Amidst the grim outlook for the global economy in the coming months, there is no end to the news of layoffs coming from big tech giants and other multinational firms. The unprecedented loss of jobs has left many professionals with an uncertain future. One such Indian-American techie took to LinkedIn to share his story of a sudden layoff and the lessons he learned from it. Engineer Vishal Arora worked at Google for more than a year and a half. He got the news of his layoff when he was preparing for his office meeting at 7 am.
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Vishal Arora shared his story of layoffs at Google where he revealed that he was one of the 12,000 employees who were laid off by Google. He said that the process of layoffs is more shocking than this news.
“Above all, I’m surprised at how unexpected this was. And every unexpected outage deserves a flawless post-mortem, so here’s mine, with my lessons: https://lnkd.in/gjB7Yscc,” Vishal Arora wrote said in his LinkedIn post.
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In the document link he shared with his post, he mentioned how things started with mail, which he thought was spam, and ended the next morning when he was not able to login to his laptop.
Receives an email at 2:00 AM about your layoff
Months ago, Vishal Arora received an email from ‘Direct Report in India’ that this message was the last chat message. On January 20, at 2:00 pm, he received the mail. Vishal thought it was a spam email. The next morning, when he tried to log in to the computer for his 7:00 a.m. meeting, he was denied access by the system. That’s when he realized that he was fired by the company.
Smooth outage expected with better communication
The process of laying off a large number of employees “could have been smoothened through better communication and transparency”. He also noted how other organizations have terminated employees with a personal notification as well as limited opportunity to bid farewell to close associates. He also pointed to creative options used by other companies to avoid layoffs, such as “temporary employee pay cuts, or temporary reductions in benefits.”
lessons learned from layoffs
Vishal Arora also shared some things that he will keep in mind in his next job. He told how some time back his wife had turned down the chance to join Google. The decision has helped the couple diversify their income. Vishal also mentioned how his stock portfolio was highly skewed with Google stock. He also mentioned the importance of creating a financial cushion for such situations as there is no guarantee of severance package. Employees should also work on enhancing their skills and should not be confined to their jobs as they can be taken from them anytime. It is important to give equal priority to family, personal health, friends etc.
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