A Google employee, who took leave from the company, to take care of his terminally ill mother, was laid off. Paul Baker, who worked at Google as Video Production Manager, revealed he was fired while he was on carer’s leave. His laptop’s connection was cut off but when he logged in through his personal computer, he discovered that he too had lost his job in the recent layoffs. There have been a dozen stories that shed light upon how sudden layoffs can impact the lives of people. A woman who had given birth to a child was laid off while she was still at the hospital. Another couple lost their jobs in a similar fashion.
Baker revealed that his mother is suffering from terminal cancer and he had taken a month’s leave to take care of his ailing mother. During his holiday, he was informed about the layoffs by his friend. Soon after the mass layoffs were announced, Baker discovered that his work laptop had been cut off so he switched to his personal laptop to check the mail. That is when he got to know that he has been impacted too in the layoffs.
“With the advent of 12k Google employee lay-offs on Friday and reading numerous hard-breaking/inspiring stories, I’m ready to share my story.While on carer’s leave for my immediate family member’s terminal cancer, I too was laid off. After the initial shock it morphed into sadness because I miss the people. I miss immersing myself into my Google career and culture,” Baker wrote on LinkedIn.
Baker told Business Insider that he was always concerned about Google being overstaffed. However, he did expect the company to take up other cost cutting measures instead of layoffs. He thought he will be safe because he was a part of Google Ads, a revenue-generating unit of the company.
One Google employee, who was laid off, revealed he worked as a recruiter at the company. He got to know about getting laid off when his call with a potential candidate was cut off abruptly.
On January 20, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said via an email that then company is laying off 12,000 employees. “Over the past two years we’ve seen periods of dramatic growth,” he said. “To match and fuel that growth, we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.”
