“It was only a few days ago that I celebrated my 5-year Googleversary, little did I know it would be my last,” wrote Aakriti Walia, a Google Cloud programme manager based in Gurgaon. She is one of the 12,000 employees recently laid off by the tech behemoth. When a message appeared on her computer as she was preparing for a meeting, she realized she had lost her job. “The ‘access denied’ message on my system rendered me speechless as I prepared for my meeting, which was only 10 minutes away. My initial response was denial, followed by “why me?” “Walia posted a message on LinkedIn.
Although it has only been a few days since her layoff, she has begun to accept the decision and move on, but the impact on her family has been difficult until she finds another job. “As I plot my next steps, the next most difficult thing for me is figuring out how to explain to my six-year-old daughter why Mumma isn’t going to work. That, however, will take its own sweet time “Walia penned a letter. Walia is one of thousands of Google employees who are reeling from a mass layoff and the manner in which it was carried out.
Another Google employee in India was laid off while on a work-related video call. The employee had spent her entire 15-year career with the tech giant, and she even met her husband there. However, the manner in which she was laid off left her in a state of denial. Deepti Krishnan, Google’s HR operations manager, said she kept refreshing the page in the hopes that the call had been dropped due to an internet outage. “After spending half my life here, Google is the only employer I’ve ever known (such is my loyalty that even my work experience was here,” Krishnan wrote on LinkedIn.
“I was in denial when I was abruptly disconnected from my video call only to discover I was staring at a ‘access denied’ page. I kept refreshing the page hoping it was my internet that was acting up. When the page refreshed, I saw an email informing me that my time here had come to an end. An image that will most likely stay with me for a long time, “She posted about it on LinkedIn.
WHY GOOGLE IS LAYING OFF PEOPLE?
Some of the world’s largest technology companies have collectively laid off over 150,000 workers in recent months. The businesses involved have given a variety of reasons for why this was necessary, which mostly boil down to a need to cut costs as global economic growth slows.