A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it was “shocking coming from Google” and that the organisation was effectively “ghosting employees” by not announcing that promotions had been scrapped.
They said it also left them in the dark about whether promotions would be on the table again in six months.
“Should these people who have been working really hard and sacrificing family time to get that promotion keep doing that? You need to give people certainty… this isn’t the Google that we joined,” the source said.
A spokeswoman for Google disputed the characterisation that promotions were cancelled, but she could not provide the number of promotions that would be made this round to Australian employees.
“There will be promotions in our cloud go-to-market division. We do not break down the numbers by region or market,” the spokeswoman said.
“We also continue to invest in our people through development programs, internal mobility opportunities, and more.”
The source said around 10 per cent of their team received a promotion in the previous round, which were handed out to reward two to three years of hard work in a role.
Global redundancies
The move to scale back Google’s budget for promotions comes after the company fired 12,000 employees – about 6 per cent of its workforce – a year ago. Smaller ongoing redundancy rounds have been reported across the global business this year.
In January, Google chief executive Sundar Pichai warned employees that additional roles could still be cut throughout the year as the company improved its profitability and focused on AI.
“The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices,” Mr Pichai wrote in a note to employees.
“Many of these changes are already announced, though to be upfront, some teams will continue to make specific resource allocation decisions throughout the year where needed, and some roles may be impacted.”
A Google spokeswoman said Mr Dias had chosen to leave Google Cloud.
“Under his leadership, we’ve significantly grown our business, continued our investment in local infrastructure and are strongly positioned to capture the AI opportunity,” she said.
“Alister has been an important part of our growth story in Australia and New Zealand, and we wish him the very best in his next adventure.”
Trailing AWS and Azure
IBRS analyst Joe Sweeney said Google continued to trail its arch-rivals AWS and Microsoft’s Azure by a “significant margin” in Australia, a position that made it harder to convince companies to buy Google’s AI technology.
“IBRS rarely sees Google Cloud being shortlisted as a core cloud platform by mid-to-large Australian organisations, despite having competitive pricing,” Mr Sweeney said. “This is not the case in other markets, especially India and South-East Asia.”
Part of Google’s challenge in Australia is due to how it positions itself in the market, Mr Sweeney said, arguing Google is selling all the parts of an AI strategy but not the vision.
“While Microsoft is great at marketing to its existing client base, Google tries to sell on its capabilities. In short, its competitors are selling sizzle and Google offers warmed-up cow,” he said.
“Google’s services are at least as capable as its rivals and great value. But it does not effectively position them in a way that excites the people who hold the ICT [information and communication technology] budget.”
Mr Sweeney noted that more IT professionals know how to manage Microsoft servers and develop on Microsoft code, “so they trust Microsoft more”.
“Yes, it’s resume-driven decision-making, not strictly rationale, but it is shaping the market,” he said.
