Tag: Google layoffs

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DeepMind’s Edmonton office to shut down

Alphabet is shutting down the DeepMind Technologies office in Edmonton, Alberta.

According to The Globe and Mail, DeepMind is consolidating its business across the country. Google’s parent company Alphabet owns the artificial intelligence company.

DeepMind’s Toronto and Montreal locations, which are housed in Google’s office, will continue operations. Edmonton had the only stand-alone DeepMind location, the publication reports.

Bloomberg further reports researchers and engineers will be allowed to relocate to another office, but some employees in “organizational infrastructure roles will be laid off.”

The news comes as Google laid off 12,000 employees and moved its focus to AI.

Image credit: Shutterstock 

Source: Globe and Mail, Bloomberg

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Spotify announces layoffs in bid to cut costs

Spotify is laying off six percent of its workforce.

The figure was hidden deep in a lengthy letter from CEO Daniel Ek outlining structural reorganizations and the need to cut costs.

Ek says the company’s operating expenses “outpaced our revenue growth by 2X” last year. Spotify has made other efforts to cut costs, the CEO said, but those alone weren’t enough.

“Like many other leaders, I hoped to sustain the strong tailwinds from the pandemic and believed that our broad global business and lower risk to the impact of a slowdown in ads would insulate us,” Ek wrote. “In hindsight, I was too ambitious in investing ahead of our revenue growth.”

Spotify is the latest tech company to announce layoffs. Google laid off 12,000 employees last week, following Microsoft and Meta’s steps.

In other changes, the company will move most of its engineering and product work under its Chief Product Officer and its business aspects under the Chief Business Officer.

Despite the changes, Ek hints that innovations are in store for 2023. Spotify will likely share more details at its Stream On event in March.

Source: Spotify

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Google laying off 12,000 employees worldwide

Google is following in the footsteps of several other tech companies through its announcement to lay off thousands of employees.

In a blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai says he takes “full responsibility” for the decisions that led to the mass layoffs. Google was one of the many tech companies that dramatically grew its employee roster during the pandemic.

The impacted employees are “across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions.” The post indicates that impacted employees aren’t specific to one country and include U.S. employees.

Despite the layoffs, Pichai said the company is “getting ready to share some entirely new experiences for users, developers and businesses.”

“We have a substantial opportunity in front of us with AI across our products and are prepared to approach it boldly and responsibly.”

It’s unclear how many employees in Canada are impacted. As of February 2020, the company employed 1,500 people in Canada and had plans to expand its offices. MobileSyrup will update the article when more information is available.

Earlier this week, Microsoft announced it was cutting 10,000 jobs, citing decreased customer spending and fears of a recession. Meta, Shopify, and Amazon are some of the other tech companies laying off employees.

Source: Google