Even as tech giant Google continues to cut staff, one laid-off Indian employee explained that the layoffs are not based on merit.
In a LinkedIn post, Google India employee Animesh Swain explained that pink slips were also sent to employees with the highest ratings. The list also includes names who have recently been promoted.
“The people who managed to stay (myself included) aren’t necessarily any better than those who got fired,” Swain was quoted as saying in the post.
Another employee, Aakriti Walia from Gurugram, who worked as a Google Cloud program manager, was fired just 10 minutes before a meeting.
“The ‘Access Denied’ message on my system left me stunned as I prepared for my meeting in just 10 minutes,” Walia posted on the professional networking platform.
“When I celebrated my five-year Googleversary a few days ago, I didn’t know it would be my last,” she said.
Previously, Jennifer Vaden Barth, a creative strategist at Google, said the layoff “hit very talented and highly rated professionals.”
Barth, who worked at Google for 15 years, said that “layoffs hit women particularly hard, especially women over 40”.
Meanwhile, to further reduce costs, Google has even asked employees returning to work to share their desk with a “partner” to maximize office space.
Google India recently laid off more than 400 employees. The layoffs at Google India were part of larger job cuts that have affected 12,000 of the company’s employees worldwide.
Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai denied the layoffs were “accidental” and had previously said he was “deeply sorry” for downsizing the workforce.
In an email to staff, Pichai said he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that got us here.”
The layoffs at Google’s parent company were expected amid the deepening funding winter that has hit companies of all sizes amid global slowdown and recession fears.