Google's layoffs affected 52 positions in Washington state.

      According to a WARN notice submitted on Wednesday and initially reported by GeekWire, Google is laying off approximately 52 employees in Washington state. The notice does not provide reasons for the layoffs, only indicating that they are permanent and not due to work being relocated or outsourced.

      The positions affected encompass various engineering roles within the company, including software engineers, product managers, mechatronics engineers, UX designers, and recruiters. The impacted employees are located across seven buildings in Kirkland, Redmond, and Seattle, with three more working remotely. Notifications began on July 8, and the layoffs will take place from early September to October 4.

      This marks Google's first significant workforce reduction in Washington since 2023. In January of that year, Alphabet, Google's parent company, eliminated 12,000 jobs globally, which accounted for 6% of its workforce, though it did not specify how many were in Washington.

      Washington serves as one of Google's largest engineering centers outside its California headquarters. The company established offices in the state over 20 years ago, working on products such as Android, Chrome, Cloud, Maps, and Ads. Earlier this summer, Google also made cuts to its Google Cloud division, including within cybersecurity teams, as reported by Business Insider, without disclosing the number of affected employees.

      The timing of the WARN filing is particularly notable, coinciding with the departure of four of Google's most senior researchers—Jeff Dean, Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and Oriol Vinyals—who left to start their own companies, with two also starting a venture fund.

      At the highest levels, Google is losing key figures who contributed to its AI development, while at lower levels, it is issuing WARN notices for engineers responsible for delivering its products. Both these developments occurred within the same week.

      Financially, Google is not constrained, with guidance indicating up to $205 billion in capital spending this year, primarily on AI infrastructure. In contrast, the impact of 52 salary reductions is minimal. The WARN filing illustrates where the company is choosing to reduce headcount rather than indicating any inability to support it.

      Google is not the only company making cuts in Washington; Zillow announced this week that it is laying off 91 employees, primarily among senior staff, as part of its largest round of layoffs this year. Microsoft and Amazon have also downsized their Washington workforce in multiple rounds over the past year.

      Earlier this year, Google employees expressed concerns over job security as the company increased its focus on AI. The filing in Washington reflects a quieter chapter of the same narrative, with the 52 layoffs representing a small figure in a state where the tech industry has been reducing its workforce over the past two years.