A newly-hired employee of Google, experienced an abrupt loss of access to Hangouts and Google Drive, receiving notification of his termination via text from his manager. The employee shared his experience on X.
The employee, named Alex Cohen, was engaged in developing algorithms for the Gemini AI model. Expressing disappointment, Cohen tweeted about his unfortunate experience of losing access to Hangouts and Google Drive, accompanied by a text from his manager confirming his dismissal.
Despite the unexpected turn of events, Cohen mentioned that he is entitled to 12 months of severance and is contemplating his next steps, aiming for a total compensation of $2.7 million.
Reflecting on the past five months working on Language Models (LLMs) and AI, he shared insights into his learning journey.
This incident comes amid reports of Google’s ongoing internal challenges. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Google, acknowledged the possibility of further job cuts in an internal memo to all employees. Pichai emphasised the need for tough choices to create capacity for investments, citing the company’s ambitious goals for the upcoming year.
Last month, the tech giant disclosed that it has spent $700 million in severance charges after axing over 1,000 roles. This follows the 12,000 employee cuts in 2023, costing $2.1 billion.
The news came alongside Alphabet’s (the parent company of Google) fourth-quarter earnings report, which showed a return to double-digit revenue growth driven by YouTube and cloud computing.
However, while ad sales grew, they lagged behind other areas, and the company’s stock dipped after the announcement.
