January has not gone as Nicole Tsai expected. January has been, to be honest, a horrible month for Nicole. A few days ago, Nicolesdailyvlog, as she introduces herself on TikTok, a young Google worker who has gained popularity posting videos about what it’s like to work for the Mountain View multinational, saw when she woke up that she had a “strange” message from his boss on the mobile.
That didn’t sound good. And indeed, there was little good: Nicole had been hit by the “snip” of 12,000 jobs that Alphabet, the group to which Google belongs, had announced shortly before to adjust costs.
He has shared the experience through his TikTok channel, where the video in which he explains the trance has not taken long to go viral and generate thousands of messages. At the moment she goes for the 4.7 million views. And up.
The key: the context
Ironies of the networks, the platform on which Tsai recounts her dismissal is the same one from which, for a time, she dedicated herself to showing how fascinating it is to work at the Google facilities, between giant slides, DJ mixers in half of the kitchen, colorful furniture that would not be out of place in a party room, a dining room with a menu that will whet your appetite, scooters available to employees to go to meetings or even a “tiki bar”.
The most popular of those videos on Google privileges, from just a few days ago, is close in fact to the three million of views. It’s not the only one. In others, he shows what one of his days at the service of the multinational in Los Angeles is like or the interior of a meeting room inspired by Harry Potter that could pass for a room —a very modern one, true— at Hogwarts.
Nicole’s latest publication has little to do with the previous ones.
Not in the content. nor of course in the tone.
@nicolesdailyvlog The Google layoffs were not how I expected to start off 2023, but I know it’s only up from here 🥲 #techlayoffs #googlelayoffs #techgirl #corporatelife #techvlog #dayinmylife #techlayoffs2023 ♬ Flowers – Miley Cyrus
In the video, the tiktoker He recounts how, after contacting his manager, he looked for a computer and verified that the company had withdrawn his credentials to access both email and the corporate calendar. Her boss ended up confirming a news that she, she assured, she had also just found out about her. Nicole hadn’t been the only one. Through calls and posts on LinkedIn, she verified that other colleagues had suffered the same fate.
“Worst of all, apparently no one had been consulted to make the decision. Everyone was finding out about the news at the same time”, laments the former Google employee, who assures that the decision was not made taking into account factors such as the performance of each worker. “It was very arbitrary”.
“We were all in shock,” he sums up.
“I spent almost the whole day crying, until I was almost exhausted from being sad and wanted to do something to feel better,” she says. What? Grab an annual pass to Disneyland. Nicole —she admits— she doesn’t know what her next step will be, but she assures that she will continue uploading more content to the channel with which until not so long ago she had gained popularity with videos about everyday life on Google.
Although Nicole’s case has gone viral and messages of encouragement and “likes” are piling up on her account, which now exceeds half a million, her case is not unique and her interest is far beyond from the experience of a tiktoker in particular.
What Tsai brings is a different perspective —from the inside— of the wave of layoffs that is affecting Big Tech, which in a scenario marked by the drop in demand and the reduction in expectations generated during the pandemic have been forced to to lighten structures that sometimes grew too fast, as the founder of Twitter himself has recognized.
Google has announced the cut of 12,000 jobs, but Microsoft has been forced to adopt a similar measure with another 10,000, Amazon targets 18,000, Meta 11,000 and Salesforce 8,000. The list of companies that tighten their belts could be stretched with names like Spotify, Disney or Netflix.
The case of Nicole Tsai is also related to a practice that over the last few years has achieved a certain prestige among the employees of large Big Tech: showing on the networks the benefits of working for their companies or the sector. Perhaps one of the most popular cases is that of Riley Rojas, a Meta employee who, just a few months ago, showed in a video how relaxed one of her working days was at the old Facebook. The piece aroused interestamong other things, because it was hung at a time when cuts were being considered in Meta.
Videos about the enviable conditions enjoyed by Google employees also abound. In March 2022 Jules Monica, who identified herself as an account strategist for the multinational, shared a video that soon accumulated hundreds of thousands of views and in which she also shows enviable working conditions. Now the videos that attract attention are those of the layoffs, like the one by Kimberly Diaz, from YouTube, who told on TikTok how she found out that she was out of the company on a business trip.
Cover image: Nicolesdailyvlog (TikTok)