Are More Layoffs Coming to Alphabet?
Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) this month announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs as part of a plan to lower costs and pivot to new opportunities like AI, but one investor isn't satisfied. Activist investor Christopher Hohn of TCI Fund Management, which had pushed the tech giant to trim its workforce back in November and argued the company would be more efficient with fewer employees, is now calling for Alphabet to go even further with its cost-cutting.
In a letter to Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Hohn said, "The decision to cut 12,000 jobs is a step in the right direction, but it does not even reverse the very strong headcount growth of 2022." Hohn noted that prior to the recent layoffs announcement, the company added 30,000 jobs in 2022 alone, and it has doubled its headcount over the last five years.
Hohn called on the company to reduce its headcount by another 25,000 people, bringing the total workforce to 150,000, in line with where it finished in 2021. He also said that employee compensation was too high, noting the median salary at the company was $300,000 and that the average was much higher. He also claimed that competition for talent in the tech industry had cooled, and given the decline in the stock price, he called on Alphabet to limit stock-based compensation.
Source Fool.com
