Last week, Google included top performers and company veterans in a major round of layoffs, and impacted employees were notified of their fate via email in the early morning hours.
Sundar Pichai, the chief executive officer of Google, acknowledged “full responsibility” for the decision to eliminate over 12,000 employees, or more than 6% of the parent company’s total staff.
Former Google engineering manager Justin Moore was among the throng of laid-off employees. He stated in a scathing LinkedIn post that he found he was unemployed when his account was “automatically deactivated at 3 a.m.” Moore had been employed by Google for over 16 years.
“This further emphasizes that work is not your life, and that companies, especially large, faceless corporations like Google, view you as completely expendable. “Live your life, not your work,” Moore wrote last Friday.
The corporation followed other corporate titans, such as Microsoft and Amazon, in laying off employees during a big downturn in the tech industry.
A similar scenario was described by Jeremy Joslin, a Google software engineer over the past two decades.
“I find it hard to believe that after 20 years at #Google I received an email informing me of my last day,” Joslin wrote on Twitter. What an insult to the face. I wish I could have bid farewell to everyone in person.”
It’s hard to imagine that after 20 years at #Google, I received an email informing me of my last day. What an insult to the face! I wish I could have said farewell to everyone in person.
#layoffs
Jeremy Joslin (@jcj) tweeted on January 20, 2023
Alan Skelley, a software engineer with more than 15 years of experience at the company, reported losing access to his company accounts in the middle of the night without warning.
Skelley stated, “Waking up to my laptop being wiped and my corporate access revoked seemed a bit harsh, but I suppose a disgruntled engineer can get up to no good.” “We presumably possess the nuclear codes and the keys to the death ray laser.” With this magnitude of layoffs, you must play the numbers game.”
Other former Google employees said that they never received the email announcing their termination prior to losing access to their accounts, or that they learned about the massive layoffs only after reading initial news stories.
“Today, my more than 15-year adventure at Google abruptly came to an end,” wrote senior marketing manager Elizabeth Hart. “While still half asleep and bleary-eyed, I checked my phone and saw a notification that my corporate access had expired alongside a New York Times notification announcing the layoffs.”
Among the hundreds of employees affected by the layoffs were personnel who “had previously received high performance reviews or held managerial positions with annual compensation packages ranging from $500,000 to $1 million,” according to managers quoted by The Information.
The layoffs at Alphabet followed a terrible 12-month period in which the company’s shares fell about 30 percent. The stock losses exceeded those experienced by the market as a whole.
In a statement sent to employees on Friday, Pichai stated that the business performed a “rigorous review across product areas and functions to ensure that our people and roles are aligned with our highest priorities as a company,” including a greater emphasis on artificial intelligence technologies.
Pichai stated that the eliminated positions were a result of the review. They span Alphabet, product categories, functions, levels, and geographies.
Pichai stated that affected employees will receive a variety of perks, including 16 weeks of severance pay and an additional two weeks for each year of service.
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