Google Offers ‘Voluntary Exit’ to Employees Across Teams to Reduce Workforce

Google on Tuesday offered buyout options to its employees across various teams, including the knowledge and information (K&I), marketing, research and communications divisions. The tech giant’s “voluntary exit program” is its latest effort to narrow down the workforce, CNBC reported. The exit program is only for US-based employees. 

“Earlier this year, some of our teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance for US-based Googlers, and several more are now offering the program to support our important work ahead,” Google spokesperson Courtenay Mencini said, according to CNBC.

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K&I is the division that takes care of Google’s search, ads, and commerce divisions and has around 20,000 employees. 

But this isn’t the first buyout offer made by Google as a measure to reduce headcount. Earlier in January this year, Google’s hardware unit, Platforms and Devices, which comprises over 25,000 workers working on Android, Chrome, ChromeOS, Google Photos, Google One, and the Pixel Devices, offered the ‘voluntary exit program’ to employees. Then in the subsequent month, Google’s human resource department made a similar offer to its employees along with a severance package of up to 14 weeks of salary and one additional week for every full year of service to its mid-to-senior-level employees, CNBC reported. The tech giant’s legal and finance team opted for the same solution to decrease its employee strength. 

The present development is in alignment with Google’s previous measures, including the layoffs to bring down costs at a time when the tech giant is making huge investments to expand its artificial intelligence infrastructure. The tech major isn’t just placing bets on AI infrastructure, the giant has reportedly started to offer programs to employees to train them to use modern AI tools. It has halted some of its previous programs to focus on more business-essential offerings.