Google has decided to halt hiring for two weeks. The company reportedly hired roughly 10,000 people in Q2 alone, with full-quarter results set to drop on July 26. Google has put a freeze on hiring for two weeks to review its headcount needs and decide on a future course of action. The company last week announced to slow down hirings for the rest of the year.
The latest development comes just days after CEO Sundar Pichai announced that the company is slowing down hirings for the rest of the year. In his internal memo to employees, Pichai had claimed that Google would still support its “most important opportunities”. It may resume hiring engineers and employees for other “critical roles”, as pointed out by the old memo.
According to The Information, Prabhakar Raghavan who is Google’s senior vice president has sent an email to employees about the decision to stop hiring for two weeks. “We’ll use this time to review our headcount needs and align on a new set of prioritized Staffing Requests for the next three months,” Raghavan wrote. The hiring pause “would not impact offers that had already been extended to applicants.” However, Google will not make any new offers until the hiring pause is over, the report said late on Wednesday.
Earlier, Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai told employees that the company will be slowing down the pace of hiring for the rest of the year, as global macro-economic conditions continue to hit industries across the spectrum.
Techcrunch also confirmed the development, and a company spokesperson said, “As Sundar announced, we are slowing hiring for the rest of the year. In line with that, we’re pausing most new offers for two weeks to enable teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the rest of the year”.
Google claims that it is slowing down hirings as it already met the yearly target in the last and current financial quarters. Pichai’s memo also pointed out that the company would re-deploy resources to higher priority areas and pause ongoing projects during this period.
Pichai said that the uncertain global economic outlook has been top of mind. “Like all companies, we’re not immune to economic headwinds. Something I cherish about our culture is that we’ve never viewed these types of challenges as obstacles. Instead, we’ve seen them as opportunities to deepen our focus and invest for the long term,” said the Indian-origin CEO.
Google, similar to its tech counterparts, is facing uncertainties due to foreign exchange fluctuations. Recently, Netflix’s Q2 earnings report showed that the company is expecting a fall in revenue next quarter owing to high inflation worldwide.
Whereas, companies like Snap and Meta are also slowing down hiring processes. Earlier this month, it was reported that Microsoft fired a portion (1 percent) of its 180,000-person workforce amid rising inflation. The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant has also decided to slow hiring in Windows, Teams, and Office.
