Google and YouTube owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) is facing calls by the UK’s highest paid fund manager to cut staff and salaries.
Christopher Hohn, managing director at TCI which holds a stake worth US$6bn in Alphabet, said “the company has too many employees and the cost per employee is too high” in a letter to Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, outlining his views.
“We are writing to express our view that the cost base of Alphabet is too high and that management needs to take aggressive action,” explained Hohn.
He added: “Compensation at Alphabet was 67% higher than at Microsoft and 153% higher than the 20 largest listed technology companies in the US.”
Hohn’s calls for job cuts comes at a time when mass layoffs are becoming increasingly common at large tech companies.
Around 30,000 people are facing redundancy after Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) all announced mass job cuts.
Alphabet’s workforce has roughly doubled in the last five years, currently standing at around 187,000.
In his letter, Hohn outlined improvements that he felt should be made at Alphabet, including saying it should increase its share buybacks, as well as reduce operating losses in Other Bets, its venture capital and private equity division, by 50%.