Google Cloud will reportedly unfreeze hiring by October amid an industry-wide hiring freeze and layoffs.
According to Business Insider, Brad Calder, Google Cloud’s vice president of technical infrastructure, sent a memo to employees to inform them of the change. Calder said the company was unfreezing hiring “for a few areas.”
“We plan to complete this process by the start of October,” he added.
At the same time, Calder said leadership will provide employees “clearer prioritization across our top priorities” for the coming year.
“We have too many Code Yellows and Purples, too many Horizontals, and we have some key programs where the requirements won’t be figured out until we get deeper into understanding them,” he wrote.
According to Insider, “Code Yellow” is a problem severe enough that it could result in outages over the next quarter, while “Code Purple” issues could escalate to Code Yellow within the next year if not fixed.
Google CEO Thomas Kurian has made it clear he wants to leap-frog Microsoft to become the number two cloud provider in the US within the next few years. The company has made impressive headway and is popular among developers.
A long-term hiring freeze could have severely impacted Kurian’s plans, depriving the company of the talent it needs to continue taking on its larger rivals. Unfreezing hiring is likely a smart move to help the company continue its current growth.