Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tells Employees They Don’t Need Money to Have Fun Amid Cost Cuts
To support his argument, Pichai referenced the days when Google was “small and scrappy.” He told employees not to equate fun with money
By | Jody Serrano | gizmodo.com
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who leads one of the world’s richest companies, very likely does not want to talk about money to his employees while the Big Tech giant is in the midst of cutting costs and slowing hiring. But, since employees asked, he wants them to do one thing: stop equating “fun” with “money.”
Pichai’s comments, made during an all-hands meeting with the entire company on Tuesday, came to light on Friday in a new report from CNBC, which obtained an audio recording of the meeting. At the meeting, which Pichai held in New York with a live audience of Googlers, employees asked the CEO why the company was “nickel-and-diming” them by restricting travel and cutting entertainment budgets and perks, especially at a time when the company had “record profits and huge cash reserves.”
In response, the Google chief said the company was simply “being a bit more responsible” amid one of the toughest macroeconomic situations of the past decade.
At another point in the meeting, Pichai spoke about how cost-cutting affected fun at work. He referenced the days when Google was “small and scrappy” in his attempt to justify changes to the company’s culture and perks.