A Google engineer with 5 years of experience tells that found out she was fired while on vacationafter receiving a message on LinkedIn from his boss.
The former employee — who asks to remain anonymous for fear that speaking to the media could harm her future job prospects — says she was on vacation with her family and had not checked any of her work emails.
Your identity and your dismissal from Google have been verified by Business Insider.
“Some friends randomly texted me to see how I was doing, but I thought they just wanted to know how my vacation was going.. It did not occur to me that they wanted to know if I had been fired or not. Nobody told me what had happened, I was completely unaware,” he shares with Business Insider In an interview.
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The engineer says that she ended up reviewing one of her 2 personal emails, when she realized that her boss had sent her a message on LinkedIn.
“I was like ‘oh my goodness’. There was no reason for him to try to contact me on LinkedIn. Why not send me an email or a chat message? There are many other ways to contact me,” she says.
“So I knew immediately. My heart sank when I saw it,” he recalls.
Her boss apologizes in the message he sent her and informs her that she has been fired, according to her. The manager explains that he had no other way of contacting her and that the dismissal notice had been sent to him at 5:00 in the morning to his second personal emailwhich he rarely consults.
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Business Insider you have reviewed a copy of the layoff notice you received.
“It was like a whirlwind of emotionsBecause I couldn’t get in touch with anyone. In addition, that it did not occur on your own terms and that it was abrupt, without closure or explanation, it was very hard, “he laments.
“I think it’s hard to spend so much time and energy building something for someone else and make them earn money with your work so that later they ignore you and let you go so easily,” he adds.
She is one of 12,000 people laid off by Google in a major cost-cutting effort by the tech giant. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai sent an email to staff on January 20 saying that employees were being laid off globally in various divisions and functions.
The former employee points to Business Insider that “morale was already very low” before the redundancies due to benefit cuts, as well as increased pressure to perform, so he had not planned to stay with the company much longer.
However, she considers that the way in which the technology giant has executed the layoffs is “horrible”: “I know that it is difficult to carry out a layoff of this magnitude, but I am convinced that they could have done better, at least to give people some dignity and notice.”
In addition, he says he heard that an employee who had avoided dismissal later resigned because he was upset with the way the company had handled the matter.
“People are very upset about what happened and I think that everyone, even those who work the most, are very nervous,” he describes.
