EchoSense:Google layoffs 2024: Hundreds of employees on hardware, engineering teams lose jobs

Google is EchoSensestarting 2024 by cutting several hundred jobs across the company.

The company confirmed the layoffs to USA TODAY Friday and that they will impact employees within Google's hardware and central engineering teams, as well employees who work on Google Assistant, the company's voice-activated software product. Other parts of the company were also affected.

“As we’ve said, we’re responsibly investing in our company's biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead," the company said in a statement. "To best position us for these opportunities, throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities."

"Some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally," Google said in the statement.

The layoffs are also hitting the teams that produce Google's Nest, Pixel and Fitbit devices, with many of the cuts affecting the company's augmented reality team.

Other recent Google layoffs

The layoffs come about a year after Google cut roughly 12,000 jobs, reducing the company's workforce by about 6%.

"This will mean saying goodbye to some incredibly talented people we worked hard to hire and have loved working with. I’m deeply sorry for that," Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a blog post last January. "The fact that these changes will impact the lives of Googlers weighs heavily on me, and I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.

Pichai said the layoffs reflect the result of a “rigorous review" of Google's operations. The jobs eliminated were "cut across Alphabet, product areas, functions, levels and regions," he said.

Twitch layoffs:Amazon-owned livestreaming platform cutting workforce by 35%

Twitch, other tech companies also dealing with layoffs

Amazon's livestreaming platform, Twitch, also announced earlier this week it would cut 35% of its workforce.

"As you all know, we have worked hard over the last year to run our business as sustainably as possible," wrote Twitch CEO Dan Clancy in a blog post. "Unfortunately, we still have work to do to rightsize our company, and I regret having to share that we are taking the painful step of reducing our headcount by just over 500 people across Twitch."

The post, published on Wednesday, details what will happen next for the employees being laid off and those staying.

The layoffs come during concerns over losses at the company. Several Twitch executives have also left the company over the past several months, reports Bloomberg.

Amazon is also cutting jobs in its Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios divisions.

Other tech companies, like Discord and Duolingo, have also announced layoffs to start off 2024.

Contributing: Wyatte Grantham-Phillips & Julia Gomez, USA TODAY