Google may fire 10,000 ‘low performing’ employees

Amid mass tech layoffs in Silicon Valley, Google may begin to fire nearly 10,000 employees starting early 2023 as it has begun spotting ‘low performing’ staff using a new performance management system, according to a report.

While its peers Twitter, Meta and Microsoft have already begun letting go of thousands of employees, Google has managed to not cut jobs yet. However, according to US media firm The Information, amid outside pressure to improve the productivity of workers, a new performance management system could “help” managers push out thousands of underperforming employees. Managers could also use the ratings to avoid paying them bonuses and stock grants, the report claims.

Google has told managers to identify 6 percent of the staff (roughly 10,000 people) as low performers in terms of their impact on the business as against 2 percent as per the previous review system, the report said.

The new system was reportedly announced in broad terms. As per the new system, the percentage of employees who can score a high rating has been reduced.

The instruction to categorise employees as ‘low performing’ comes after Hedge fund billionaire Christopher Hohn argued in a letter to the parent firm Alphabet that the number of employees in the company needs to be reduced, according to the report.
The UK investor also contests that Google’s employees are paid higher compared to other digital companies. The billionaire also believes the company’s headcount is “excessive” in comparison to historical hiring patterns and does not meet the requirements of the present business environment.

Reports cite a US Securities and Exchange Commission report, which says the average salary for an Alphabet employee in 2021 was around $295,884, which exceeded that of Microsoft staff by over 70 percent. Alphabet paid its employees 153 percent more than what the 20 largest tech companies in the United States paid their employees. CNBCTV18