Around 12,000 — or 6% — of Google employees were laid off on Friday, but not everyone saw the "abrupt and impersonal" email before commuting to work. And so some employees who missed the memo — at least in New York and Chicago — only found out they were canned when their badges wouldn't let them into their office. Nice.
Employees, at least one who was at the company for 20 years, have described the way they were let go as "inhuman," "cold," "a slap in the face," and that left at least one person with "shaky hands."
From Insider:
One laid-off Google employee, a software engineer who requested anonymity to speak freely, told Insider that he witnessed one of his co-workers repeatedly try to scan his employee badge to get into Google's Chelsea, New York office, only for the card reader to turn red and deny him entry.
His colleague was clearly confused, the former employee told Insider, and after his badge failed to work, he walked past reception toward the staircase that led up to the office, where he was met by a security guard who escorted him out. …
A third laid-off Google employee told Insider that a team midway through an off-site at the Chicago office discovered that two of their team members had been laid off when they were unable to badge into the office with the rest of the group. …
Security guards also told employees to badge in individually at the building in Mountain View, California, on the morning of the layoffs, an additional source familiar with the matter told Insider.
One laid-off software engineer told Insider that getting laid-off via email was "a slap in the face." Another worker said she couldn't "control her shaky hands" after she learned she was being let go. Google is still hiring, but laid-off employees must apply externally like any other candidate, which another software engineer said he didn't plan on doing after the "inhuman" way the layoffs were communicated.
