Google, through its CEO, Sundar Pichai, has cautioned the company’s employees to prepare for additional workforce reductions as the tech giant persists in implementing further cost-cutting measures across its various operations.

This announcement follows reports of job terminations at YouTube, Google’s video-sharing platform, affecting 100 employees in diverse divisions such as engineering, services, and the voice-activated product Google Assistant. According to a memo circulated to the staff, Pichai informed that more layoffs are anticipated throughout the year.

“We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year. The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices,” he said. He stated that  the role eliminations are not at the scale of last year’s reductions, and will not touch every team. “But I know it’s very difficult to see colleagues and teams impacted.”

He explained that the job cuts aimed at streamlining operations by eliminating certain hierarchical layers to enhance efficiency and accelerate progress in specific areas.

“Many of these changes are already announced, though to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted,” he said.

Numerous global tech companies have declared layoffs, indicating a sustained trend from 2023. Nevertheless, the scale of job reductions appears to be less than the previous year. In Google’s initial mass layoffs in January 2023, 12,000 positions were cut, with the company attributing the decision to economic challenges and acknowledging that its previous hiring strategies were insufficient for the prevailing economic conditions.

Similarly, Amazon disclosed layoffs affecting hundreds of employees, with the company reducing its workforce by more than 18,000. Microsoft implemented job cuts, letting go of 11,000 employees, which accounted for 5 percent of its total workforce. Google also terminated numerous employees in its digital assistant, hardware, and engineering departments.