A woman who worked with Google for five years found out she was laid off while vacationing with her family, Insider reported. Her manager sent her a message on LinkedIn, telling her she had been sacked.
The engineer, who requested anonymity, said she was unaware of the layoffs but then people started reaching out to her to see how she was doing.
"It didn't occur to me that they were checking to see whether or not I had been laid off," she told Insider. "Nobody told me that happened, I was just blissfully unaware."
After she received those messages, she went through her email account and saw that her manager had messaged her on LinkedIn. She said at that moment, her heart sank. She knew immediately what the message was about.
The manager informed her that she was indeed being let go. He added that an email had been sent at 5 am, but it went to another account -- the one she said she rarely checks.
He apologised to her and said there wasn't another way for him to contact her.
Though the professional said she wasn't planning on staying at Google for much longer, the abrupt manner of her termination was hard to process.
"It was like a whirlwind of emotion because I just couldn't contact anybody," she told Insider. "Also to have it happen not on your terms and have it be abrupt with no closure and no explanation was really hard".
She expressed dismay at being "brushed off and let go" that easily, despite her hard work.
Google has sacked 12,000 people across departments and seniority levels. While announcing the layoffs last month, CEO Sundar Pichai said over the last two years, company had hired people to match its drastic growth, but the situation it faced at present was different.
Many employees shared their stories online. One worker was sacked soon after he returned from a leave to mourn his mother's death from cancer. Another was in the advanced stage of her pregnancy when she was fired.
A recruiter at Google was given a termination notice in the middle of a work call.
Read their accounts here:
Google employee sacked after his mother died of cancer: ‘Slap in the face’
8 months pregnant woman sacked by Google: 'Couldn't control shaky hands'
Google recruiter laid off in the middle of a call: ‘Dream job, did not expect…’
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