So on the morning of January 20th, I actually woke up to
one of my friend's text messages that said, Hey,
were you just laid off by Google?
I responded saying, I don't know what you're talking
about. So I went to my work laptop, and lo and behold,
when I opened it, I was forbidden.
I was locked out.
I was just shocked, just chilled to the bone to read
this email that was sent to my personal email to say
"You are no longer an employee." I'd been at
Google for four and a half years.
My performance was great.
This was something that kind of blew me out of the
water. So these new virtual layoffs, I think are very
inhumane. They're very impersonal, and they don't
treat you as an actual human being.
Virtual layoffs are when companies decide to lay off,
let go and terminate roles of team members by
email, by phone, by text, or even by
video apps like Zoom or pre-recorded videos.
We are seeing a rise in virtual layoffs.
First, its because of the pandemic.
Pandemic normalized the adoption of remote work and
virtual communications.
Organizations realized that it's possible to conduct
business virtually, including communicating
difficult messages to employees such as layoff
announcements. Also, they learned that probably
virtual layoffs can be more cost and time effective for
big organizations.
They don't need to hire external contractor and send
them to all different offices across the nation.
Just imagine how much travel expenses they are
saving.
As the pandemic hit the US economy in March 2020, it
erased nearly 20 million jobs in a matter of weeks.
The unemployment rate rocketed to 14.7%, the
highest level since the Great Depression.
As remote work became widespread and interest
rates hit rock bottom levels. Big tech companies
went on a hiring spree.
In 2020, Amazon added half a million employees and over
38% increase.
Microsoft added 18,000, an 11% increase.
Meta added over 13,000, a 30% increase.
And Google-parent Alphabet added over 16,000, a nearly
14% increase, while Apple added less than 7000.
Federal Reserve raising interest rates to a new
range of 0.25 to ...
Then the Fed began its fight against inflation, raising
interest rates at a pace not seen in decades.
That hit tech companies hard because they relied on
low-interest rates to fuel growth.
Last week, he fired more than 900 people on one Zoom
call.
Better.com, a mortgage lending company, was one of
the many companies that had to lay off their employees
because of this. The way its CEO handled the firing
received a huge backlash.
If you're on this call.
You are part of the unlucky group.
Your employment here is terminated effective
immediately. I think what happened in 2021 December
was that we were amongst the first companies to have
to do major reductions in force as the economic
environment was changing.
We were a company of less than 100 people in 2017 and
we became a company of 10,000 people by 2021.
And my leadership style, which had been all about
grow, grow, grow and really growth at all costs meant
that the focus of the business was about doing
what it needed to do to grow and less about how
people were feeling about it.
A lot of the criticism was deserved.
We made a mistake.
We learned from it, and now we're better.
The Better.com incident was just a start.
More and more big tech companies began adopting
virtual layoffs.
I want to say,you know, upfront that I take full
responsibility for this d ecision.
In November of 2022, Meta laid off 11,000 workers, and
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg delivered the news over a
remote video call.
...and for deciding how we execute that, including
things like this.
And in 2022, as soon as Elon Musk bought Twitter, he laid
off half its workforce with some staff losing access to
their company's email without prior notice.
Virtual layoffs have continued in 2023 as well.
In January, Google laid off thousands of its employees
over email.
Google was the company I wanted to work for, and I
felt so amazing that I was inside.
I felt like I was a foreigner that really I had
to keep pinching myself, that I was there.
I mean, I utilize the gym, I utilize the bikes, I
utilize massage.
I utilized every type of perk that was possible.
And I never thought that it one day snap it would be
gone.
And I think it's very convenient to send an email
on a Friday where someone's not coming into the office
and tell them that they no longer have a job.
It makes it very easy on the leadership and it
creates a scenario where there's at least likelihood
for emotional fallout or for pushback to occur.
So I think it's really designed to help support
leadership and management to make it easier for them
to do these types of layoffs.
As more and more virtual layoffs dominate the
headlines, there's a debate raging online over layoff
etiquette. In April, McDonald's temporarily shut
its corporate office and fired hundreds of employees
virtually.
Frankly, I think. Mcdonald's is teaching a master class
in layoffs. They broadcasted back in January
that they were coming.
People were able to prepare. Now April has come
and they're letting people know in the comfort of their
own home, they're able to maintain confidentiality.
They don't have to walk their stuff out down the
hallway and be escorted out.
If I were getting laid off, I'd want to be laid off at
home, not at the office.
I think it's lazy leadership. You know, we're
talking about thousands of people's lives that have
been turned upside down.
And it's one of the most, you know, impactful moments
in somebody's career to be let go or to be laid off.
And it lacks humanity and it lacks an ethical and a
moral component.
When you work for a big tech company.
You had this assurance that you were going to be okay,
that you were part of this greater thing, that you were
part of this culture that really meant something, that
you were making a difference. And at any
moment snap, you could be axed.
Google's extreme cost-cutting measures, which
have included 12,000 workers losing their jobs,
has translated to big upside moves in its stock.
Its CEO, Sundar Pichai, has also done well.
He made $226 million in 2022, thanks to a $218
million stock award, plus his regular salary and
benefits. Pichai is among the highest-paid CEOs in the
US.
Hey, good on him. You know, he's got a couple hundred
million dollars of bonus and salaries and everything
else. I think the thing that really stings for me is
in the letters that came out about the layoffs, the
communications that came out from Sundar Pichai and
other leaders was he's taking full responsibility.
And a full responsibility means taking a massive bonus
after laying off several thousand people at their
company. To me, that's a huge red flag.
Google did not respond to CNBC's repeated requests for
comment. Companies have been facing mounting
criticism over their increasing use of virtual
layoffs. Onwards HR is one of those platforms that
helps companies in the layoff process.
So many organizations roll out the red carpet for those
as part of the hiring process, but very few have
put any attention to how they treat employees when
they leave the organization. But right now,
that is something that needs to be top of mind for
organizations because you never know when it's going
to be a final goodbye.
And it's important to really leave a great last
impression.
It is not about the leader.
It's about the employees who are being impacted.
And the leader must talk about that, spend time
acknowledging that difficulty.
Instead of questioning, is it dignified to do it
virtual or in person?
We should think of better ways of if it's going to be
virtual, how we can do it in a dignified way for
workers, and how workers can prepare themselves to
deal with situations like that.
If you look closely at the current job market, you
might scratch your head.
On the one hand, mass tech layoffs continue dominating
headlines and on the other hand, the labor market still
seems strong. In April, the US economy added 253,000
jobs, and unemployment dropped to 3.4%, tied for
the lowest level since 1969.
The jobs market is incredibly fragmented and
what that meant is that large firms, especially
large firms tied to tech, hired aggressively during
the pandemic, and now they're right sizing that
hiring as people relied less on the tech sector.
They're doing more things related to goods and
services, and getting out there in terms of leisure
and hospitality.
And so you're seeing some big firms with big
headlines, but that is not yet translating into the
overall labor market.
And in particular, we've seen layoffs at companies
like in Big Tech because those are sectors that have
hired enormously during the pandemic and maybe misread
some of the pandemic-era trends as long-term
structural shifts. And it turns out that those were
more temporary. So because of the potential recession
on the horizon, we're seeing a lot of companies
that have to reevaluate.
And unfortunately, some are deciding that they need to
lay off workers to get into a more sustainable place.
Unfortunately, virtual layoffs are here to stay.
And what companies can do to improve this process is
to actually bring a human-centered approach that
cares about the person behind the screen.
And so I think companies are opting for using Zoom or
virtual mechanisms over in-person mechanisms,
primarily due to working from home and the culture of
working from home that has really permeated itself
across most major corporations in the United
States today.
So with this new reality of just being cut off and laid
off by any company.
I think what I've learned and I think what people need
to do is to really be invested in yourself, be
invested in what you do really, really well and
don't invest in the culture. It sounds
counterintuitive, but just do the bare minimum when it
comes to actually investing in the company, but invest
in yourself, because really, at the end of the
day, it's only you that you can rely on.