When Google offered 300% hike to retain employee who wanted to work at…

Google once offered an employee a 300% hike in salary. Why? The employee was planning to switch jobs to Perplexity AI, its CEO Aravind Srinivas, said on the Big Technology Podcast while talking about the length to which big tech companies go to retain their employees.

Aravind Srinivas said that the employee who received the salary hike was part of the ‘search team’. They did not even have any direct involvement with its AI division, he said.

This come as as Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned employees of more more job cuts as he said that the company needs to make “tough choices” to create capacity for investments going forward.

In an internal memo to all Google employees, Sundar Pichai wrote, “We have ambitious goals and will be investing in our big priorities this year. The reality is that to create the capacity for this investment, we have to make tough choices.”

Google has reportedly laid off over a thousand employees in various departments since January 10. Sundar Pichai had announced plans to cut approximately 12,000 jobs- 6% of its global workforce- earlier.

“I have some difficult news to share. We’ve decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We’ve already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices,” he said.