Alphabet has added insult to injury following the company’s round of 12,00 layoffs, with employees receiving lesser unemployment packages depending on which division they worked at.
When announcing the cuts, CEO Sundar Pichai boasted he would “support employees as they look for their next opportunity, before laying out the following packages:
- We’ll pay employees during the full notification period (minimum 60 days).
- We’ll also offer a severance package starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google, and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting.
- We’ll pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time.
- We’ll be offering 6 months of healthcare, job placement services, and immigration support for those affected.
However, reports have emerged that these packages were for Google employees only.
Those who work for other divisions, which are grouped under the ‘Other Bets’ umbrella, such as those working on the Wing drone delivery service, or Verily, Alphabet’s health sciences arm, were given lesser packages.
Verily employees got a base of 12 weeks of severance and only one week per year of employment. Same deal for those working in the Waymo driverless car division.
“On principle, we are all Alphabet employees on paper,” a laid off Verily employee told Forbes.
“It does seem somewhat arbitrary that the severance packages are different.” This specific employee told Forbes they “spent years at Google before transferring to Verily,” and weren’t compensated with extra weeks for this period of employment.
“Google and Verily are separate entities with very different financial realities and resources,” Verily spokesperson Steven Cooper said in a statement, defending the differing packages.
“Verily is a smaller Alphabet company, and it’s structured and scaled very differently.”
Even so, the optics of such a decision aren’t good for Alphabet.
