Employees at Google could soon find themselves on the chopping block if their performance doesn't meet the company’s expectations soon.

Google Cloud senior leadership reportedly told workers that the company will conduct an “overall examination of sales productivity and productivity in general.” If third quarter results don’t improve, they warned staff that “there will be blood on the streets”.

In an interview with the New York Post, Google workers said they are afraid of impending layoffs after the company extended its hiring freeze without any announcements.

Google has yet to comment on the NY Post report.

Read more: Analysis: Big Tech, eCommerce brace for staffing headwinds

Last month, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company’s plans to help improve the performance of its workers through its Simplicity Sprint program. 

“It’s clear we are facing a challenging macro environment with more uncertainty ahead,” Pichai said.

“There are real concerns that our productivity as a whole is not where it needs to be for the head count we have.”

Aside from Google’s stricter performance guidelines, the company also announced that it will freeze its hiring of new workers for two weeks. However, Google hasn’t lifted the measure even though the two-week period has already lapsed. This has left many workers in the company to fear about their job security.

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“Everyone has been talking about the company tightening its belt,” one employee said.

Google is not the only tech giant forced to adopt  stricter productivity measures due to the industry’s struggles as of late.

In July, Facebook’s parent company Meta announced that it was adopting higher standards that its workers need to meet. This is in response to the company’s recent lacklustre market performance, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg described as “one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history”.

However, several Facebook employees interpreted the measures as a threat to their employment.