Ruth Porat, Alphabet CFO
Adam Galica | CNBC
Google’s finance chief Ruth Porat recently said in a rare companywide email that the company is making cuts to employee services.
“These are big, multi-year efforts,” Porat said in a Friday email titled: “Our company-wide OKR on durable savings.” Elements of the email were previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.
In separate documents viewed by CNBC, Google said it’s cutting back on fitness classes, staplers, tape, and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees.
One of the company’s important objectives for 2023 is to “deliver durable savings through improved velocity and efficiency.” Porat said in the email. “All PAs and Functions are working toward this,” she said, referring to product areas.
The latest cost-cutting measures come as Alphabet-owned Google continues its most severe era of cost cuts in its almost two decades as a public company. The company said in January that it was eliminating 12,000 jobs, representing about 6% of its workforce, to reckon with slowing sales growth following record headcount growth.
Cuts have shown up in other ways. The company declined to pay the remainder of laid-off employees’ maternity and medical leaves, CNBC previously reported.
In her recent email, Porat said the layoffs were “the hardest decisions we’ve had to make as a company.”
“This work is particularly vital because of our recent growth, the challenging economic environment, and our incredible investment opportunities to drive technology forward— particularly in AI,” Porat’s email said.
Porat referred to the year 2008 twice in her email.
“We’ve been here before,” Porat’s email stated. “Back in 2008, our expenses were growing faster than our revenue. We improved machine utilization, narrowed our real estate investments, tightened our belt on T&E budgets, cafes, micro kitchens and mobile phone usage, and removed the hybrid vehicle subsidiary.”
“Just as we did in 2008, we’ll be looking at data to…
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