'Don't equate fun with money,' Pichai's advice to staff

New Delhi: Google has slashed the budget for employee travel and entertainment after reporting weaker-than-expected earnings for the second quarter in a row. The change has not gone down well with the employees, who recently sought answers from CEO Sundar Pichai, seeking clarifications on managing productivity, the company's austerity on the leisure budget as well as layoffs.

Pichai has reportedly told the employees that money and perks aren't everything and that they should be looking for fun at work instead of agonising over a reduced budget for recession and employee benefits.

A report revealed that Pichai had faced questions from the employees about cost-cutting at an all-hands meeting held last week. A highly-rated question -- in such meetings questions are submitted and then rated by fellow participants -- by Google, employees asked Pichai on why the company was "nickel-and-diming employees" by slashing travel and other budgets when "Google has record profits and huge cash reserves" coming out of the Covid pandemic.

Responding to the question, Pichai asked employees to stay together to face such macroeconomic conditions. "How do I say it? Look, I hope all of you are reading the news, externally. The fact that you know, we are being a bit more responsible through one of the toughest macroeconomic conditions underway in the past decade, I think it's important that as a company, we pull together to get through moments like this," says Pichai in an audio clip. He then added, "I remember when Google was small and scrappy. We shouldn't always equate fun with money. I think you can walk into a hard-working start-up and people may be having fun and it shouldn't always equate to money."

Moving through the intense all-hands meeting, Sundar Pichai sounded annoyed at some moments and even went on to say, "We don't get to choose the macroeconomic conditions always".

Pichai also commented on Google slowing down the hiring process. He again hinted that Google has way too many people and that productivity doesn't reflect these numbers. "I think you could be a 20-person team or a 100-person team. We are going to be constrained in our growth on a looking-ahead basis. Maybe you were planning on hiring six more people but maybe you are going to have to do with four and how are you going to make that happen? The answers are going to be different for different teams," added Pichai.

Of late, companies -- including tech companies -- are tightening their belts because of the adverse macroeconomic conditions. Across the world, interest rates are inching upwards and the easy money that has fuelled startup culture is no longer available as abundantly as it was a few years ago. This has led many tech companies, including Google and Facebook, to slash some perks and go slow on hiring.