In a post on LinkedIn, the Google employee expressed his disappointment and frustration with the timing of the layoff, stating that it felt like ‘a slap in the face, like being hit when you’re down.’
Google employee fired
A Google software engine has stated he was fired by his employer just days after he returned to work following his mother’s death. Tommy York, who is based in San Francisco, wrote in a LinkedIn post that his mother died in December after battling stage-four cancer.
He shared his disappointment with corporate cultures that are insensitive to employees’ mental health. “I was laid off from Google last week. I found out on my fourth day back from bereavement leave,” the man said on LinkedIn on January 26. “I’m tired and disappointed. It felt like a “slap in the face, like being hit when you’re down.”
The techie looked back on his “challenging” time at Google. He disclosed that he joined the company in December 2021 and his mother was diagnosed with cancer the following February.
“Onboarding at Google is challenging, there’s a lot of ‘just figure it out’,” he said. “It was even more difficult when also dealing with my Mom’s chemo appointments, moving her in with family, or the extremely challenging last few months of her life.”
He further said he was grateful he spent time with his mother instead of “overworking” for a company that would sack him suddenly. “There will always be more opportunities to work at exciting companies, but a parent dies only once,” he wrote.
Google Layoffs
Google employees were fired recently when the company suddenly stopped offering access to employees who worked at the company for decades. Sundar Pichai, later in an internal meeting, explained why the company fired 12,000 employees without prior notice. He claimed that he had to accomplish the action before things got worse. Other executives in the meeting claimed that the decision had to be made.
Pichai said, “If you don’t act clearly and decisively and early, we can compound the problem and make it much worse.” He added, “These are decisions I needed to make.”
He also assured that the job cuts were finalized after careful consideration. He assured that even the company’s leadership would see a “significant reduction” in their annual bonus this year.
