Google CEO Pichai discusses Cost Cuts, Layoffs, Macroeconomic Conditions

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is being “a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade”. He also said that the company needs to take a long-term view through conditions like this.

While addressing certain questions of employees, Pichai who faced tough questions said the same. The discussion includes cutting on travel and entertainment budgets, managing productivity and potential layoffs.

However, regarding the expenditure cuts related to travel and entertainment, Pichai told employees that he hopes everyone to read the news, externally. The fact that one know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, he think it’s important that as a company, everyone pull together to get through moments like this.

He also said, “I remember when Google was small and scrappy. Fun didn’t always — we shouldn’t always equate fun with money. I think you can walk into a hard-working startup and people may be having fun and it shouldn’t always equate to money.”

Pichai further said that he does appreciate some of the travel restrictions at a time like this and RTO and people wanting to see each other, definitely is not ideal.

“If you haven’t seen your team in a while and it’ll help your work by getting together in person, I think you can do that. I think that’s why we are not saying no to travel, we are giving discretion to teams,” he said, according to the report.

On managing productivity, Pichai told employees, “I think you could be a 20-person team or a 100-person team, we are going to be constrained in our growth in a looking-ahead basis… Maybe you were planning on hiring six more people but maybe you are going to have to do with four and how are you going to make that happen? The answers are going to be different with different teams.”, according to the CNBC report.