Google offers buyouts to staff in latest round of cost cutting

It’s not clear how many employees are affected, but voluntary exit offers were made to staff in Google’s search, advertising, research and engineering units, according to The Wall Street Journal

Google has offered buyouts to staff in several divisions in a fresh round of cost cutting, according to a company statement and reports from several news outlets.

It’s not clear how many employees are affected, but the offers were made to staff in Google’s search, advertising, research and engineering units, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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“Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for US-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead,” a Google spokesperson, Courtenay Mencini, said in a statement.

“A number of teams are also asking remote employees who live near an office to return to a hybrid work schedule in order to bring folks more together in-person,” Mencini said.

The tech company started trimming its headcount in 2023, when it announced that it was laying off 12,000 staff as the economic boom that fueled demand for online services during the Covid-19 pandemic started to fade.