Google cuts 35% of managers overseeing small teams in past year

Google has reduced the number of its managers overseeing small teams by about 35% over the past year, according to a company executive at an all-hands meeting last week.

The company has been restructuring to cut bureaucracy and improve efficiency, with many affected managers remaining as individual contributors.

Google eliminated roughly 6% of its workforce in 2023 and has continued job cuts and buyouts in several divisions.

Ten product areas have offered “Voluntary Exit Program” buyouts to U.S. employees in teams such as search, ad, hardware, and people operations, with 3% to 5% of those teams accepting the offers.

Executives said employees often cited a desire for a career break as a reason for accepting buyouts.

Google said it does not plan to introduce a paid sabbatical policy similar to Meta’s “recharge” program, but believes its current leave policies are competitive.

🔗 Source: CNBC

🧠 Food for thought

1️⃣ Google returns to its anti-bureaucracy roots after decade of growth

The 35% reduction in small-team managers represents Google returning to its foundational skepticism of traditional management structures.

A decade ago, Google was known for being “initially skeptical about traditional management roles, favoring an engineering-centric approach” with a flat organizational structure that reduced bureaucracy2.

This philosophy helped drive Google’s early innovation culture, but the company gradually added more traditional management layers as it scaled from a startup to a massive corporation with diverse business lines.

The current cuts specifically target managers overseeing fewer than three people, suggesting Google is eliminating micro-management roles to empower individual contributors.

The timing coincides with Google’s need to compete more aggressively in AI, where the company may believe its original flat, engineering-focused structure provides competitive advantages over more hierarchical competitors.

2️⃣ Voluntary buyouts prove more effective than traditional layoffs for workforce reduction

Google’s shift from layoffs to voluntary exit programs demonstrates a more strategic approach to workforce management that employees prefer.