In a recent pay increase offer, Google offered a worker who intended to transfer to Perplexity AI a 300% raise.
This incident was disclosed by Perplexity AI’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, on the Big Technology Podcast. Srinivas, an IIT Madras alumnus, discusses the extent to which big IT companies will go to keep their staff.
According to Srinivas, the worker who got a huge pay increase was a member of the “search team” and was not specifically connected to the company’s AI section.
Srinivas also discussed the tech industry’s layoffs. According to him, companies specifically target high earners who don’t make a proportionate contribution to production.
Tech layoffs in 2024: In just the first month of 2024, 32,000 positions were eliminated in the tech sector alone, leaving tens of thousands of people jobless.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai forewarned staff members last month that there will be additional layoffs. “Tough choices” must be made by the corporation, he said, to make room for investments.
Pichai stated, “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year,” in an internal memo sent to every Google employee. He said, “The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”
Google has let go of more than a thousand workers across several departments since January 10.
Pichai stated in 2023 that it intended to eliminate 12,000 positions or around 6% of its total staff worldwide. “I must break some tough news. We have decided to cut almost 12,000 positions from our staff. A separate email has already been sent to the impacted US workers. This procedure will take longer in other countries because of local laws and customs,” Pichai stated in an open letter. Numerous employees at Alphabet have been laid off, including hundreds in the advertising sales team, and hundreds in the hardware team (which makes Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit devices), and most of them are in the augmented reality team. Dozens more have been laid off at the company’s X Lab division.
