Google's director of news laid off after 13 years, plans to return to India

Google has laid off its director of news, Madhav Chinnappa. "I am leaving Google as part of the Google layoffs," Chinnappa said in a post on LinkedIn on Saturday. Google has joined the league of tech firms that are cutting jobs to deal with the global slowdown. Chinnappa said he was proud of what he had been able to achieve during his almost 13 years at Google.

"From Digital News Initiative (which wasn’t just a Fund - though a wise person did say that it helped kickstart a European media R&D culture) to the Google News Initiative Innovation Challenges - and of course Ludovic Blecher’s brilliant idea: JERF, the Journalism Emergency Relief Fund which showcased the best of Google: helping where it could when a vulnerable part of the news ecosystem needed it most and involving 300 Googlers," he said. 

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Chinnappa, who worked from London, said he plans to take a month off before exploring new opportunities or considering the next steps in his career. "And what now: I am in the privileged position of being able (to take) some time to figure that out. In the near term, I have some pressing family issues that need my fuller attention, so in the spirit of the Zen proverb that the tea cup must be empty before it can be full, I will take August off, then spend September looking after my mum in India and only start thinking about work in October with a view to doing more things in 2024." 

Around 12,000 people were affected worldwide by the mass layoffs Google announced in January this year, and again last month, the company announced job cuts at its mapping app Waze. Since then, stories of the employees affected by the layoffs have been emerging on social media. 

Some employees were laid off while on their maternity leaves, and others received the pink slip while on vacation. Notably, even some top Google employees, including the company's Mental Health Head, were among those who lost their jobs as part of the downsizing.

Economic challenges have affected the tech ecosystem in the worst way possible, and the news of layoffs coming in almost every day is a sign of it.

In January this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the firm had decided to reduce its workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. He said over the past two years, the company had seen periods of dramatic growth. "To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today." 

"As an almost 25-year-old company, we’re bound to go through difficult economic cycles. These are important moments to sharpen our focus, re-engineer our cost base, and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities," he had said.

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