Was I laid off or not? The twists and turns of my Google layoff story

The way I found out about the Google layoff on January 20 couldn’t have been more dramatic. Not only was I shocked by the news, but I was also confused as to whether I was laid off or not. The following weeks and months weren’t like any times I had experienced in my life. Was it a blessing in disguise in a way? Yes. Would I sign myself up for it? Absolutely no. As a foreigner in the US whose life heavily depends on employment, I want to share my story. 

On the day of the layoff 

My friend L and I were planning to spend a week together in Mexico City. I had arrived a few days earlier to explore on my own. She was supposed to arrive around midnight on January 19. Feeling pretty tired after being out all day, I went to bed early. But because I was expecting her, I couldn’t fall asleep. So I was on my phone the whole time. It’s now 12AM, 12:30AM, 1AM…I still hadn’t heard anything from her. I texted and called…no response. I checked her flight status and it showed that it had already landed. Maybe she’s going through customs and there’s no reception? Maybe her phone plan didn’t support international roaming? Anyways, she’s a big girl. She should be fine. Right? 

It’s now 1:30 AM, 2 AM, 2:30 AM… Still nothing from her. I even got up to check if she was already in the Airbnb and somehow I just didn’t hear anything. No, she’s not there. I’m now wide awake. My brain started to imagine the worst-case scenarios. I contacted her husband, all of our mutual friends, and even stalked her social media to see if I can find any traces. I texted, emailed, WhatsApp-ed, Instagram DMed, and even LinkedIn DMed people who might have been in contact with her that day. As I frantically checked these apps, an email titled “Notice regarding your employment” appeared on my personal Gmail. At first, I didn’t think much of it at all. But as soon as I opened it and saw “We have some difficult news to share…” my heart sank. I froze. I continued to read the email but the words seemed to have lost meaning to me. I checked my work email and realized I had already lost access. My profile was blank. Here I am…being alone and awake in Mexico City at 3:30 AM, worried sick about my friend’s safety and getting laid off at the same time. Wow, life truly has its ways. 

In the next couple of hours, while I waited to hear back from L, I texted my colleagues at Area 120 to see if they also got notified. Many people just got up and hadn’t even checked their emails yet. My unique situation probably made me the first person to find out. One after another, they all got back to me saying they were also impacted. This is happening, I thought to myself: Area 120 is gone. The place where entrepreneurial Googlers pitched ideas and built products from scratch is gone. The place where I felt the strongest belonging and inclusivity at Google is gone. I met some of the most talented, kind, and driven people in my career at Area 120. I can’t believe they were just laid off like that. While I knew R&D teams are usually the first to go during tough times, I was still shocked to my core. I didn’t know how I should feel. Plus, my friend was still missing. I felt like I was in a white noise space and time had stopped. 

Around 7 AM, I finally heard back from L! Turned out she had some visa issues so she couldn’t enter Mexico. They took away her personal belongings for the night, including her phone, and sent her back to the US this morning. There’s no doubt that it was a stressful situation for her (a story for another time), but at least she’s safe! Hooray! A huge weight on my shoulder was lifted. I felt deeply relieved. By now the whole night had passed and I barely closed my eyes. My body felt heavy, my eyes were dry, and my brain felt extremely alert and foggy at the same time.

My body felt the pain before my mind did 

I always knew that layoffs have a huge impact on health. According to Harvard Business Review: “One study found that being laid off ranked seventh among the most stressful life experiences — above divorce and a sudden and serious impairment of hearing or vision. Experts advise that it takes, on average, two years to recover from the psychological trauma of losing a job.” What I didn’t know was how immediate and profound the impact was on me. 

After coming back from my walk, I mindlessly scrolled on my phone for a few minutes. When I lifted my head again, I felt a sharp pain in my neck and upper back, so sharp that I couldn’t move at all. There’s only one angle that didn’t trigger the pain. Whenever I moved, no matter how small the movement was, I’d feel the sharp pain. Eventually, I stabilized my neck with my hands and walked one step at a time to get myself to bed. After lying down, I found a position that was least painful and stayed still for almost 4 HOURS before the pain started to go away. I’m sure I had been heads down staring at my phone many times before, but getting such a sharp pain from it? That’s a first. My friend called me later and I finally couldn’t hold my tears anymore. “I thought after all of this sh*t, I also need to go to ER by myself in Mexico…” Thankfully I didn’t have to and the pain went away completely after a few days. 

But wait, was I laid off?! 

The tricky part of my layoff story was…I wasn’t sure if I was actually laid off. You see, Friday, 1/20 was my last day with Area 120 and I was about to join a new team (that’s not impacted) on the following Monday. Had the layoff happened a day later, maybe I wouldn’t have been impacted. Anyway, the reality was that I received the layoff notice and I lost all of my corporate access. Part of me naively thought Google might just be like, oops, our bad, please come back on Monday. But it turned out to be a lot more complicated than that. 

Because the layoff was so unprecedented, there’s no existing process on how to bring back people who were pending internal transfer. My new team tried hard to rehire me but no one knew if I could be rehired, or if so, how long the process would take. There’s nothing I could do but wait. I wonder if I was straight up laid off, would I have had an easier time, because at least I could have grieved with everyone else? I was caught in limbo and felt alone. Even though I’d like to think that Google will honor my internal transfer, it's hard not to lose faith after the layoff. So even though it’s still up in the air, I had already prepared myself for the worst-case scenario. 

Sticking together with other laid-off colleagues helped me heal 

Area 120 was always a strong community. And it came across in how we supported each other post-layoff. A bunch of Slack channels was created for us to share information, ask questions, vent, check in on each other, post job opportunities, etc. I can’t imagine what it would have been like if I had to go through this in isolation. Although I wasn’t super active in these channels, they gave me a strong sense of companionship and togetherness, which I’m deeply grateful for. We also did happy hours, biweekly coffee chats, and other live events to help us stay connected. 

I can’t thank my managers Maya and Joyita enough for their support during this time, whether it’s making intros, reviewing my resume and portfolio, or doing mock interviews. Maya started to host a weekly team huddle 2 weeks after the layoff. We’d go around the room to talk about how we were doing and what we need support for. Whenever she talked to hiring managers, she’d propose that they hire our entire team. She even put together a spreadsheet to track all the open roles and who on the team might be a good fit for it. When everyone was still in shock or denial about the layoff, she had already kicked off the next steps. She put together a lookbook and posted it on LinkedIn for us to get visibility. I didn’t think I had any motivation left in me to work on the lookbook, but because of her initiative, I pushed myself and got a few leads as a result. Every week, I looked forward to the team huddle. It’s where I found sanity and togetherness. 

Learning to embrace funemployment 

The way Google handled the layoff was highly criticized, but the severance package was generous enough for me to not worry about money for a few months. As the dust settled in, I started to see it as an opportunity for me to just chill for a while. I know it's definitely a privilege, which made me cherish it even more. My boyfriend was also visiting from out of town for 3 weeks, so it’s a perfect opportunity to spend some quality time together. 

So for 3 weeks, I woke up when I wanted to, not because I had to go to work; I had long and elaborate morning routines where I took long walks and did yoga; I spent afternoons sipping tea and reading books that have been sitting on the shelve forever; we went out to bars, restaurants, comedy clubs, or hung out with friends almost every day; we cooked delicious meals at home; we went for runs together in prospect park…for the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have to worry about being productive or becoming a better version of myself. I just accepted life as is. One afternoon after my yoga class, as I walked back to my apartment, I saw the sun setting on the top of the beautiful brownstone houses. At that moment, I felt so content just being alive. For the longest time, I always had somewhere to be, some goals to achieve, and someone to prove to. Now that I’m in the unknown, I strangely found peace and beauty in it. 

The layoff made me rethink what work meant for me. I used to greatly associate my value with work. In the tech industry, people who spend all of their waking hours working are often praised and even idolized. There’s nothing wrong with it if you feel passionate about work. But there’s a lot to enjoy outside of work too. Somehow I never gave myself permission to think this way. As a foreigner trying to establish myself in the US for the past 10 years, it seems like I’ve forgotten that there’s an amazing world outside of work and that it’s ok to be a human-being instead of a human-doing. 

Searching for a job under immense stress 

Being on an H1B visa meant I only had 2 months (the grace period) from my termination date to find a new job. Although I wanted to enjoy life as is for longer, I didn’t have the luxury. I never imagined that I could lose everything I've built here - my career, my home, my community...everything. This was the moment I was reminded of how fragile my relationship with this country is. It all depends on my employment status. Towards the end, I could already sense my anxiety increasing day by day. It’s definitely possible to find a job before my grace period ends, but knowing how competitive the market has been, I wanted to start as soon as possible. 

Very quickly, I noticed that there weren't many openings, to begin with. And some got taken down quickly. Not sure if they were canceled or filled extremely quickly for some reason. For many openings on LinkedIn, there were easily hundreds of applications already. Most of my applications didn’t get any responses or were rejected within a day. On top of that, it’s much harder to prepare for interviews when you don’t have access to your previous work, so I had to rely entirely on my memory. 

When you are on such a time crunch in a highly competitive market, it takes a lot of mental power to bring your A-game to interviews. Previously when I interviewed for new jobs while still having a stable job, my conversations with companies felt a lot more equal. I had the headspace to be curious and exploratory, instead of feeling my whole life was at stake. Luckily I did ok, thanks to lots of practice and feedback. I got into the final round with a couple of companies. I was happy with the progress I made, but it was quite an emotional rollercoaster. 

Returning to Google 

Around the same time, Google finally got back to me and extended me a rehire offer, with a tight deadline. I felt deeply relieved because it meant at least my life won’t be turned upside down now. I still remember running in the park that day and getting teary-eyed, thinking to myself, you are safe now. Despite feeling relieved, I didn’t know if I wanted to return after what happened. On one hand, I’m excited about my new team and can’t wait to finally start working with them. On the other hand, although I know I shouldn’t take the layoff personally, I just didn’t feel valued by Google the same way I did before. I had gotten the highest performance rating in the last cycle and went up for promotion. But because I was locked outside of the system, I lost eligibility, which means I’ll need to wait until the fall and try again. I’m sure in the grand scheme of things, a delayed promotion should be the last thing to worry about. But part of me couldn’t get over it. Part of me thought it was unfair for me to pay for someone else’s oversight. 

In the next few days, I found myself going back and forth about my decision. I wish I had more time to finish my interviews so I had more options, but the timing didn’t work out. Should I just risk it all the decline the rehire offer? So what if my life can be turned upside down? Is life worth living if I didn’t have the respect I deserve? Now that the ball is in my court, I’m in limbo again. 

When I journaled about why I wanted to join the new team in the first place, I was reminded of what excited me and what I wanted to accomplish, which still sat well with me. Eventually, I decided to compartmentalize and focus on the opportunity in front of me. So I decided to rejoin Google. It took a lot of soul-searching to arrive at this decision, but it felt good after I signed the offer. Phew, finally the turbulence is coming to an end and I can start working with my new team after such a long delay. 

Final words 

I’ve never shared my stories publicly before. But this time I felt a strong urge to do so. Layoffs suck and when you are on a work visa, the impact can be life-changing. I was one of the nearly 170K people who got laid off so far this year. It’s easy to feel numb about these statistics. It’s easy to think of people as a number. But each person, just like me, has a unique story behind the number.

The layoff taught me that we can’t control what happens to us. Like, who would have thought the day I found out I was laid off was also the day my friend went missing? But what we do have control over is how to respond to it:

• Give yourself permission to rest and recharge. Layoffs are hard.

• Lean into your friends, family, and network for support. Don’t isolate yourself.

• Play the long game, which might mean facing setbacks head-on, but believe your day will come eventually.

Thank you for reading. I hope you feel less alone after reading my story.

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