Offended Googlers are finished being nice.
Current and former employees of the tech behemoth took to LinkedIn to vent their frustrations at the best way management has handled essentially the most recent round of layoffs — with one software engineer blasting higher-ups as lacking “one single visionary leader.”
“From the C-suite to the SVPs to the VPs, they’re all profoundly boring and glassy-eyed,” Diane Hirsh Theriault wrote on her LinkedIn page on Wednesday.
Theriault reacted to the news that Google was shedding several hundred people from its ad sales team.
Last week, the corporate shed around 1,000 employees from its Pixel, Fitbit and Nest divisions — a move that reportedly outraged staffers who were particularly upset by the undeniable fact that CEO Sundar Pichai didn’t communicate directly with those affected.
On Thursday, Pichai told employees that more job cuts are likely this 12 months, though he cautioned that they may not be on the dimensions of those from a 12 months ago.
“We now have ambitious goals and might be investing in our big priorities this 12 months,” Pichai told all Google employees on Wednesday in an internal memo that was first obtained by The Verge.
“The truth is that to create the capability for this investment, we now have to make tough decisions.”
“Call me old fashioned, but I feel that if you happen to end up in a situation where you’ll want to let someone go, you owe it to them to satisfy them face-to-face, look them within the eyes, and acknowledge their humanity,” Kenneth Smith, a former engineering manager who was let go by Google, wrote on his LinkedIn account.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned this week that more job cuts were coming this 12 months. AFP via Getty Images
Smith, who acknowledged that one supervisor followed up with him after news of the layoffs broke, wrote that he “harbored quite a lot of anger and frustration at Google’s leadership for a way they handled the layoffs” of 12,000 colleagues last 12 months.
“I don’t see quite a lot of evidence that they’ve learned much from that have,” he wrote.
Current and former Google employees took to social media to vent their frustrations at management’s handling of the recent round of layoffs. AP
Gergely Orosz, a software engineer and tech commentator, reacted to Smith’s LinkedIn post on X, blasting Google as a “faceless corporation.”
“Google [is] successfully cementing their fame because the place that after years of service, all you get is an email from the system that you simply’re fired,” Orosz wrote on X.
“It’s just business. They’ll fire you any time (and can, if it’s the business interest) and also you do the identical and leave any time (when it’s your personal interest),” Orosz wrote, adding: “Forget ‘loyalty’ or ‘commitment’ each ways.”
Last 12 months, Google laid off some 12,000 employees as tech corporations looked to chop costs in anticipation of an economic downturn.
On the time of the layoffs, the corporate boasted an overall global workforce of nearly 187,000 people.
An organization rep told Business Insider that it was “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the numerous opportunities ahead,” adding that organizational changes included “some role eliminations globally.”
“We’re continuing to support any impacted employees as they give the impression of being for brand spanking new roles here at Google and beyond,” the Google rep said.
Shares of Google parent company Alphabet Inc rose by greater than 2% on Friday.
