At an all-hands meeting last week, Google employees questioned leadership about cost cuts, layoffs and "morale" issues following the company's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report.
The internal strife continues despite Alphabet's better-than-expected first-quarter earnings report, in which the company also announced its first dividend as well as a $70 billion "To many people, there's a clear disconnect between spending billions on stock buybacks and dividends and re-investing in AI and retraining critical Googlers," the post said.
"The problem is a couple of years ago — two years ago, to be precise — we actually got that upside down and expenses started growing faster than revenues," said Porat, whonearly a year ago that she would be stepping down from the CFO position but hasn't yet vacated the office. "The problem with that is it's not sustainable."Google's core business challenges, saying "things are not like they were 15 to 20 years ago," and urged employees to work faster.
By contrast, distributing cash to shareholders is not considered an expense on the balance sheet, she said, adding that the board has a fiduciary duty to consider such measures. Buybacks and dividends don't replace investments in AI, Porat said."I think you almost set the record for the longest TGIF answer," he said. Google all-hands meetings were originally called TGIFs because they took place on Fridays, but now they can occur on other days of the week.