Google’s decision to lay off 12,000 employees was only announced on Friday, but it amplified the recent trend of “Big Tech” companies cutting jobs in numbers never seen before, and now we’ve seen more reports about where those cuts occurred. . .
Information reports that at Google, the layoffs extend to almost every group, including projects like Chrome, Search, Android and Google Cloud. His sources said they affected people who had previously received “high performance reviews” and some managers making between $500K and $1 million.
One area of the search and advertising giant that was “relatively unaffected,” however, was the Google Brain division led by Jeff Dean, senior vice president of research and artificial intelligence. That’s the team that develops the machine learning technology that Google is already using in many areas. According to the New York Timestheir work will also be applied to a number of products that we’ll reportedly see at their I/O event in May, including tools for generating images, a YouTube green screen feature, and sometime this year, a version of your browser’s chatbot.
Google confirmed to Bloomberg that he decided to “reduce the majority of the Area 120 team.” That incubator, named after the famous but inactive for a long time policy of allowing employees 20 percent of their time to pursue side projects, had already seen big cuts affecting half of its projects late last year. The company said three projects will join Google while the rest appear to have left.
At Microsoft, where 10,000 people are being laid off, Polygon notes reports of the effects in various game development studios and the answers of some former employees. According to Bloombergthere were cuts in star field developer Bethesda and reporter Jason Schreier he said in a tweet What is it aura The 343 Industries studio was reportedly “hit hard”. At the same time, my city noted that The Coalition, which works in the Gears of war games, was also affected.
Amazon confirmed to us months ago that their layoffs included jobs in the devices and services division. Then, in early January, hardware chief Dave Limp said on CNBC’s TechCheck that the cuts affected nearly 2,000 people in its division, which houses products like Alexa and its Echo smart home devices. Confirmed dropped projects included its children’s video calling device and telehealth service.
This week, CNBC reports The layoffs also include a “significant number” of employees working on the Prime Air drone delivery project at multiple sites, including its headquarters and, according to a since-deleted LinkedIn post, up to half the team on its Pendleton test. , Oregon site. Originally announced by Jeff Bezos in 2013, the program is seeing those cuts just as it begins rolling out trials in some cities and prepares to launch the next-generation MK30 drone that will follow the older MK27-2 unit pictured above.
Amazon declined to tell CNBC how many people in the division had been laid off.
