And a Happy New Year to the “Don’t be evil” crowd, huh? It’s shaping up to be a barn burner.

Google parent Alphabet Inc. said it plans to eliminate roughly 12,000 jobs, reducing its staff by 6% and marking the company’s largest-ever round of layoffs as it copes with a darkened economic outlook.

The reductions will cut across Alphabet units and geographies, the company said, though some areas, including recruiting and projects outside of the company’s core businesses, would be more heavily affected.

The cuts follow a wave of layoffs at other technology companies in recent months, including Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc. and Meta Platforms Inc.

Those cuts have been part of a broader pivot toward protecting profit and cementing the end of a growth-at-all costs era in technology. Google executives have in recent months said the company would be tightening its belt, reflecting a new period of more disciplined and efficient spending. But the company hadn’t announced cuts as deep as those of its Silicon Valley peers.

Well, now it has. YOICKS

Google just announced to layoff 12,000 ppl, or 6% of its staff. This is the largest-ever job cut in it's history.

According to the reports, the reductions will cut across all of Alphabet's units & company's core business would be more heavily affected. #Google #layoffs pic.twitter.com/Ma023sTcID

— Kamlakant Tripathi (@kkt_tweet) January 20, 2023

That heady pandemic hiring boom is being blamed for a good portion of the lay-offs, which have added up to almost 40,000 jobs since just the first of the year and over 70,000 since this past fall. You’d think such smugly smart people would know these sorts of boomtimes don’t last, but apparently not. The employees getting the boot will have to make do with handsome severance packages and a (possibly heartfelt), “Sorry, my bad.”

… “I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here,” Mr. [Alphabet CEO Sundar] Pichai wrote. The corporate mea culpa for overhiring has become a recurring message in recent months at tech companies as executives realized that some of the hiring they undertook to keep pace with soaring demand for all-things-digital early in the pandemic left them overstaffed as the business environment soured.

They will be offering some company assistance on pesky things like health insurance and squaring away the new immigration status, etc.

…The company will also offer former employees access to resources to help them with their immigration status, job placement and mental health, the spokesman said. Tech companies in the U.S. often have employees on work visas tied to their employment.

Shoot. In this bold new “Biden’s America” day and age? Work visa? You don’t need no stinking visa! Who are we kidding?

They didn’t really waste time on a touchy-feely goodbye for any of their longtime employees, either.

It's hard for me to believe that after 20 years at #Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email. What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face.
#layoffs

— Jeremy Joslin (@jcj) January 20, 2023

NO CAKE FOR YOU!

The thoughts below are also true.

Where are the reporters that are sitting outside the HQ of these companies, interviewing the newly laid off workers, like they were Twitter?

I am fine with doing that. What I am not fine with is these so called journalists only doing it when it is politically expedient.

— Pradheep J. Shanker (@Neoavatara) January 20, 2023

All this news came on top of yesterday’s announcement that Google was delaying paying a portion of everyone’s Christmas bonus. I’ll bet that red flag started people sweating. Tons of folks have that spent before it ever hits the bank account.

Google executives are deferring a portion of employees’ year-end bonus checks, according to documents viewed by CNBC, as the company moves toward permanently pushing back payouts.

In past years, employees received their full bonuses in January. However, Google will pay qualifying full-time employees 80% of their bonus checks this month and the remaining 20% in March or April, the documents say.

Google described the January payout as an “advance” in correspondence to employees. Leadership said it will be a one-time change due to “transition” of its employee-evaluation system and the altered timing for future bonuses.

Leave employees an”Oopsie” Post It note…

…“We hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Mr. Pichai said in a note to employees posted on the company’s website.

They’ll get over it.

So the business goes and working for the woke is no protection. Whoda thunk it?

This can't be.. they have the biggest DEI department on the planet pic.twitter.com/P9K8a1T0PL

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) January 20, 2023

It almost sounds evil.