After learning that the mass layoffs announced on Friday included her position, a Google employee who is eight months pregnant stated she could not “control her shaky hands.” Katherine Wong, a program manager at Google since November 2021, disclosed to Insider that she would be taking a maternity leave starting the following week.
Google announced on Friday that it was firing roughly 12,000 workers or about 6% of its global workforce. Wong wrote on LinkedIn that when she checked her phone and saw that she was “one of the impacted 12,000,” her “heart sank.” “The first thought that came to my mind was, “Why me? Why now?” Wong wrote.
Wong, a San Leandro, California resident, stated that creating a plan for the future was her “first instinct” as a program manager. But because “the timing is really bad,” she would have to say that this was “one of the most difficult projects” she has ever worked on.
Wong claimed that looking for a new job is “almost impossible” at 34 weeks pregnant. Despite being fired, Wong maintained that she loved the organization and her team at Google Domains. She expressed gratitude that they still “got my back” and described her coworkers as feeling like “family.”
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“Texts and calls have been flooding in for the whole day. People are concerned about my baby and wellbeing,” Wong posted on LinkedIn.
Wong told Insider that while she valued the “opportunities and growth” she experienced while working for Google, she was troubled by the company’s choice to fire “a woman in her last piece of pregnancy.”
Google has delayed its Program Electronic Review Management
Google CEO Sundar Pichai said in his email to colleagues that he accepted “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.” “Over the past two years, we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” he wrote. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.
An inquiry from Insider for comment was not met with an immediate response from Google. Recent reports claim Google has delayed its Program Electronic Review Management (PERM), a crucial step in obtaining an employer-sponsored green card. As if the news of widespread layoffs at big software businesses wasn’t worrying Indian techies working in the United States enough.
Google has informed its international staff through email that it will halt all new PERM applications, leaving workers in a precarious situation. A crucial first step in obtaining a green card (permanent residence) is submitting a PERM application.
Employers must prove there are no competent US workers available for the specific post to proceed with the process, which has become a more challenging position for us to defend, given the current state of the labor market.