Google employees scramble for answers after layoffs hit long-tenured

[superadmin]

Google employees scramble for answers after layoffs hit long-tenured and recently promoted employees

• As Google announced a companywide layoff, employees said they unexpectedly found their access cut off.
  
• Employees have rallied to find out who’s been laid off while demanding answers from leadership.
  
• It comes as company leadership must confront the outspoken employee base who remains.
  

Google employees are scrambling for answers from leadership and from colleagues as the company undergoes a massive layoff.

On Friday, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 employees, roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. While employees had been bracing for a potential layoff, they are questioning leadership about the criteria for layoffs which surprised some employees, who woke up to find their access to company properties cut off. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-tenured or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide whose jobs were cut.

Shortly after CEO Sundar Pichai’s initial email to employees Friday morning, Google’s search boss Prabhakar Raghavan sent an email to employees saying he “also feels the responsibility to reach out” and asking for them to save questions for next week’s town hall. There will be “bumps in the road” as the organization moves forward with the layoffs, Raghavan noted.

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