Google's 'star performer' of the month in Hyderabad laid off: 'Why me?'

Harsh Vijayvargiya shared a few snaps of his first day at Google. (Image credit: LinkedIn)

Harsh Vijayvargiya's heart skipped a beat on Saturday when he received an email notification on his phone from Google Operations Center. The email stated that the employee from Google's Hyderabad office was laid off.

Vijayvargiya is one of the 12,000 employees the tech giant has decided to lay off following market uncertainties and recession.

Although he was the star performer of the month, like many others, he too had a question for Google. "My first question was 'why me' even though I was the star performer for the month still why me? And there was no answer at all!" Vijayvargiya wrote on LinkedIn.

Sharing how the layoff has affected him, the former Google employee and father of one wrote, "My salary is half for two months! My financial plans are completely ruined! This took place on Saturday and it took me two days to get the strength to jot this down and now I have to fight back for survival."

Vijayvargiya is not alone in this struggle.

Read more: 'Layoffs are particularly hard for women over 40, like me': Staffer fired after 15 years at Google

Aakriti Walia a Google Cloud program manager based in Gurgaon and mother of one was also laid off recently.

"As I celebrated my 5-year Googleversary just a few days ago, little did I know it would be my last," she shared.

Walia got to know that she had lost her job when a message popped up on her computer while she was preparing for a meeting. "The 'access denied' message on my system left me numb as I was preparing for my meeting just 10 mins away. My initial reaction was of denial, then 'why me'," Walia wrote on LinkedIn.

She noted that although it's been a few days since the layoff, she's begun to accept the decision and move on, but until she finds another job, the impact that it has had on her family has been difficult.

"As I plan the road ahead from here, the next hardest thing for me right now is -- how do I make my six-year-old daughter understand why mumma's not going to work? Well, that will take its own sweet time," Walia wrote.

Read more: After 15 years with Google India, employee gets laid off during video call at work: 'I was in denial'