A Google engineer of more than 16 years only learned he had been laid off when his company account was deactivated.
Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai announced the “difficult decision” to lay off some 12,000 workers last week. Interestingly, when making the announcement, Pichai said US-based employees had already been notified. For at least one engineer, however, that “notification” left much to be desired.
Engineering Manager Justin Moore, who worked at the company for 16.5 years, says on LinkedIn that he learned he was one of the laid-off employees when his company account was deactivated in the middle of the night:
So after over 16.5 years at Google, I appear to have been let go via an automated account deactivation at 3am this morning as one of the lucky 12,000. I don’t have any other information, as I haven’t received any of the other communications the boilerplate “you’ve been let go” website (which I now also can’t access) said I should receive.
Moore walked away from the experience with a vital life lesson, one he outlines in his post:
This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable. Live life, not work.
While it’s nice to see Moore maintaining a positive attitude, it’s hard to understand how or why his termination was handled the way it was. Any employee who has worked for a company for more than 16 years deserves to be properly notified when their services are not longer required — rather than being ghosted in the middle of the night.