“After 19 Years Of Working… Laid Off Overnight”: Google Employee

In a surprising turn of events, a former senior software engineer at Google took to social media to share the news of his sudden layoff after 19 years with the tech giant. Kevin Bourrillion, the engineer, who spent over 16 years on the team he founded, candidly expressed the unexpected decision, revealing a mix of emotions and reflections on his lengthy tenure.

Tech giant Alphabet Inc.’s Google had announced recently that it will lay-off hundreds of staff from its workforce. This move is in tally with its continued drive to cut down the costs. The company said that the cut would affect workers working with the voice-based Google Assistant, augmented reality hardware team and also the workers with the company’s central engineering organization.

In a statement this week, a Google spokesperson said, “throughout the second half of 2023, a number of our teams made changes to become more efficient and work better, and to align their resources to their biggest product priorities,” and that, “some teams are continuing to make these kinds of organizational changes, which include some role eliminations globally.”

Despite the abruptness of the layoff, the engineer celebrated the change with a mid-workday 17-mile bike ride and dinner at Il Fornaio. In the social media post, he admitted to feeling in a rut about work and life for an extended period, indicating that the layoff might bring a much-needed change.

The engineer expressed an unconventional perspective on the situation, emphasizing a lack of hurt feelings as corporations, in his view, don’t have emotions. He acknowledged the blessing of two decades of steady income and free of job hunting, highlighting the opportunity to get paid for a few months of doing nothing – something he humorously declared as one of his favorite pastimes.

While recognizing that some aspects of the situation may pose challenges, the engineer maintained an optimistic outlook, stating definitively that he would never wish to return to his 2023 life. The post concluded with a philosophical touch, as the engineer shared his belief that death does not exist, drawing an unexpected connection to the transitory nature of life.