'Decisions I needed to make': Sundar Pichai reveals reason behind massive Google layoffs

Google announced last Friday that it will be cutting about 6 per cent of its workforce, which is equivalent to 12,000 jobs. After announcing the biggest job cuts in the history of the search giant, CEO Sundar Pichai that the cuts were made in a bid to act decisively.

Sundar Pichai, said in an internal meeting on Monday, that he had consulted with Google's founders and board members before making the decision. The details of the meeting were revealed by Bloomberg. 

Pichai said, “If you don’t act clearly and decisively and early, we can compound the problem and make it much worse.” He added, “These are decisions I needed to make.”

In the internal meeting, Pichai also assured that the cuts were not done abruptly but after careful consideration. He assured that even the company's leadership would see a "significant reduction" in their annual bonus this year. 

In the meeting, Fiona Cicconi, Google's chief people officer explained why they had to announce the layoffs without issuing warnings to the managers. Cicconi claimed that the size of Google's workforce forced executives to keep the circle of decision-makers relatively small.

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"In an ideal world, we would have given managers a heads up, but we have over 30,000 managers at Google," Cicconi said. "We wanted to give certainty sooner."

The Reason Behind Google Layoffs

Ruth Porat, Alphabet's Chief Financial Officer, announced that the layoffs were done to allow the company to continue investing in key priorities. Porat said, "Act early, and you then create the capacity to invest for long-term growth. As difficult as this was, those were the takeaways." However, the executives did not offer details on the "key priorities". 

Post the layoff announcement, a number of Google veterans posted how abruptly they were removed from the company. An Alphabet executive, in the internal meeting, disclosed that the severance package had been structured to reward workers with long tenures at the company.