Google reportedly starting layoffs in Israel
US tech giant sent out letters summoning dozens of employees in Israel for pre-firing hearings this week, according to Hebrew media
Sharon Wrobel is a tech reporter for The Times of Israel.
Google is said to have started the process of laying off in what is estimated to be dozens of its employees in Israel, after the US tech giant last month announced that it is trimming staff around the world.
According to reports in the Hebrew press, Google has sent out letters to dozens of employees summoning them for pre-firing hearings, as required by law, this week. A spokeswoman for Google in Israel declined to comment on the report.
The move comes after Google’s parent Alphabet announced last month that it is cutting its workforce worldwide by 6%, affecting about 12,000 jobs across product areas, functions, levels and regions. The rate of layoffs at Google Israel is estimated to be similar to the 6% overall rate of the tech giant’s global workforce, according to the reports in the Hebrew press.
Google has had R&D activity in Israel since 2005, and employs about 2,200 workers in Haifa and Tel Aviv, with teams tackling machine learning, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, cloud networking and machine perception challenges.
Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post on Jan. 20 that emails to employees in the US who are affected by the job cuts have already been sent out, while “in other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices.”
Over the years, the tech giant has bought and invested in a number of Israeli companies and startups including the $1 billion purchase of navigation app Waze, threat detection firm Siemplify, cloud storage firm Elastifile, cybersecurity company Cybereason and data migration company Alooma.
