Google to slow hiring for rest of year, CEO tells staff

SAN FRANCISCO • Alphabet's Google plans to slow hiring for the remainder of the year in the face of a potential recession, chief executive Sundar Pichai said on Tuesday in an e-mail to staff.

He said the company will focus on hiring for "engineering, technical and other critical roles" this year and next year, according to a copy of the e-mail viewed by Bloomberg News.

"Moving forward, we need to be more entrepreneurial, working with greater urgency, sharper focus and more hunger than we've shown on sunnier days," he wrote. "In some cases, that means consolidating where investments overlap and streamlining processes."

Historically, Google has remained relatively immune to the economic dips of the technology sector.

The Internet giant paused hiring after the financial crisis more than a decade ago, but has since regularly added waves of new employees for its main advertising business as well as areas such as smartphones, self-driving cars and wearable devices that are not yet profitable.

Google parent Alphabet, which employed almost 164,000 people as at March 31, has hired primarily in recent years for Google's cloud division and new fields like hardware.

Google's move mirrors that of other technology companies.

In May, Snap and Lyft said they would slow hiring.

Several weeks later, Instacart said that it would dial back job growth and Tesla followed with an announcement of a 10 per cent reduction for its salaried workforce.

Earlier this week, Google rival Microsoft announced that it was cutting a small number of jobs. Facebook owner Meta Platforms also reduced its hiring plans because of concerns over economic conditions.

In the e-mail, Mr Pichai said Google added 10,000 employees during the second quarter and had "strong commitments" in the next few months to hire college recruits.

Business Insider reported earlier on Google's plans.

BLOOMBERG