{"slug": "we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s", "title": "'We Can See Your Greedy Side': 4,500 Google Workers Chant Outside Sundar Pichai's Office", "summary": "More than 4,500 Google workers signed a petition demanding stronger layoff protections and delivered it to CEO Sundar Pichai's office, chanting accusations of greed as the company posts huge profits and invests heavily in AI. The Alphabet Workers Union-led action calls for guaranteed severance, voluntary buyouts, and an overhaul of performance ratings, reflecting growing worker anxiety over job security amid tech industry cuts linked to AI-driven efficiency.", "body_md": "# 'We Can See Your Greedy Side': 4,500 Google Workers Chant Outside Sundar Pichai's Office\n\n## As AI promises to supercharge productivity, Google's workers are fighting to ensure they are not the ones quietly written out of the future.\n\nMore than 4,500 [Google](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/alphabet-market-turmoil-ai-leadership-departures-1804437) workers in the US have signed a petition demanding stronger layoff protections from the tech giant, delivering their demands to CEO Sundar Pichai's office on Thursday as staff accused the company of putting profits ahead of people.\n\nThe petition, organised by the Alphabet Workers Union, calls for guaranteed severance, voluntary buyouts before compulsory redundancies, and the option to take severance as extended paid leave.\n\nA bruising 18 months for staff across Google and its parent company Alphabet. Mass layoffs in 2023 cut thousands of roles, and this year the firm has been quietly trimming headcount in specific teams, according to multiple reports.\n\nWorkers say that, taken together, the cuts have shredded any lingering belief that a job at Google is secure, even as the company posts enormous profits and doubles down on artificial intelligence.\n\nOutside Pichai's office, employees gathered for a press conference, some holding placards, others simply raising their voices. 'Google, Google, you can't hide, we can see your greedy side,' they chanted, a pointed message to a company that built its brand on the promise of doing things differently to its rivals in Silicon Valley.\n\n## Google Staff Demand Layoff Protections As Profits Surge\n\nThe union-led petition lays out a specific set of protections. Workers want a formal commitment to robust severance packages, a transparent process that offers buyouts before any mandatory layoffs, and the right to convert severance into a period of paid leave rather than an abrupt exit.\n\nThey also want an overhaul of the company's performance rating system, which they argue is driven by quotas rather than individual merit.\n\nThat ratings issue sounds technical, but for many Googlers it has become a pressure point. If managers must hit pre-set distributions of low ratings, staff fear they can be pushed towards the exit under the guise of 'performance' even when overall business is thriving. The petition frames this as a structural problem rather than a few bad managers, and it explicitly links ratings to who is most vulnerable when cuts come.\n\nAfter marching to deliver the petition, Parul Koul, president of the Alphabet Workers Union, did not soften her language. 'This is a company enjoying massive, unprecedented success,' she said, arguing that 'these layoffs and cuts are not difficult decisions, but simply profit being put over the people that make this company run.' That is not the message Wall Street wants to hear, but it is one that has become increasingly common inside big tech.\n\nGoogle did not issue a detailed public response to the petition in the material provided. Koul said staff were 'greeted with closed doors and no response for the most part' at Pichai's office.\n\nInstead, the document was handed to a member of staff who, according to the union, described it as 'the largest piece of employee feedback that Google had received about job security' and promised to pass it on to the Google and Alphabet chief.\n\n## Google Workers Push Back Against AI-Era Layoffs\n\nThe protests at Google are playing out against a broader wave of [tech layoffs ](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/big-tech-layoffs-ai-blame-1808389)that executives often link, directly or indirectly, to AI-driven 'efficiency.'\n\nMicrosoft recently announced 3,200 job cuts, half of them immediate and the rest expected over the next financial year. Meta has shed 8,000 roles this year. Oracle, in its latest [annual report](https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-layoffs-skyrocket-highest-level-since-pandemic-tech-giants-blame-ai-40-cuts-1805380), disclosed that 21,000 staff had gone over a 12‑month period and explicitly tied those reductions to AI deployments that 'resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce'.\n\nOn paper, Google looks like the last company that needs to squeeze labour. Its market capitalisation has quadrupled in the past six years, reaching an estimated $4.3 trillion (£3.2 trillion). It is pouring money and talent into AI, positioning itself as a leader through Google DeepMind and its Gemini models. From the outside, it can feel like the high-water mark of the tech boom, not a firm in retrenchment.\n\nInside, the story is murkier. Workers see bumper share prices and ambitious product roadmaps, then watch colleagues quietly disappear from org charts. There is anxiety that the same AI tools executives celebrate will eventually be wielded as a justification for leaner teams, thinner benefits and more precarious work.\n\nDemis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, has tried to push back on that logic. Speaking earlier this year, he argued that if engineers become 'three or four times more productive,' the correct response is to 'do three or four times more stuff,' rather than to replace them. He criticised companies that treat AI mainly as a way to cut headcount as showing 'a lack of imagination.'\n\nWorkers at Google are not betting their futures on corporate imagination alone. The Alphabet Workers Union's petition is, in effect, an attempt to hard‑code protections before any next round of cuts.\n\nThey are not claiming that layoffs are illegal, and nothing in the available material confirms that further redundancies are imminent, so any predictions about future job losses should be taken with a grain of salt.\n\nWhat they are saying, loudly and on the record, is that a company richer than almost any in history can afford to give its staff more than a cardboard box and a security escort when the tide turns.\n\nWhether Pichai engages with that argument or simply files it away as another piece of 'employee feedback,' will be watched closely not just at Google, but across a tech industry where the age of untouchable, lifetime jobs are fading fast.\n\n© Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s", "canonical_source": "https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichais-office-1809324", "published_at": "2026-07-18 12:56:57+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-18 13:07:01.400803+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-ethics", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Google", "Alphabet Workers Union", "Sundar Pichai", "Parul Koul", "Microsoft", "Meta", "Oracle"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/we-can-see-your-greedy-side-4500-google-workers-chant-outside-sundar-pichai-s.jsonld"}}