Some of Google’s 12,000 laid-off staff included workers making seven figures, The Information reported.
Google managers told the outlet that some who lost their jobs included those earning between $500,000 and $1 million a year.
The average salary for a manager at the tech giant in the US was about $165,000, according to employment website Indeed.
“We hired for a different economic reality than we face today,” Pichai said in an email to all employees on Friday, and took “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
The tech giant last month brought in a new “support check-in” policy that an anonymous Google employee described as a “compassionate-sounding euphemism for a performance warning mark on your personal record.”
The source told Insider the new rating system amounted to a “talking-to” from managers to employees: “It’s a sign that you need to shape up, or start looking for another job soon.”
According to The Information, Google told managers to put more employees into low-performing categories during performance reviews.