Yes, and they're still hiring too, while doing this at the same time.
As a person who worked there for a long time, I never thought it was a good idea how rapidly they hired and never felt they needed that many people.
But the layoff process has been sadistic.
And the people who made the decisions to hire like crazy are not paying the consequences. In fact it feels very much like they're using this as an opportunity to push the median average age and compensation level of their staff down. Moving more and more positions to lower cost regions, and hiring younger developers while ditching higher paid senior staff.
Today's Google really sucks.
>> the people who made the decisions to hire like crazy are not paying the consequences
They should have been first out the door, but Sundar is part of the problem.
This is incorrect thinking. Over-hiring is very easily corrected. You are weighting the 'human' in human resources too much. It's 'resources' that gets the emphasis.
This is a success at Sundar's level.
> In fact it feels very much like they're using this as an opportunity to push the median average age and compensation level of their staff down.
They're doing exactly that, veiled in euphemisms like "making our talent pool more reflective of our user base."