谷歌首席执行官在发给员工的电子邮件中说，谷歌旗下的导航和地图服务公司Waze将裁员5%，即555名员工中的30人。Waze还将关闭其在亚太和拉丁美洲地区的多个办事处，以寻求将业务重点重新放在某些市场上。

Waze说，裁员的部分原因是冠状病毒的流行，它已经清空了世界各地的道路，并导致许多城市进入封锁状态。随着避难所和在家工作成为新的常态，越来越少的人使用Waze来满足他们的日常导航需求。应用程序上的眼球减少意味着公司的广告收入减少。

据报道，2013年谷歌以11亿美元收购了Waze，该公司的月活跃用户数（即每月使用该应用程序的客户数）和行驶公里数（该公司衡量客户在使用Waze时行驶距离的指标）都出现了下降。

今年4月，Waze在一篇博客文章中阐述了其中一些数字下降的严重程度。在全球范围内，与2月份相比，3月份开始实施封锁时，Waze的客户开车里程减少了60%。意大利跌幅最大，达90%。美国也下跌了约60%。

但随着疫情的蔓延，这些数字变得更糟。Waze说，在封锁期间，全球每周行驶公里数一度下降了70%。自今年6月以来，随着限制取消的国家的人们重返工作岗位，Waze开始看到驾驶的复苏。在全球范围内，该公司表示，它已恢复到COVID之前的驾驶水平。

Waze公司首席执行官诺姆·巴丁（Noam Bardin）在邮件中说，Waze公司将“重新考虑优先事项”，“我们决定将资源集中在为用户改进产品上，加快对技术基础设施的投资，并将销售和营销工作的重点重新放在少数高价值国家。”

该公司成立两年的拼车服务Waze Carpool也受到了影响。随着越来越多的人在家工作，越来越少的人使用Waze Carpool与同事或其他在类似路线上工作的邻居一起乘车。因此，Waze正在减少其独立拼车服务的人数。一位发言人说，今年早些时候，Waze有望在全球范围内完成每月100万次的拼车出行，而现在公司离这还差得远。

收到解雇通知的30人中，大多数来自公司的销售、市场营销和合作部门。但这并不是永久性的裁员：Waze表示，计划在未来几个月为其技术和工程团队招聘相当数量的员工。

Waze还关闭了在马来西亚、新加坡、哥伦比亚、智利和阿根廷等国的办事处，以期将更多的业务重点放在业务增长的国家。这包括美国、英国、法国、巴西、加拿大、意大利和墨西哥。

Waze显然不是唯一一家在流感大流行期间遭遇裁员的科技公司，甚至运输公司。Uber、Lyft、Yelp、Mozilla、Kickstarter、Lime、Sonos、Glitch和其他几十家公司都在流感大流行期间裁员。由于美国失业率仍保持在8.4%（尽管实际数字可能要高得多），仍有数千万人失业。

Waze意识到在流感大流行期间裁员是残忍的。该公司表示，它承诺在2021年初之前为那些被解雇的员工提供一个缓冲，包括遣散费、奖金和医疗保险。

以下是Waze首席执行官Noam Bardin致员工的完整说明：

Dear Wazers,

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, many cities and countries have enforced travel restricti*** to curb the spread of the disease, so it’s no surprise that our users are driving less (or have stopped altogether), leading to a significant drop in kilometers driven (KMDs), Carpools, and Ad revenue.

This has forced us to rethink priorities and we’ve decided to focus our resources on product improvements for our users, accelerate our investments in technical infrastructure, and refocus our sales and marketing efforts on a **all number of high-value countries. These investments ensure the long-term success of Waze and that we exit this pandemic stronger than we entered it.

I have always strived to maintain a transparent culture at Waze, so I want to share with you that in order to continue and accelerate our investment in Engineering and other technical positi***, I have decided to close 30 roles in other parts of Waze. I’m sorry this email is coming over at such a late hour but I wanted to make sure we reached out to all impacted employees first.

At a high-level, these are the impacted areas:

Ads Sales Team: The Ads team will pare back and focus on the key markets that drive 93% of revenue and carry 95% of the KMDs we sell in. This means we will be closing the on-the-ground Sales offices in APAC (Singapore, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia) and **aller LATAM markets (Colombia, Argentina, Chile). We will continue servicing these countries via increased investments in Waze Local Starter, supported by our SMB teams in our main sales hubs.

Partnership Team: Uncertainty of back-to-work plans from our employer partners and with employees continuing to work from home means that we will be shrinking the Carpool Partnerships team. Our narrowed product focus also means we’ll reduce our product partnerships and private & public sector teams.

Marketing Team: The focus on fewer markets and adjustments in our partnership investments means that we will be reducing the size of the Marketing team.

Performance Marketing Team: We are making investments in Product to support our Growth efforts and are restructuring the Performance Marketing team to realign around these efforts.

Letting Wazers go is an extremely painful process for all of us. I want to make it clear that these reducti*** are being made due to the c***traints created by the pandemic and to support investments in our focus areas, and not because of anyone’s acti*** or performance.

The leaving Wazers were a critical part of our growth up to now and it is important that we take care of those leaving as best we can. Our goal is to try and help as much as possible and ease this process for them. We’ve done our best to support those affected with a severance package that includes:

Career Transition: The Google Internal Mobility teams have been working with us and will help all impacted employees search for opportunities within Google.

Outplacement Services: We will be offering outplacement services to all impacted employees from the date of the notice through six month after employment.

Financial: Given the circumstances of the year, we have worked closely with the internal HR teams to ensure that everyone has been taken care of through early 2021 and will be eligible for year-end bonuses.

Healthcare: We are giving each impacted employee as many continued benefits as possible, in accordance with local law.

I ask that we all help in any way we can and support our colleagues, both in highlighting internal roles at Google that we may know about and external opportunities we may be aware of.

I want to thank all of the impacted team members — Waze has become what it is because of your contributi***. These changes are happening due to a global pandemic, and none of this is your fault. We have no doubt that you will bring your talents to a new team and help them become even better, as you’ve done at Waze.

Thank you.

Noam