While Google has so far avoided the widespread job cuts that have hit other tech companies like Meta, employees have grown anxious if they could be next.And in November, a number of employees in an all-hands meeting asked for clarification on executives' plans around headcount, and even asked if executives mismanaged headcount when Google grew its workforce by 24% year-over-year in Q3 2022.How do we prevent this from happening in the future?” “The support check-in process is confusing, increasingly becoming a cause of stress and anxiety in Googlers, especially given the current economic situation and rumors around layoffs,” said another top-rated employee question.“It’s not ideal to have support check-ins occur so late in the review cycle and we know that people need time to absorb the feedback and take action on it,” admitted Cicconi, adding that “Googlers should have plenty of time to course-correct.” Several employees also asked executives whether they had quotas for placing people in lower performance categories in order to reduce headcount in 2023.One question asked executives if Google was becoming “a stack-ranking company like Amazon,” referring to the process of using quotas to place employees in certain performance buckets."