Google has conducted a mass layoff of employees who are part of the recruitment group, The New York Times reports. The recruiting group had more than 3,000 employees, but this year the layoff trend affected it as well.

The cuts are an indication that the company will continue with the preventive measures that many other tech giants are also taking to maintain their presence in the tech market, despite doubling their investment in artificial intelligence and spending much more than they have alongside their employees.

According to a post seen by The New York Times, the employees were called into a last-minute meeting where they were told they would be laid off.

Brian Ong, vice president of recruiting, told the employees that he wanted them to hear the news from him personally.

The company says the cuts are not part of large-scale layoffs, but other Google units may also decide to reduce their number of positions.

Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s chief executive, has been criticized by current and former employees for the way he has carried out the latest cuts. He had told his employees about the layoffs in the middle of the night. But that’s not all – he immediately revoked employees’ corporate access.

The competition that is being felt between the tech giants around the development of artificial intelligence is starting to affect employees. Companies are laying off their employees en masse, and the goal is one – to cut costs so that there is more budget to create AI technologies. Is this the right decision and will AI replace the need for humans forever? Questions that redundant employees keep asking themselves and whose answers are frightening.