Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta were once counted among the safest places to work, but not anymore. Alphabet’s Google just carried out the biggest layoffs in its history and Microsoft has announced that it will lay off 10,000 employees in FY 2023. Together, they have fired nearly 50,000 employees. Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, fired over 11,000 employees in November last year.
Firings by these tech giants have shocked the employees for various reasons – such as the way they have been fired, and no respect for loyalty. Many are also angry at Google as it fired people despite posting a $17 billion net profit in the September quarter. Upset with the layoffs, fired employees said the board should sack Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Some of the employees who have been fired have served the company for 20 years. As the employees come to terms with what just hit them, a debate has begun on whether people should carry a sense of loyalty to the companies they work for if in the end firms are ruthless in cutting costs.
Ankur Kesharwani, a software engineer at Walmart, said one employee worked for 21 years at Microsoft and another 16 years at Google. “If these loyal employees could get laid off in a blink without any prior intimation then, Don’t judge candidates’ loyalty based on their past frequent switches. When a company doesn’t value loyalty then why should the employees be loyal? Agree?” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Suraz G, a data engineer, went further ahead and suggested all that the employees should now care about is money. “Even after spending 20 years at Google, many employees were laid off. That’s someone’s entire Life. What can be the best joke of Loyalty,” he said. “Lesson Learned: A Company is not your Home and you are never a part of a family. Stop Glorifying about companies’ work culture. Work for money n move on (sic).”
Many sacked employees have expressed their shock at the firing as they never thought that Google would take any such decisions, because of the growth and stability.
A day after the announcement, Pulkit Pahwa, lead program manager at Google, said: “Yesterday was a day of disbelief finding out friends and colleagues you worked with for years were laid off.” She further said that like every other tech company, the employees would fear that it was coming, “but would just brush it off, thinking ‘nahh, Google wouldn’t do it’, but they did.”
Anusha Bayyarapu, an HR professional, said she was also unfortunately one of the 12,000 employees who were laid off. She said it was extremely disappointing for all as this came as a sudden shock.
Google also fired an employee who was eight months pregnant. The news of layoffs came as a shock to Katherine, who was one week closer to seeing her baby and was about to go on leave. “However, the moment I checked my phone, my heart sank,” she wrote on LinkedIn.
Justin Moore, an engineering manager at Google, spent 16.5 years at Google. He was fired via an automated account deactivation at 3 am. He did not receive any other communications. He, in a post, said: “This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposal. Live life, not work.”
Moumita Mukherjee, director-Talent Acquisition at Talent500, said she had been associated with Microsoft for the longest time and had always taken immense pride in their leadership, governance, and technical craft. But, she said, the company swept her off the feet with 10,000 massive layoffs.
In a detailed post, she asked what is the meaning of stability today if global IT giants like Microsoft, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google cannot withstand one storm of recession and choose to trash away their employees like dry leaves, who they hired after 7 to 11 rounds of interview, multiple approvals, and training.
“What will you write as your “EVP” when you plan your next hiring drive? Do you think just paying more than services companies will be appealing enough to talents now? Because we have seen that you certainly cannot continue to pay that salary forever,” she asked – a question clearly directed at the top leaders.
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