Google has laid off its director of mental health and wellbeing in ongoing job cuts that will affect 6% of its workforce. The tech giant is currently in the process of laying off 12,000 employees, including senior managers like Kristin Maczko, head of the company’s mental health division, who has been with Google for 15 years.
Maczko started working with Google as a data scientist in 2008 before moving to finance. She was appointed director of mental health and wellbeing at Google in July 2021 – a position she held until her role was eliminated last week.
In a LinkedIn post announcing her layoff, San Francisco-based Mackzo said serving as director of Google’s mental health initiative was a “dream role” that allowed her to apply her “psychology training in an organizational context to improve the wellbeing of Googlers.”
“I have had so many emotions these past few days,” Maczko wrote on LinkedIn. “I am sad to leave the many friends and colleagues who I have worked with at Google.”
She said that several employees of Google’s mental health and wellbeing team had been laid off. “To those who remain, Googlers need you more than ever now, and I am excited to see what you will do,” she wrote.
Google announced on January 20 that it would lay off about 12,000 employees, with CEO Sundar Pichai saying “we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
