After recently laying off members of support teams working on Google Cloud products, the company plans to hire more than 200 more support staff, some of whom will be based in cheaper markets, say internal communications seen by Insider.
Google Cloud support staff help customers and engineers tackle problems with the company's cloud services. Last month, Google told some of its support staff that their roles were being terminated, though the exact number of layoffs could not be determined. Multiple sources at the company previously told Insider the number was in the dozens, possibly over 100. The Alphabet Workers Union also said the number was "around 100."
The move led to backlash within Cloud, which eventually bubbled up to the company's TGIF all-hands. Now, the company plans to hire for more than 200 new positions in other locations by the end of this month.
"The Global Google Cloud Support team is growing significantly — we have 200+ hires to make for our growth sites in Bangalore, Pune, Warsaw, Waterloo and Mexico City by the end of April to ensure we can meet our H1 Goal," said an email sent to some employees by John Bunney, the senior managing director of global advanced support at Google Cloud.
A recent internal newsletter also said Google Cloud was hiring 212 "advanced support team" positions, including at its newest location in Pune, India. The internal newsletter also asked for employees, including those who had previously worked in support and transferred to other organizations, to help with the interview process.
"We've been rapidly growing our customer-facing teams, including support, for the past several years — we're continuing to do so, particularly in high-growth markets," a Google spokesperson told Insider in a statement.
There are dozens of open positions for full-time technical solutions engineers on Google Cloud's website. The roles are in locations such as India, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Poland, and South Korea. The company is seeking people skilled in Java, C, C++, Python, Shell, Perl, or JavaScript.
Insider previously reported that Google was planning to outsource many of the roles it had made redundant. The cuts also hit support teams on Looker, a data-analytics unit under Google Cloud, which it acquired in 2020. It's unclear how many of the new roles will be contractors.
Morning Brew reported that some employees unwittingly trained their replacements, and that Google planned to rely more on outsourced labor through contractors.
Google has given laid-off employees 60 days to find a new job at the company. But some employees told Insider that this was already proving difficult because of their specific skill sets.
"Everyone is applying for site reliability engineer roles, but the bar is way too high," said one employee, who added that they'd given up hope of getting a new job at Google.
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