoffs of other tech giants. These giants have already drastically reduced their workforces amid a sluggish global economy and soaring inflation.
Tech giants such as Meta, Twitter and Amazon have all made large layoffs of varying sizes.
Last October, Twitter laid off 50 percent of its workforce, about 3,700 people, and dissolved its board immediately after Musk's acquisition, leaving almost all of its previous executives.
In November, Meta announced 11,000 layoffs, or 13 percent of its workforce, the largest layoff since the company was founded in 2004. Zuckerberg looked lonely in the all-staff announcement and admitted that the company's development difficulties in the past year were mainly his responsibility.
In December, Amazon revealed the news of layoffs, and the scale is increasing. First 10,000, then increased to 17,000. A few days ago, CEO Andy Jassy confirmed in an all-staff letter that the layoff will affect 18,000 employees.
According to HR consultancy Challenger Gray & Christmas, the tech sector has laid off the most jobs in 2022 so far. Layoffs were 97,171 for the year, an increase of 649% compared to the previous year.
Two Alphabet subsidiaries laid off workers at the same time
According to the Wall Street Journal, Verily Life Sciences, the former Google X life science division and the healthcare division of Google's parent company Alphabet, plans to lay off more than 200 employees, which is Alphabet's first large-scale layoff after the wave of layoffs from technology manufacturers.
CEO Stephen Gillett said in an email to employees Wednesday that the layoffs will affect about 15 percent of Verily's total of 1,600 employees, and that the company will stop developing Verily Value Suite medical software programs and several early-stage products.
Gillette asked employees in the email to work remotely from home for the rest of the week as Verily's physical office closes Thursday and Friday.
The company said it would provide severance pay and re-employment services "in the coming weeks and months," but did not provide details.
Gillette wrote in the email:
We can't do everything, the company has to make some tough choices, and the company will hold a plenary meeting on January 18 to explain the changes in more detail.
Verily's main business system is to provide technology and data support through its parent company Alphabet, so as to provide users with accurate and effective medical advice and medical service products.
Their products also include wearable blood glucose monitors, data-driven, personalized chronic disease care methods, automated retinal screening services, and more.
In short, highlight a high-tech health care.
Verily has also recently prepared to develop a series of healthcare programs focused on applying data and technology to patient care, including a virtual diabetes clinic and an online program that connects subjects with clinical trials.
However, with the news of this layoff, these projects will probably be "optimized and streamlined".
Originally known as Google Life Sciences, Verily is one of Alphabet's largest companies outside of Google and is part of a group of companies known as "Other Bets."
As of the end of September last year, Alphabet had more than 180,000 employees.
Verily wants to cut the once-huge number of projects, including health insurance and mosquito breeding, and the huge pile up of projects that cannot be moved forward has become the biggest problem facing the company.
The restructuring shows that big tech companies trying to break into the healthcare industry still face difficulties.
In an email to employees, Gillett said Verily will focus primarily on products related to research and care, while centralizing more decision-making on a central leadership team rather than a single team.
It is worth mentioning that Gillette just took over as CEO of Verily this month, replacing geneticist Andy Conrad, who was relocated as executive chairman, said:
Moving into the next phase of Verily, we are doubling down on our goal of ultimately doing business in all areas of precision health, and we're doing so by closing the gap between research and care.
Similarly, on Wednesday, Intrinsic, another subsidiary of Alphabet, also announced layoffs.
Intrinsic, once a robotics project in Alphabet's moon landing project, officially became an independent subsidiary of Alphabet in 2021, focusing on robotics software and artificial intelligence.
Intrinsic said Wednesday that it made the difficult decision to fire some team members.
An Intrinsic spokesperson said in a statement that the decision was made in line with changes in Intrinsic's priorities and long-term strategic direction, which will ensure the company allocates resources more efficiently.
Google's peers have recently laid off workers in response to deteriorating economic conditions and a decline in online advertising.
Alphabet's other businesses lost $1.6 billion in operating losses, compared with $209 million in revenue in the third quarter of last year, mainly from sales of medical technology and internet services.
Performance reviews suddenly tightened Google's layoffs were foreshadowed
According to CNBC late last year, under the new performance evaluation system starting in 2023, more Google employees will be at risk of low performance ratings, while fewer employees will reach high performance.
Mandatory low performance scores, the next step is to understand.
At a recent all-hands Google meeting and a separate presentation last week, Google executives presented more details about the new performance review process.
Under the new system, Google estimates that 6 percent of full-time employees will face low-performance ratings, up from 2 percent previously, and these employees are more likely to fall into the low-performance range called "need improvement."
At the same time, achieving high performance will be more difficult than before. Under the new standard, the proportion of employees who achieve the highest two levels of performance will be reduced from 27% to 22%.
For example, in order to receive the highest performance rating of "transformative impact," employees must "achieve near-impossible goals" and make significant contributions "beyond the imagination of others."
This new performance review process is called the Google Review and Development (GRAD) program.
At the end of last year, Google employees complained about GRAD's procedural and technical problems because they feared their performance would not be accurately rated, CNBC recently reported.
The recent wave of layoffs in the tech industry has exacerbated this anxiety. While Google hasn't made a massive layoff like Meta's so far, employees have begun to worry that it's only a matter of time before the layoffs arrive.
At an all-hands meeting in December, employees expressed frustration with executives, who have long boasted of transparency but have not had clear answers to questions about specific layoffs, especially how many to lay off.
Some employees believe that the new performance appraisal system could be a precursor for companies to cut headcount.
Since the second half of last year, the issue of "number of layoffs" has been a hot topic for employees.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai found himself in a bad mood in September because he was forced to explain the company's changing stance after years of hypergrowth.
Executives said at the time that there would be small-scale layoffs and that they could not be ruled out.
And in November, some employees asked at an all-hands meeting to clarify executives' plans around headcount, and even asked whether Google's 24% year-over-year increase in headcount in the third quarter of 2022 was a mismanagement of the company's headcount.
It's very simple, since it is said that there will be layoffs, why are there still a lot of recruitment?
As of the third quarter of 2022, Google employs 186779 full-time employees, and the number of outsourced contractors is about the same.
At the all-hands meeting, Google executives were under siege
According to the meeting audio obtained by CNBC, the pressure of year-end performance reviews was mentioned in many of the company's most popular questions at the company's most recent all-hands meeting on Dec. 8. Some employees felt that leadership was not transparent enough in dealing with headcount issues.
For example, management suddenly sent notices to middle managers to force recognition of low performance for some of their employees. This "surprise attack" policy change has caused dissatisfaction among many employees.
"A lot of notifications of similar requests seem to have been sent at the last minute, causing a lot of confusion and anger." Another employee asked. "With only two weeks to correct direction, how can that get any useful feedback?" How can this be prevented from happening in the future?"
"The process is chaotic and increasingly a source of stress and anxiety for employees, especially given the current economic situation and rumours surrounding layoffs, which is particularly exacerbated," said another popular employee question.
Earlier this month, CNBC reported that some employees were starting to receive "Support Checks," which are often tied to performance ratings in the last few days before the year-end deadline. They also said executives changed the rating process in the final days.
Fiona Cicconi, Google's chief people officer, acknowledged that this approach was inappropriate, and at a recent all-hands meeting, she briefly acknowledged the problems in GRAD.
"It's really not ideal to make these kinds of rule changes at the end of the review cycle, and we know that people need time to absorb feedback and take action. Cicconi acknowledges that Googlers should have plenty of time to correct course.
Some employees also asked executives if they had issued some sort of "quota" that would place a fixed percentage of employees in lower performance rating categories to facilitate headcount cuts in 2023.
Executives denied the speculation but did not appear to convince employees.
There was also a question asking the company to clarify rumors about layoffs.
"Layoffs across the industry have been a topic of concern for employees, raising stress, anxiety and burnout at work, and there is no official word on this issue, which raises more concerns. When will the company solve this problem?"
But executives have largely shied away from answering these questions directly. CEO Pichai has always said he "doesn't know what the future holds."
"What we've been trying to do is try to prioritize what we can do so that we can be better weathered by storms, and whatever happens in the future, we don't really know what's going to happen in the future," he said.
So unfortunately, I can't make forward-looking commitments. But as a company, we've been planning to do all the hard work for the last six to seven months, trying to cope as much as possible that way. That's all I can say now."
Now it seems that after waiting for more than half a year, the "other shoe" of Google's layoffs has finally fallen.
Whether this is just the beginning, and whether more layoffs will fall in the future, we will wait and see.
Resources:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/alphabets-verily-lays-off-staff?rc=epv9gi
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/11/alphabet-to-cut-staff-of-health-sciences-unit-verily-by-15percent.html
https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/alphabet-unit-verily-trim-200-jobs