Featured Image Credit: @nicolesdailyvlog/TikTok
Topics: Google, Technology, Life, TikTok
Daisy Phillipson
Topics: Google, Technology, Life, TikTok
A former Google employee has vlogged the day she got 'blindsided' when she became one of the thousands of workers who got laid off by the tech giant.
Unfortunately, Nicole's story is not a standalone incident – it's actually very far from it.
On Friday (January 20), Alphabet - Google's parent company - announced it was planning to cut 6 percent of its global workforce.
That's approximately 12,000 people who have or will be laid off at a time of economic struggle in the US.
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Rather than giving everyone fair warning that their time at the company was set to end, numerous ex-workers have claimed they were simply locked out of the system and rather coldly told they no longer had a job.
One software engineer who spent 20 years at Google said he was given the bad news via an email, something he described as a 'slap in the face'.
And Nicole was faced with a similarly unfortunate situation.
The TikToker, who shares 'day in the life' videos as a tech employee at Google, used the same format while opening up about her experience getting laid off.
She kicks off the video by sharing screenshots from a text exchange, with the first message stating: "Hey Nicole feel free to give me a call."
Alongside the footage, she explains: "I woke up to this really ominous text from my boss and I honestly had no idea what it was going to be about."
However, after a quick *ahem* Google, she soon found out about the mass layoffs.
She then rushed downstairs where she discovered that she'd lost access to 'basically everything' work related, and could no longer login to her email or check her calendar.
"I called my boss and we just sobbed over the phone because she was also finding out about my layoff for the first time today too," she says.
As the morning continued, Nicole started to receive calls from other coworkers who had lost their jobs.
The worst part of all for her is the fact that it seemed 'like no one was consulted' about the decision and everyone was just finding out about it at the same time.
She compared it to Russian Roulette in terms of who was let go, saying: "It was also not performance based so it just felt really random."
Nicole decided to take a look at Linkedin where she saw a number of other former Google employees were 'equally as blindsided' by the whole thing.
As many others would, the TikToker spent 'most of the day crying'. But thankfully she was able to turn it around with an impromptu trip to Disneyland.
Honestly, we can't think of many better things to cheer yourself up with – it's pretty hard to be miserable at the House of Mouse.
Nonetheless, there's no denying it's one crappy situation to be put in, with many people sharing their support for Nicole in the comments section.
"It’s wild to me companies as wealthy as Google does this," said one. "At the very least they should give a two week notice AND a generous severance package."
Another wrote: "Blows my mind how big techs like Google will always have endless revenue and still layoff people. Just shows how little they care about their workers."
"These layoffs are ruthless," commented a third, while a fourth added, "I'm so sorry love."
UNILAD has contacted Google for comment.