Google employees ask Sundar Pichai questions on budgets cuts, layoffs

Alphabet Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai faced some tough questions from employees related to cuts to travel and entertainment budgets, increasing productivity, and potential layoffs, according to a CNBC report. Here are some of the questions Pichai answered at a companywide all-hands meeting in New York last week

Cutting on travel and entertainment budget 

As per reports, in the meeting, one of the employees asked why is Google cutting off vacation leaves and allowances despite recording profits and high cash reserves.

“I remember when Google was small and scrappy. The 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,” said the CEO, emphasising that at times of uncertainty, it is important “to be smart, to be frugal, to be scrappy, to be more efficient”.

Also read: After Meta, Microsoft, now Google to slow hiring for rest of the year

“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.”

To this, Kristin Reinke, head of Google finance, who was also present at the meeting added that the sales teams will have more leeway to travel since their jobs require meeting with customers.

Trudging through rough macroeconomics 

Responding on today’s tough microeconomic situation, Pichai said, “The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it’s important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this”.

At the meeting, Pichai was asked why the company has shifted from “rapidly hiring and spending to equally aggressive cost saving,” to which he said,  “I’m a bit concerned that you think what we’ve done is what you would define as aggressive cost saving. I think it’s important we don’t get disconnected. You need to take a long-term view through conditions like this.” Pichai informed that Google was “still investing in long-term projects like quantum computing.”

Nonetheless Pichai said, “We’re committed to taking care of our employees, and I think we’re just working through a tough moment macroeconomically and I think it’s important we as a company align and work together.” 

How to be more productive 

One of the key questions posed by employees at this week’s meeting was “how to be more productive?” in the light of Pichai’s comment earlier this month, when the CEO said that he hoped to make the company 20% more productive while slowing hiring and investments.

To the question, Pichai said, “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,” he added.

In August, Google launched an initiative called “Simplicity Sprint,” which aimed to solicit ideas from its more than 174,000 employees on how to “get to better results faster” and “eliminate waste.”

Pichai believes, every employee should chip in and do work across all levels. “I think it can help the company. At our scale, there is no way we can solve that unless units of teams of all sizes do better," he said.

It is not just Google that is going through a difficult time. The entire tech industry is facing some of its biggest challenges ranging from a potential recession, soaring inflation, rising interest rates and tempered ad spending, as the report noted, companies that in the past were known for high growth and an abundance of perks on entertainment, travel etc., are waking up to this reality.