The severance pay Google will pay after laying off employees is staggering

Google laid off thousands of employees last year and had committed to paying billions of dollars in severance pay during this process. The company's latest quarterly report revealed these payments. According to the fourth-quarter earnings figures for 2023 announced on Tuesday, the company will pay 700 million dollars in severance pay in this quarter alone.

Google also started 2024 with layoffs. The company fired hundreds of employees from its core engineering and hardware teams. It was announced that the total amount of severance paid by the company following last year's layoffs was 2.1 billion dollars. Google, which made a profit of 86.3 billion dollars in the fourth quarter of the year, saw a 13% increase in this regard compared to the previous year. A profit of 307.4 billion dollars was announced for the 2023 fiscal year.

In January 2023, Google laid off exactly 12 thousand of its employees. Although the exact number of the company's employees is not known, this figure corresponds to 6% of the total number of employees. Company CEO Sundar Pichai shared a note with employees stating, "We have seen periods of dramatic growth over the past two years. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."

The laid-off employees received pay during the 60-day minimum notification period. They also received at least 16 weeks of severance pay plus two weeks for every year they had been at the company. Their 2022 bonuses and unused vacation time were also paid to the employees. Google is among the technology companies that hired a large number of people during the pandemic period and subsequently reduced their workforce.