Google employees are scrambling for answers after layoffs hit the long haul

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Google employees are seeking answers from leadership and colleagues as the company suffers a massive layoff.

On Friday, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was shedding 12,000 employees, about 6% of its full-time workforce. As employees were preparing for a potential layoff, they are questioning leadership over the criteria for layoffs which has surprised some employees, who have woken up to find their access to company property cut off. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-serving or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide which jobs would be cut.

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

The company has provided a FAQ about layoffs, which CNBC has seen, but employees have complained that it doesn’t provide much detail on many responses. Employees flooded Dory, the company’s question platform, and created virtual communities to figure out who got fired and why. The directors told employees to hold questions for town hall next week.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The scramble highlights the challenges Google could face in maintaining a supportive and productive corporate culture for its restless workforce of more than 160,000 full-time employees. Further clashes are possible, as the company has said it plans to lay off international employees, but has yet to determine which ones.

So far in the US, employees have been laid off in business units including Chrome, Cloud and its Area 120 experimental unit. Some employees working on the company’s AI programs have also been laid off, according to Bloomberg.

A list of top-voted employee requests, displayed by CNBC, contained timely questions for executives.

How were the layoffs decided? Some high-performers have been fired from our teams, one of the top-voted questions read. This negatively impacts the remaining Googlers who see someone with high recognition, positive reviews, promotions but still get fired.

What metrics were used to determine who was fired? another top voted question read. Was the decision based on their performance, scope of work, or both, or something else?

Another asked: How much catwalk do we hope to gain from layoffs? and would you explain clearly what allows Google to do the layoff that Google couldn’t have done without the layoffs?”

Another much appreciated statement from CEO Sundar Pichais, stating, I take full responsibility for the decisions that have brought us here.

What does taking full responsibility entail? an employee asked Dory. Responsibility without consequences seems empty banality. Is leadership forgoing bonuses and pay raises this year? Will anyone quit?”

Some employees have come together on their own, organizing ad hoc groups to try to get answers. Employees created a Google Doc spreadsheet to track who was fired and where in the company they worked.

More than 5,000 laid-off employees have started a Discord channel called Google Post-Layoffs, which spans topics ranging from venting to work arrangements and immigration to visas. Some employees have set up virtual Google meetings with people over video calls. Others have tried to arrange physical meetings.

Some have turned to the company’s in-house meme generator as a way to connect with each other, for answers and comfort.

One meme featured Mila Kunis from the movie ‘Friends with Benefits’. Kunis spoke to the Google logo, saying the line: The sad thing is, I actually thought you were different. Another meme showed former President Bill Clinton gesturing the word “zero with the headline Leadership paycut.

Alphabet’s leadership claims full responsibility for this decision, but that’s not much comfort to the 12,000 workers who are now out of work, Parul Koul, executive chairman of Alphabet Workers Union-CWA, said on Friday. that he made a profit of $17 billion dollars in the last quarter alone.

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