Google Slows Down Hiring Due to the Coronavirus

To prepare for the economic downturn caused by the ongoing global pandemic, Google‘s parent company, Alphabet, just announced that it will “significantly slow” hiring for the remainder of the year. It is part of the company’s broader cost-cutting measures, as Sundar Pichai detailed in a memo obtained by Bloomberg.

The memo says:

We are reevaluating the pace of our investment plans for the remainder of 2020. That starts with taking a more critical look at the pace of hiring for the rest of the year. For context, we hired 20,000 Googlers in 2019 and had been targeting a similar number for 2020. […]

We believe now is the time to significantly slow down the pace of hiring, while maintaining momentum in a small number of strategic areas where users and businesses rely on Google for ongoing support, and where our growth is critical to their success. By dialing back our plans in other areas, we can ensure Google emerges from this year at a more appropriate size and scale than we would otherwise.

The company is deciding on this in light of the continued economic uncertainty caused by the global economic situation. Google is not the only big tech company to reduce hiring because of the pandemic. Microsoft, only a few days before Alphabet’s announcement, announced a hiring freeze.

More than 22 million people in the US only have filed for unemployment in recent weeks. The situation is likely to get worse before it gets better. More and more companies are opting for hiring freeze and layoffs in order to stay afloat.