The layoffs amount to about 6 percent of the global work force at the company, the latest tech giant to make cuts after a pandemic hiring spree.
We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Alphabet’s chief executive, Sundar Pichai, wrote in a memo to employees.Credit...John G Mabanglo/EPA, via Shutterstock
Alphabet, the parent company of Google, said on Friday that it planned to cut 12,000 jobs, becoming the latest technology company to reduce its work force because of concerns about a broader economic slowdown, after a hiring spree during the pandemic.

The job cuts are the company’s largest ever, amounting to about 6 percent of its global work force. Sundar Pichai, the chief executive, said Alphabet had expanded too rapidly during the pandemic, when demand for digital services boomed, and must refocus on products and technology core to its future, like artificial intelligence.

“We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Mr. Pichai said in a note to employees posted on the company’s website.

Google joins a list of technology companies that have laid off workers after concluding they overextended under the belief that the pandemic-fueled boom represented a new normal. Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and Twitter are among others that have announced thousands of job cuts.