Amid a trend of layoffs and a freeze in hiring among major IT and software companies, Google executives have reportedly warned its employees to work harder or be prepared to leave as “there will be blood on the streets” if the next quarterly earnings are not as per expectations.
As per a report by Insider, a company message sent by Google Cloud sales leadership said that there will be an “overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general” and that if next quarter results “don’t look up, there will be blood on the streets.”
If third quarter results “don’t look up, [then] there will be blood on the streets,” according to a message conveyed to the sales team. The warning was first reported by Insider. The IT giant has now threatened its employees with layoffs if the profit expectations were not up fulfilled.
Alphabet owned Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai had told employees in July that they must improve productivity due to fierce economic headwinds. He said he wanted to get ideas from employees on to get “better results faster.”
“There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have,” he was quoted as saying.
In July, Google had put a cap on hiring for two weeks to review its headcount needs and decide on future course of action. It had earlier announced that it would slow down its hiring process. According to Pichai, “it’s clear we are facing a challenging macro environment with more uncertainty ahead”.
“Because of the hiring progress achieved so far this year, we’ll be slowing the pace of hiring for the rest of the year, while still supporting our most important opportunities,” Pichai had said in July. However, he had added that Google was not freezing its hiring process, and the company would ” focus our hiring on engineering, technical and other critical roles, and make sure the great talent we do hire is aligned with our long-term priorities.”
The Google CEO had also said at the time that the company was still trying to hire as many employees as possible to battle with the current scenario and help the society. “In Q2 alone, we added approximately 10,000 Googlers, and have a strong number of commitments for Q3 start dates which reflects, in part, the seasonal college recruiting calendar. These are extraordinary numbers, and they show our excitement about long-term opportunities, even in uncertain times,” he said.
Other tech companies that have either laid off employees or slowed hiring in the current economic downturn include LinkedIn, Meta, Oracle, Twitter, Nvidia, Snap, Uber, Spotify, Intel and Salesforce, among others.
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