‘Positivity within hardship’: Google employee fired during mental health leave, shares post

The mass layoffs across various tech firms- be it Google, Amazon, Meta, have unleashed mayhem worldwide as people find it difficult to secure job prospects amid fears of a global recession.

Several employees have taken to social media to narrate their ordeal and question companies’ ethics after being laid-off.

A US-based Google engineer was fired after receiving an email at 2 am when she was on mental health leave. The employee, Ali Neil, who was among 12,000 workers laid off by the tech giant, said there is positivity within the hardship ill face.

Neil shared a post on LinkedIn and said at least her leave positioned her to be somewhat prepared for an event like this. It took her a few days to accept it and come to terms with what happened.

“After having some time to really settle with everything that’s happened over the past week, I thought id add some color to my exhausted post I shared early last Friday after not being able to sleep. It wasnt all that great still being awake at 2:06AM to read that email,” she wrote. Neil shared her account quoting an earlier post of hers where she announced the news that she was laid off by Google.

She said she hadn’t really considered what comes after Google, adding that the reality is more humbling than that it seems though.

“I started my first job at 14, an unpaid intern until age 16 when I could become a paid employee…I wished the younger me could see who I am now…I’ve always loved the jobs I’ve held,” she said.

She added the uncertainty surrounding her future feels ‘comfortably unsettling.’ “But now having to think about what’s next after Google, it’s oddly, somewhat comfortably unsettling. It was devastating…but it’s also such a good reminder in my life that it’s still an enterprise multinational company.” On a note of positivity, Neil said the company was just an entity and not an ‘identity’ and there were lots left to explore for her. “…there’s so much more to explore and continue to give 110% toward. I feel so very proud to have gotten where I am today, and to see what’s next” (sic)

She thanked her team members and managers for her time at the tech giant and said they all had a ‘great impact’ on her.

Earlier this month, Google said it is laying off 6 per cent of its global workforce, or around 12,000 employees. India Today Tech covered many such stories about affected employees in the tech industries. A Washington Post report recently claimed that over 200,000 IT workers have been laid off since November last year, many of which are from India. These Indian workers are desperately looking for new roles to save their H1-B and L1 visas.