Google tells employees to use AI at work or risk falling behind in the tech race
News Mania Desk / Piyal Chatterjee / 22nd August 2025
Google is encouraging its employees to use AI in their daily job, cautioning that those who don’t adjust run the risk of falling behind in a market where competitors are already advancing more quickly. Whether they agree or disagree, staff at the tech giant have reportedly been instructed to deploy AI to increase productivity, according to a Business Insider story. While some employees are enthusiastic about the change and others are reluctantly following orders, the management’s message is clear: AI is now crucial, according to a Google engineer who spoke to the journal.
The pressure is a reflection of the larger reality in Silicon Valley, where big businesses are vying for customers’ attention by incorporating generative AI tools into their workflows and products. Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized at an all-hands meeting last month that the company must step up to the task or risk falling behind as rivals advance AI.
“We are competing with other companies in the world,” he told staff, adding that only those who increase efficiency through AI will remain competitive. Pichai also pointed to data showing that engineers’ weekly productivity hours had already risen by 10 per cent since the company rolled out AI tools internally.
Other technology firms have delivered similar messages. In June, Microsoft told staff that “using AI is no longer optional,” while Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy wrote to employees saying corporate headcount would shrink as more work is handled by AI agents. Shopify’s Tobi Lutke went further, saying it is a “fundamental expectation” that employees use AI, and before teams request extra staff, they must prove that tasks cannot be completed with AI.
This opinion is supported by Meta’s chief technology officer, who recently informed employees that engineers who become proficient with AI technologies and prevent themselves from being supplanted by them will “command a premium.” The CEO of GitHub has also cautioned coders to “get out of your career” or embrace AI.
An expanding collection of internal AI technologies at Google is keeping pace with the urgency. Google is working hard to integrate AI into software engineering, according to Brian Saluzzo, who oversees the teams that provide the groundwork for the company’s major products. He mentioned an internal program called “AI Savvy Google” that provides training sessions, toolkits, and courses in addition to Cider, a coding assistant that has already been embraced by half of the staff members who have access.
Saluzzo told staff that Google’s internal AI tools would only “get better” and would soon become “a pretty integral part of most SWE [software engineering] work.” He added: “We feel the urgency to really quickly and urgently get AI into more of the coding workflows.”
Google is also making strategic hires to strengthen its AI capabilities. Earlier this month, it acquired startup Windsurf in a $2.4 billion deal, bringing in co-founder Varun Mohan and other senior engineers. Pichai described them as a team that would “end up helping a lot in this area as well.”



