Google Cloud to unfreeze hiring process in October

Google Cloud is in the process of unfreezing the company's hiring pause in "a few areas" at the fast-growing cloud giant, according to a recent internal memo sent to employees.

By October, Google Cloud plans to "complete" the unfreezing of employee hiring in some areas, which was first implemented across parent company Google in July.

Brad Calder, vice president of Google Cloud Platform and technical infrastructure, said in a memo to employees that executive leaders in certain cloud teams were still trying to restart the hiring process in a few Google Cloud areas as of September.

"We plan to complete this process by the start of October," Calder said in his memo, which was obtained by CRN.

Google added 10,000 employees in Q2

In July, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said Google Cloud's parent company was temporarily pausing hiring employees.

"We'll be slowing our hiring and sharpening our focus as a company," said Pichai at the time.

However, it appears that Google's red-hot cloud business would not feel too big of an impact in terms of the company-wide hiring freeze, as Google would still be hiring technical talent.

"We are still focused on hiring engineering, technical and other critical roles," Pichai added.

In the second quarter of 2022, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said the company added more than 10,000 employees to its head count.

"With respect to Alphabet head count, we added 10,108 people in the second quarter with the majority of hires for technical roles," said Porat.

Google's CFO said although the company would "slow the pace of hiring" in its second quarter, Google expects "our actions on hiring to become more apparent" in 2023.

"Our head-count additions in the third quarter will reflect we already have a strong number of commitments, including new graduate hires," said Porat.

The Mountain View, California-based company's third fiscal quarter ends 30 September 2022.

Google also on-boarded thousands of new employees from Mandiant, which the company officially acquired in September for $5.4 billion in a blockbuster security move.

"Although we expect the pace of head-count growth to moderate next year, we will continue hiring for critical roles, particularly focused on top engineering and technical talent," said Porat.

Google cloud sales growth and operating loss

Google Cloud generated $6.3 billion during its second quarter of 2022, representing an increase of 36% year over year.

However, Google Cloud reported a loss of $858 million during second-quarter 2022, compared with a loss of $591 million in second-quarter 2021.

Google Cloud business includes Google's infrastructure and platform services, collaboration tools and other services for customers.

A version of this story first appeared in Computing's sister title CRN.

Pichai has been steadfast in recent years about technology being the focus and long-term vision for the company as a whole.

"With an uncertain global economic outlook, our strategy to invest in deep technology and computer science to build helpful products for the long term is the right one," he said in July.