Economy

Canadian employees among infamous Google layoffs

Google’s parent firm Alphabet stated earlier this year that it will be laying off 12,000 people from its global workforce. As a result, Google mailed layoff notifications to affected Canadian employees on Monday.

The affected employees had received alerts, according to Lauren Skelly, a spokesperson for Google Canada. The quantity of damaged Canadian jobs wasn’t immediately apparent.

Skelly stated that the business was unable to comment on specifics regarding the layoffs. In an effort to reduce headcount in light of the current economic climate, Google, which has headquarters in Toronto, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, and Edmonton, said last month that it was laying off 12,000 employees.

In mid-January, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and Alphabet, informed colleagues that 12,000 employees would be let go from their positions.
Pichai claimed that the company had to make employment layoffs because it had hired expecting a different economic reality than what ultimately transpired.
Days following Pichai’s statement, Google also declared it will shut down the Edmonton location of its DeepMind subsidiary, which specialises in artificial intelligence.

It’s one of the biggest rounds of employment cuts ever at the corporation and comes on top of the tens of thousands of previous layoffs reported by companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Facebook parent Meta, among others. At least 48,000 job layoffs were disclosed by significant tech businesses in January.

Big tech layoff hypocrisy

The year’s constant stream of personnel reductions at technological firms started in the summer of 2022, when fintechs began doing so as their valuations dropped.

The layoff procession has continued into the first quarter of 2023 and now includes BigTech and reputable fintech firms. For instance, PayPal declared it will cut about 7% of its staff, or nearly 2,000 positions. This comes after Google announced plans to cut 12,000 employees, while Microsoft announced plans to eliminate 10,000 jobs.

Almost any executive in the finance or tech sectors might have made the following statement when announcing layoffs:

“While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do, we must continue to change as our world, our customers, and our competitive landscape evolve. Addressing these changes requires us to make hard decisions.”

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called for a “referendum on capitalism” in 2020 and stated that “Microsoft and others should measure their success by the jobs they create, the revenue they generate for their suppliers, and the money their employees spend elsewhere.” Microsoft announced in January that it would be laying off 10,000 employees.

Other layoffs effecting Canadians in 2023

This week, The Canadian Press received confirmation from Hudson’s Bay Company that it intends to fire 2%, or about 250 workers, of its whole workforce.
The Bay and Hudson’s Bay, the retailer’s online and offline divisions, respectively, will be most affected by the layoffs, according to The Canadian Press.

The Canadian Press reports that less than a week after newspaper owner Postmedia Network Corp. declared it was struggling with “economic contraction,” the firm plans to fire 11% of its editorial workforce.
According to reports, the layoffs were announced to Postmedia staff during a town hall meeting on Tuesday in the late afternoon.
The layoffs would affect all of the company’s publications, with the exception of Brunswick News and Postmedia Editorial Services, which have already been shrunk, according to an audio recording of the discussion that The Canadian Press was able to obtain.
About 650 journalists are employed by Postmedia, which owns publications all across Canada, including the National Post, Vancouver Sun, and Calgary Herald.

American commercial software corporation Salesforce, according to Canadian law firm Samfiru Tumarkin LLP, wants to lay off 10% of its workers. However, it does not specify how many Canadians will be affected by these layoffs, according to Canadian startup news website Betakit.

Benevity, a Canadian IT company, informed its staff on January 18 that it will be cutting 137 jobs, or 14% of its workforce.

Following a wave of huge layoffs in November, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff published on January 4 that the business will be eliminating further positions. With the two layoffs combined, the corporation will lose 18,000 positions.
Jassy stated that PXT and Amazon Stores would experience the majority of layoffs, but she did not specify whether or how many Canadians would be impacted.
This will enable us to pursue our long-term ambitions while maintaining a more stable cost structure, he stated.