- Google employees are asking leaders for answers on layoffs being made to Cloud staff.
- They want affected employees to be given more time and support to find new roles.
- Google employees pressed leadership about these layoffs at two internal company meetings.
Google employees are grilling leaders over the decision to terminate dozens of support roles within Cloud, and move some of the affected positions to vendors.
The cuts, which were announced on March 2nd and could affect more than 100 roles, have roiled workers inside Google Cloud, who are asking leadership to give more time for affected employees to find new roles at the company.
The cuts impacted Google’s support teams, known as technical solutions engineers (TSEs), who help customers and engineers solve issues with Google Cloud applications and provide a critical layer between the platform and its users. Google told employees many of these roles would be outsourced to vendors, which are typically cheaper to hire.
Many Google employees want more answers about these cuts and how they were communicated. Google Cloud held two company town halls last week, wherein employees raised their concerns. This week, employees delivered a petition to management, asking for the company to give more time for employees in terminated roles to find another job at Google.
The petition, which had been signed by more than 1,400 employees, said that there were “limited opportunities” for direct transfers, according to a copy seen by Insider.
“Many Googlers have visas tied to their employment,” the petition read, in part. “Successful transfers take more time due to added mobility delays from governments’ and Google’s immigration processes.”
Cuts hit employees across a range of Google Cloud products including Looker, the data analytics company it acquired for $2.4 billion in early 2020. The exact number of layoffs could not be learned. Some insiders said the number was in the dozens, and could be as high as over 100. Affected employees were told they have 60 days to find another role at Google, or else they would be given severance, according to emails seen by Insider.
Following the layoffs, Google Cloud is reorganizing its support teams as Google Cloud, Workspace, Looker, and Mergers and Acquisitions. The business unit also plans to consolidate some of its regions, and move some of its support work to “trusted vendors.”
“As Google Cloud grows, we frequently evaluate our approach to providing the best service and support for our customers. The changes announced today will ensure we have the right people, partners, and systems in place to meet our customers’ needs now and into the future,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement on the layoffs.
Questions about the layoffs spilled out at internal meetings
Large rounds of layoffs at Google are rare – so much so that it bubbled up to Google’s regular company-wide all-hands meeting, known as TGIF (Thank God Its Friday), which was held last Thursday.
“Several hundred roles for Cloud Support Roles including TSEs were eliminated on March 2nd,” one employee wrote on Dory, Google’s internal question submission platform for large meetings, as viewed by Insider. “Without getting into the complete opaqueness of internal planning and messaging, isn’t this antithetical to Cloud’s push into Enterprise?”
Another of the most upvoted questions said the move was done in a way that did “not show Googleness from senior management,” and asked if Google would reopen a recent annual survey for employees in the Cloud unit, as the results had been taken before the cuts were announced.
People who attended the meeting said that they were given “robotic” and unsatisfactory answers.
Another town hall held earlier in the week, this one specifically for Google Cloud employees and hosted by Cloud Support vice president Atul Nanda, went similarly, according to two people who attended the event. Some employees submitted questions accusing leadership of destroying their trust and asked why they weren’t given more warning about the cuts.
“How can those of us not directly affected ever feel secure again in our jobs?” asked one question, which was upvoted by 237 employees. “How can we be convinced it is not a matter of time until we too are fired?”
Another read: “You reassured TSEs our jobs are safe and when TSEs move on to other roles, the headcount will go to growth sites. This is not what happened last week. How do you plan on restoring our trust?”
Employees criticized the way Google had handled the internal communication about the layoffs, including an email sent by leaders that said the cuts were being made “to delight customers and improve Googler wellbeing over time,” which was seen by Insider.
“The email announcement about this lacked empathy and it felt like it was written for PR,” an employee wrote.
An employee who attended the meeting, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said that leaders in the meeting “evaded the hard questions and used corp speak to answer the rest.”
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