Layoffs begin in Ontario corridor

Most employees worked on Stadia video game service

Less than a week after announcing disappointing fourth quarter results, Google parent company Alphabet has started trimming jobs in Canada.

The job cuts, which are part of a 12,000-person downsizing announced in January, began to take effect this week, company spokesperson Lauren Skelly confirmed via email.

While Skelly wouldn’t comment on the size or location of the cuts in Canada, it appeared that many of the job losses were in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, and involved people who had worked on the company’s now-shuttered cloudbased video game service, Stadia, judging by postings on LinkedIn and other social media.

“Working at Google was a dream of mine, and I’m heartbroken. Never have I worked somewhere more challenging, more supportive, and more rewarding,” Janice de Jong, a user experience researcher wrote on LinkedIn.

“Turns out that I’m part of the Google Canada layoffs today, along with an enormous percentage of the incredibly talented people I had the pleasure of working with over the last four years. Between this and the Stadia shutdown, it’s certainly been a difficult few months,” Matthew Esper, a software engineer wrote.

At Kitchener-based tech incubator Communitech, CEO Chris Albinson said there’s been an influx of job seekers posting their CVs on Communitech’s Help List, as a wave of downsizing sweeps across the tech sector, including Alphabet’s cuts.

“We are definitely seeing more people figuring out their next adventure,” Albinson said. “There were 100 people on the help list in November. This morning, there were 430.”

If there is an optimistic note to be sounded, Albinson said, it’s that there are still many tech sector companies hiring.

“There are still a lot more job openings than there are people who are looking,” Albinson said,

noting that there are 8,400 openings on Communitech’s job board.

Albinson also said the WaterlooToronto “innovation corridor” is still the second-biggest tech hub in the world, after Silicon Valley, and that it has a bright future.

Still, he didn’t try to sugar-coat the struggles for the tech industry, which has seen layoffs everywhere from well-known companies like Shopify, Facebook, Alphabet and Twitter to smaller players.

On Tuesday, pandemic superstar Zoom announced that it would be cutting 1,300 jobs, or 15 per cent of its worldwide workforce.

“This too shall pass. But it’s going to be a tough year, there’s no getting around that,” Albinson said, adding that getting told you’re out of a job is a traumatic experience.

“On a personal level, it sucks. It does really hit you, there’s no question about it,” Albinson said.

Last week, Alphabet announced profits had fallen more than 25 per cent in the fourth quarter, dropping to $13.6 billion (U.S.) compared to $20.6 billion a year earlier.

In a conference call with analysts after announcing the results, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said the company would still be spending money, but would be more careful about how and where it’s spending.

“We are committed to investing responsibly with great discipline and defining areas where we can operate more cost-effectively,” Pichai said.

In a late January blog post announcing the cuts, Pichai said the economic downturn was the biggest reason for the job losses.

“Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today,” Pichai wrote.