Background

Google has been known for years as one of the top companies providing luxurious perks to its employees. Due to rising inflation, and the ongoing economic weak scenario, the senior management at Google is facing a steep challenge. Advertisers who used to spend a lot of money in advertising in Google is reducing their budgets considerably. Due to this, companies like Google and Meta are seeing a steep decline in their advertisement revenue in recent months. Google and Meta are also advising their employees to reduce their expenses on perks like employee travel and laundry service. The companies have also started reorganizing their departments to focus and spend their money only on projects that are extremely critical. Google employees are scared that more layoffs and employee cuts are coming ahead. Experts in the industry see that this might lead to a white collar recession. Such a recession is represented by a decline in job growth and job security for professionals in the software engineering sector. The white collar recession might not just be limited to the technology sector but can also spread to other high skilled industries. This is a good time for companies like Google and Meta to find low performing employees. Subscribe below to access Google interview questions on coding and other topics.

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Google Employees losing Projects

The parent company of Google is alphabet Google is worth $1 trillion. They have an employee strength of over 150,000 in this economic situation, the senior management at Google is setting new expectations and creating pressure on the Google employees to work harder. Google is also cutting the budget of its projects and is removing team members who used to work in these projects. When the Google employee is removed from a project. The recruiter then helps them get allocated to a different project in Google based on their skill sets, the employee might have to wait days to find a new project and even that is not guaranteed. Google employees were used to unlimited parks and expenses. But those days are now over. The senior management at Google has told the employees to cut back on their expenses and also reduce spending on office parties.

Google Employees Job Security

The revenue of Google is nearly the size of the gross domestic product of some smaller countries. Companies like Google can afford to make changes to their organization structure and weather the times of economic downturn much better. But many experts believe Google might take this as an opportunity to reduce their workforce more than what is necessary. This will indirectly help them save more money. The stock price of Google has been struggling. With an increase in financial strength, their stock price will be able to recover. The message from senior management at Google to its employees is very clear that all employees will have to perform more than before. Google wants its employees to be more entrepreneurial and achieve targets with greater urgency, and a higher degree of focus and hunger. Setting a higher benchmark of performance and creating an atmosphere of fast work will put more pressure on Google employees. The overall sense at Google is now that their job security no longer exists. Google employees have already been feeling the change in their work culture for quite a while now. Earlier the question among Google employees was mostly regarding salary hikes. But the most popular question now among Google employees is whether they will be keeping their job and is there going to be more layoffs.

Google Employees Attrition

Google employees accept all their senior management's cost-cutting measures and salary decisions. Google employees understand they are surviving and getting benefits much better than people around the world. Google employees are now increasingly nervous because of the message that the company has announced regarding 20% productivity rise and the recent layoffs. Google employees will continue to see a risk to their job security for a while now. Due to the recent announcements, attrition could also rise. Google employees who are seeing their job security at serious risk might even consider looking for opportunities elsewhere. This will in turn, create an environment where Google will start losing experienced and valuable employees to their competitors. Thus Google will be indirectly laying off many employees without intending to actually lay them off. The technology industry has been shining for several years. But the pandemic and the recent economic scenario has brought in massive changes to the work culture and the overall economic outlook in this sector.

Google Management Transparency

The way the Google senior management has been talking to its employees will definitely discourage them from asking for more perks in the near future. There is steep competition from different technology sectors that is cutting away the profit of Google. This is an opportunity that Google's senior management has taken to announce various unpopular decisions, which they otherwise would not have been able to announce as freely. Many Google employees are now saying that their senior management should be more transparent. And in order to be more productive, they should clearly share what the team needs to do. Google employees always say that they are working, but their management are not sharing what they consider as a higher priority. Google's senior management has a lot of scope of improvement in sharing the priority of the work that the employees need to do more transparently. Google employees should not fear about their work that they're doing so well. If the Google higher management is efficiently and transparently sharing which work is a higher priority, then the employees will of course understand and do that work better first.

Google Management Discipline

Google invested a lot of time and money for its pixel book laptop, but ultimately canceled it. This is a clear example where the company is not clear on its priority. And investment strategy. A lot of time and money went into each product with a clear vision at that top, there would be a lot of savings in both money and time. Employees at Google will also be more clear in which area they need to focus more. There needs to be a lot of improvement in the discipline of Google higher management and roadmap. Google needs to provide a clear roadmap where it will define the priorities of each of the projects instead of starting a project and working and investing in it for several months, and then suddenly ending it. Each project should be clear in its overall vision and how it fits into Google's long term priorities.

Google Projects in Area 120

Google is focusing more in projects that are related to artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Area 120 is one of the in-house Research Lab at Google. There were many projects that were not directly focused on artificial intelligence, and these were stopped in Google in Area 120. Only those projects in Area 120 are being continued at Google, which are related to its long term vision of quantum computing and artificial intelligence. Many Google employees and industry experts are worried that too much of cost-cutting might backfire by losing valuable employees and reducing the innovation. This is what made Google great. Setting goals is good and achieving the goals as target is great. The costs are does directly measurable, and there is no extra expenditure. However, there is very little freedom, very little flexibility, and very little room to experiment and fail in this situation which is detrimental to innovation This is an extremely tricky path that Google is taking, because increasing productivity and increasing innovation is very difficult at the same time. It is never the case that Google is now saturated, and there is no scope for innovation in the near future. The technology landscape is just starting to flourish in this century. And this is one of the greatest moments that we have to innovate new concepts and ideas. If Google taking the right decisions by putting pressure on their employees only time will tell.