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Google’s Unexpected Layoff Warning Email Sent to everyone
No one is safe.
Introduction
On January 17th, Google sent a company wide email warning all their employees to expect layoffs coming soon. It was an unexpected unexpected email immediately following the company’s recent 1000+ layoffs.
As a Googler, we’ll explain all the details in that email but first we’ll go through Google’s last layoff looked like.
3:00 AM Email
Google had their last layoff exactly one year ago today on January 20th, 2023. This was a sudden email sent to every employee that the company decided to layoff +12,000 employees.
This was all done in a single day without any warning. What followed afterwards was an explanation that the “decision was random” and what their severance package looked like.
6 Months of pay
For every employee laid off last year, they each received an amazing total of 6 months of pay. It was composed of multiple parts and we’ll go through the break down here:
Notification period
There was a 60 day notification period to each impacted employee. This is a notification period under the WARN act to give employees time before releasing them from the company.
Also while under this period, the employee is still “employed” with all their benefits and payroll.
As an intended consequence, this 60 days gives anyone under an international worker under an H1B1 visa extra time to find a new role before being forced out of the country
But any benefits after this period expires depends on the company.
Extended severance
16 weeks of severance was given to anyone part of the layoffs. In addition, they also received an additional 2 weeks for each year of service to Google.
