Google laid off thousands of employees in January. While some started looking for new opportunities immediately, others preferred taking a break before starting their new venture.
Google announced laying off 12,000 people in January this year, sending shockwaves across the tech industry. Thousands of employees took to LinkedIn and described their experiences. While some recalled receiving the layoff mail suddenly, late at night, others revealed how they were on pre-planned leaves when they got the email.
We all know how traumatic losing a job can be and it is no secret that it has an effect on your mental health. While many ex-Google employees started looking for new jobs almost instantly, some took the time to take a deep breath and recharge before diving in to their next venture. And one such former Google executive recently shared her experience on LinkedIn.
The ex-Google employee shared on the job search platform that taking a break allowed her to recharge before getting in the job market again. She added how the job world has its own share of challenges these days and that she is trying to find a role where she can "immerse herself in enhancing processes and untangling complex problems." The ex-Google employee then shared that she "thrives" in an environment where she can put her skills to work in "streamlining operations, analyzing intricate challenges, and crafting effective solutions."
January's layoffs weren't the only round of layoffs that Google announced this year. A couple of months later, Google fired people in its Waze mapping app department as they began integrating the app into Google Maps products. Chris Philips, who heads the Geo unit of Google, informed employees about the layoffs decision via an email.
Then, in September, Alphabet, Google's parent company, had announced laying off hundreds of employees from its recruiting team. The exact number of affected employees was not made public, but the company said that it is not part of a wider layoff and that it will retain a significant majority of the team for hiring critical roles. Alphabet also said that it is helping the affected employees find new roles within the company and elsewhere.
More recently, a Google employee resigned after working there for about 18 years. He penned a blog post about his layoff in which he wrote that Google was not the company that it was before and that CEO Sundar Pichai "lacked visionary leadership."
He added that the tech giant's work culture begin to "erode" as time passed. Giving an example, he wrote that the decisions that were once made with the best interests of users in mind were increasingly being made with the goal of maximizing profits. Transparency, which was once a hallmark of Google's culture, began to "evaporate". He also wrote that the company's leadership, under the direction of Pichai, became "increasingly out of touch with the rank-and-file employees."