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The layoffs seem to have come as a surprise to employees at several big tech companies, whose failure to communicate has exacerbated the anguish of those now out of work.
At Salesforce, it laid off 8,000 employees in January, but co-CEO Mark Benioff deflected questions at a sweepstakes meeting aimed at addressing the cuts. Bowling says his former colleagues at Google are also upset that they can’t ask any questions of the executives who let them go. At some companies — notably Twitter, where Elon Musk is cutting entire teams as part of a 50% headcount cut — layoffs seem haphazard.
“It’s personally embarrassing for me to explain to friends and family members why I was fired,” says a former Meta employee, who was fired as part of the company’s layoffs in late 2022 and asked not to be identified to avoid jeopardizing her future job prospects.
But not only is it surprising, but also the inhumane way in which the announcements were made enrages the employees who have been let go. When it finally came to pass, the email telling Pauling he was being laid off from Google was “legal,” signed by the company’s vice president with no salutations.
He says, “No sincerely, no sorry, nothing.” It was written by a lawyer, so there was no guilt implied or anything in it. It was very cold. Everything about it was so cool.”
And according to Pauling, the company has historically treated employees fairly well, even when they’ve been out. “This layoff was very different from the culture of people leaving the company,” he says.
Google did not respond to a request for comment.
But for Susan Schurman, a professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, the gap between how tech companies portray themselves and how they act has always existed.
“It would be fair to say I’m shocked, but not surprised,” Schurman says. “I am old enough to have been brought up in what is called the Twentieth Century Organization, where you could say that workers are seen as expendable goods.”
Attitudes towards employees have also worsened during the pandemic, according to Carrie Cooper, professor of organizational psychology at the University of Manchester Business School. Remote working has created a greater separation between managers and their employees. “There was less face-to-face contact, and a lot of their communication was virtual,” he says. “This can create a situation where you don’t develop a close relationship with your employees, if you were a line manager.”
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