Google executives terrified employees in a creepy meeting this week — dressed in festive Halloween costumes as they asked questions about further cost cuts and layoffs, according to a report.
Google’s chief scientist Jeff Dean wore a starfish costume during the all-party meeting on Wednesday. CFO Anat Ashkenazi wore a sports jersey of former Indiana Pacers star Reggie Miller.
As for CEO Sundar Pichai, the boss wore a T-shirt that read “Error 404 Costume Not Found” with a pixelated dinosaur image.
During the meeting with employees, a Google spokesperson told The Post that executives answered about 20 questions on a variety of topics, including one or two related to cost efficiency.
A day ago, Google Guardian Alphabet reports better-than-expected earnings and revenueBut on a call with investors, the recently appointed Ashkenazy said she wanted to “go a little further” on cost savings.
Asked if there could be layoffs in the future, Pichai said: “If we’re making a companywide decision, we’ll definitely let you know.”
“I was saying to Anat yesterday, the earnings call is a piece of cake compared to [the meeting] The next day, Pichai made the joke during a staff meeting.
According to internal correspondence seen by CNBC, employees are concerned that the company is preparing to cut more jobs after the end of the year.
“What exactly did the comments on greater efficiencies in total headcount mean?” an employee asked during the meeting, referencing Ashkenazi’s comments during the earnings call.
Ashkenazy did not share details, but said employees are “one of the most important assets we have.”
He said the company is investing in its employees, even hiring 1,000 new graduates in the third quarter.
Pichai said that apart from layoffs, there are many ways to increase efficiency and restructure the company.
“If you have to do something new and it would take 10 people, if you can find a way to do it with eight people somewhere by making smart trade-offs and better aligning teams, that’s a way to find efficiencies in headcount.” Example is Pichai said.
Google is spending big on its artificial intelligence infrastructure to compete with other tech giants and AI startups like OpenAI, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI. The company has laid off staff to try to save costs – cutting its marketing, cloud, security and safety teams.
“There’s a realness to it,” Google vice president of recruiting Brian Ong said, according to a recording of the meeting. Reviewed by CNBC“We’re hiring less than we did a few years ago.”
Ong said fewer positions are open and geographic assignments have changed, “so you may see fewer roles available where you are.”
Although the company is spending money on its artificial intelligence units, Pichai said the push won’t last forever.
“We are going through an extraordinary period of growth in capital spending,” Pichai said. “When you have these technology shifts, in the early stages, you invest disproportionately and then the curve gets better and that’s the shift we are working through as an industry.”
However, he left the door open to further job cuts, saying that not all decisions are taken by company executives.
“It’s not like all these decisions are taken centrally at the company level,” Pichai said. “And so, at the scale of our company, there may be moments where small groups of people will be impacted.”
During Tuesday’s earnings call, Ashkenazy said using artificial intelligence internally could help the company cut expenses.
Google has said that 25% of its new code is generated by AI.
That 25% number refers to low-level tasks, but the company is working on “expanding into more complex areas,” said Brian Saluzzo, head of “core” developers.
“Core” teams build the technology behind Google’s products. In May, Google laid off more than 200 employees from its core engineering teams and redeployed some of them to India and Mexico.
