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Many former Google employees have taken to LinkedIn and other social media sites to share their stories of being laid off by the tech giant. Recently, Google revealed that it is planning on cutting out 12,000 jobs, with layoffs already under way. Many of the posts reveal heartbreaking and difficult stories, including an 8-month pregnant mother.
Most of the employees who were laid off were simply notified via email or had their employee accounts deactivated with no warning.
Jeremy Joslin, a former Google software engineer who was with the company for 20 years, said it felt like a “slap in the face” when he found out he was laid off via email.
“It’s hard for me to believe that after 20 years at Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email,” he wrote in a tweet. “What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face.”
In a post on LinkedIn, Joslin added: “I never thought it would happen like this.”
Dan Russel, a former research scientist at the company said on LinkedIn: “I found out [I was laid off] when I went to work at 4AM to finish up an important analysis, and my badge didn’t work. After 17.5 years at Google, it was kind of a tough way to discover that I’d become a Xoogler.”
Katherine Wong, a former project manager at Google who is also 34-weeks pregnant, found out that she had been laid off in an email.
“The first thought that came to my mind was ‘Why me? Why now?’ It was hard to process and digest,” she said.
Former employees have also expressed distaste at the way Google handled the layoffs, with Joslin writing on LinkedIn: “Being let go via a transactional email without any acknowledgement of your personal time or impact on the company is a difficult way to go out. A little bit of compassion and personal touch can go a long way.”
Elizabeth Hart, a senior marketing manager on Google’s global ads team has been working at the company since 2007. She said that she found out she had been laid off when she checked her phone on Friday morning, while “bleary eyed and still half asleep,” and saw a notification saying that her corporate access had expired, alongside one for a New York Times article about the layoffs.
Another former employee who was laid off wrote on LinkedIn that big tech companies saw employees as “100% disposable.” Justin Moore had been an engineering manager at Google for 16 years and found out that he was laid off when his account automatically deactivated.
He added: “Live life, not work.”
A Growing, Worrying Trend
Google is not alone in its layoffs. Riot Games, Spotify, Microsoft, and Meta have also been seeing major layoffs as of late. The trend is worrying for the tech, gaming, and entertainment industry. It also signals that the world is entering a difficult period economically.
It also shows that despite any amount of loyalty, anyone can be laid off in an instant. Many of the laid off employees included staffers that “had previously received high performance reviews or held managerial positions with annual compensation packages of $500,000 to $1 million,” The Information reported, citing managers at the company.
Employees at Google affected by the layoffs will be given 16 weeks of severance as a base with the addition of two weeks for each year of service at the company.
Still, it certainly is painful to the many stories of engineers, managers, and staffers at Google and many other companies.
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