Big Tech has gone through a rough stretch of layoffs — between Meta, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft, 51,000 people have lost their jobs since November 2022, including 12,000 cuts this month at Alphabet alone.
Alphabet’s layoffs didn’t hit its health care teams head on: Rather, laid-off employees told STAT, the cuts were scattered across the company. But given the sheer scale of the layoffs, and the span of teams they impacted, there’s now a spate of ex-Alphabet employees with health expertise now on the hunt for jobs. In interviews with STAT, former employees said ex-Googlers’ expertise could come in handy for health care organizations increasingly trying to bring their technology systems up to speed.
“Most of health care is about 15 to 20 years behind us in terms of infrastructure modernization,” said Esteban López, a physician at Hopscotch Health and healthcare and life sciences market lead at Google, who was laid off this month. “Data tends to be siloed, and it’s either unstructured or unorganized.”
This article is exclusive to STAT+ subscribers
Unlock this article — and get additional analysis of the technologies disrupting health care — by subscribing to STAT+.
Already have an account? Log in
Already have an account? Log in
About the Author Reprints
To submit a correction request, please visit our Contact Us page.
STAT encourages you to share your voice. We welcome your commentary, criticism, and expertise on our subscriber-only platform, STAT+ Connect