A former Google employee has documented the moment she got to know she has been laid off by the tech giant. In a video uploaded on YouTube and TikTok, Nicole Tsai, who was a Program Manager at Google, revealed that she figured out she had been fired when she woke up to an "ominous" text message from her boss and found her access to the company properties had been cut off.
"I rushed downstairs to find out that I had lost access to basically everything. I couldn't log into my email or even check my calendar," Ms Tsai said in the YouTube video titled 'Day in my life getting laid off at Google'. "I called my boss back and we just sobbed over the phone because she was also finding out about my layoff for the first time today too," she added.
Watch the video below:
The former Google employee said that she spent most of her day crying and scrolling through LinkedIn to read about other employees who were also impacted by the layoffs. She said that she started receiving calls from her co-workers as well as she discovered who else was let go.
"I think the worst part is that it seems like no one was consulted on this decision, and everyone was just finding out about the layoffs at the same time. It just felt like a really bad game of Russian roulette," Ms Tsai said in the video. "There was no consistency around who was let go. It was also not performance based so it just felt really random," she added.
At the end of her video, Ms Tsai also stated that she felt "so tired from being sad" that she decided to visit Disneyland to lift her mood. She also stated that she is not sure what she will do next.
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Meanwhile, according to her LinkedIn page, Ms Tsai had been working at Google since July 2021. In her post, she said that she was "completely blindsided" after finding out she was being let go, but added that "there is some comfort knowing I'm not the only one".
Google last week announced it's in the process of laying off 12,000 employees. Some of the staff realised they lost their jobs when they were unable to access the systems. Chief executive officer (CEO) Sunder Pichai has stressed the cuts were made after careful consideration. He also stated that Google will "support" employees as they look for other opportunities.
