"A Slap In The Face": Google Engineer On Being Laid Off Via Email After 20 Years Of Service

Tech giant Google is laying off 12,000 employees, or 6 per cent of its workforce. Impacted by the job cut, a software engineer named Jeremy Joslin working in the tech giant since 2003 was laid off. The company gave him the news over an email.

In a tweet, Mr Joslin wrote, "It's hard for me to believe that after 20 years at #Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email. What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face."

In a LinkedIn post, Mr Joslin added, "I never thought it would happen like this."

On Friday, Google and Alphabet CEO, Sundar Pichai shared the difficult news with its employees. "We've decided to reduce our workforce by approximately 12,000 roles. We've already sent a separate email to employees in the US who are affected. In other countries, this process will take longer due to local laws and practices," the message read.

Mr Pichai said, "Over the past two years we've seen periods of dramatic growth. To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today."

Alphabet's job losses affect teams across the company including recruiting and some corporate functions, as well as some engineering and products teams.

The news comes during a period of economic uncertainty as well as technological promise.