Google's parent company Alphabet Inc has laid off 12,000 employees across teams. The announcement was made on January 20. Employees have now started posting on social media platforms about how the layoffs have been conducted poorly.
A software engineering manager named Justin Moore, who worked at Google for nearly 17 years, found himself out of a job when his account was deactivated at 3 am.
“I appear to have been let go via an automated account deactivation at 3 am this morning as one of the lucky 12,000. I don't have any other information, as I haven't received any of the other communications the boilerplate 'you've been let go' website (which I now also can't access) said I should receive,” Morre wrote in a LinkedIn post.
He further added how companies see employees as "100 percent disposable".
“This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100 percent disposable. Live life, not work,” the post further read.
Many employees like Moore have put out on LinkedIn that they just woke up one morning to work as usual and found that their account has been deactivated, indicating that they have been laid off.
In her LinkedIn post, ex-Google programme manager Katherine Wong, who is eight months pregnant and just one week away from her maternity leave, wrote that when she learned she was one of the 12,000 employees let go by the business, her "heart sank." She also mentioned that the news was more shocking as it came after a positive performance review.
"The first thought that came to my mind was 'Why me? Why now?' It was hard to process and digest,” she added.
Another employee Nishant Kelkar, a San Francisco-based software engineer at Google wrote in a post, “Chaos. That is an accurate description of my mental state when I saw the email notice this morning. Why me?, What now?, Omg, my financial responsibilities!, But...now the competition to get a new job...on and on and on. All these things, constantly circulating in my thoughts in random order.”
Although the employees have also posted that they are thankful for the opportunity in Google and had great learning experience and can do nothing about the layoffs, but the process is being questioned.
Bonnie Dilber, recruiting leader at Zappier, wrote on LinkedIn that with Google's layoffs she noticed that instead of the "grateful for my time" posts, more employees actually call out how these layoffs were conducted — poorly.
“If you have to go through the difficult decision to conduct layoffs, do right by your people. Give them the courtesy and dignity of a real conversation with a real live human. Let them cry or scream or be mad at you. Answer their questions. Make sure they can access the resources available to them,” she wrote.
The company's leadership accepting "full responsibility" for extensive layoffs, on the other hand, is "little consolation," according to Alphabet Workers Union, for the 12,000 employees who are currently without jobs.
First Published: Jan 23, 2023 6:03 PM IST
