Job layoffs can be difficult for people to cope with and can have a range of emotional effects. People may struggle to find ways to express their disappointment and difficulty. But it seems Google employees have found a good coping mechanism to deal with the stress and support each other at the workplace amidst the ongoing testing times. This mechanism is humour. Some Google employees shared memes to comfort each other. Some of these employees also created spreadsheet to keep a count of job cuts.
As soon as Google announced 12,000 lay offs, the employees began questioning the leadership and basis of these job cuts. According to a CNBC report, the company provided an FAQ for the layoff but the employees were unsatisfied with the answers. Dory which is the company’s question asking platform was swamped with questions from employees related to the layoff wherein they raised questions like how was the layoff decided or what was the basis for layoffs? One of the employees also questioned a statement from Pichai’s email that read- ““I take full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
“What does taking full responsibility entail?” an employee asked on the questioning platform. “Responsibility without consequence seems like an empty platitude. Is leadership forgoing bonuses and pay raises this year? Will anyone be stepping down?”
One of the memes seen by the news website shows Hollywood actress Mila Kunis from her film Friends with Benefits wherein she is telling Google logo- “The sad thing is, I actually thought you were different.”
Another hilarious meme features former US President Bill Clinton gesturing the word “zero” with the title “Leadership paycut.”
Following the layoff, some Google employees made a spreadsheet to understand how many and across which departments were the layoffs happening. According to the report, employees created a Google Doc spreadsheet to track the employees affected by the layoff.
Some employees came together to organise ad hoc groups for finding answers while some held virtual and physical meetings for the same. Reportedly, over 5000 fired Google employees started a Discord channel titled Google post-layoffs to discuss over topics like labour organizing and immigration issues.
Google last week announced nearly 12,000 layoffs affecting over 6 per cent of its global workforce. The list of laid off employees also includes names of those who received high-performance reviews or held senior positions with annual compensation packages from $500,000 to $1 million.
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