Google may lay off 10,000 low-performing employees: Report

Google was an exception among the big tech companies carrying out mass layoffs in the economic downturn, but all that could be set to change. According to a report in The Information, Google has come up with new ranking metrics to identify low-performing employees and ease them out of the company.

Google managers have been asked to identify 6% of employees – or roughly 10,000 people -- as low performers in terms of their impact for the business, people with knowledge of the matter told The Information.

Employees rated as poor performers under the new “ranking and performance improvement plan” could be shown the door. These layoffs could begin in early 2023.

Earlier, managers at Google had been asked to identify only the 2% lowest performing employees. This new directive marks a significant increase in the number of workers whose performance in the workplace could put them at risk of being laid off.

The instruction to reform the ranking system came after hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn, in a letter to Alphabet, said the organisation is bloated while its employees are being paid too much, compared to other companies like Microsoft.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a workforce of nearly 187,000. According to Forbes, the median income of an Alphabet employee was $295,884 in 2021.

The tech sector has been hit with a wave of layoffs which has affected tens of housands of employees at Twitter, Microsoft, Byju’s and more.

While Google so far appeared immune to the tech winter, CEO Sundar Pichai had asked employees to focus on productivity after the tech giant reported its second consecutive quarter of weaker-than-expected earnings earlier this year.

“It’s clear we are facing a challenging macro environment with more uncertainty ahead,” he said. “There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the headcount we have.”