Thousands of workers at Google laid off via email
On the morning of January 20, one Google employee had to call tech support after getting hit with an unusual error message when they tried to log in to their work system. Another employee’s manager was on vacation, so they had no one to reach out to when rumours of layoffs started to swirl. A third was waking up to demands from their toddler when their phone started to buzz with text messages asking, “Are you safe?” Watch the latest News on Channel 7 or stream for free on 7plus >> The three employees, who spoke to CNN on condition of anonymity, were all among the 12,000 workers laid off by Google that day. While the extent of the layoffs was staggering, and by far the largest cuts in its history, it was the way the lay-offs were handled that stunned many inside and outside the company. Google, which for years ranked as the top company to work for in the United States, laid off thousands of workers by e-mail. And not just any employees — decades-long veterans of the company, at ...