Week after pay rise talk, Google recruiter loses job while interviewing candidate

NEW DELHI: Expecting a pay rise in what he called his ‘dream job’, a Google employee working in the HR department was caught unaware when he found out he was sacked by the tech giant while taking a candidate’s interview.
In a LinkedIn post that went viral, Dan Lanigan Ryan said that he was blocked out of the system in the middle of the interview, bringing an ‘abrupt end’ to the 16 months he worked with Google.

“Unfortunately, I was laid off from Google along with many thousands of others last Friday. Just over a year ago, I landed a dream job with a dream company. I was walking the dog when my recruiter called to tell me I got the role and I nearly choked the poor pooch I was celebrating so much,” said Ryan’s post.
“Cut to 16 months later, I did not expect it to come to such an abrupt end, blocked out of the system in the middle of a call. My contract was just extended for another year and I was moved to the Cloud Sales recruitment team (an area that is seeing massive growth) and only a week ago there was talk of a pay rise, I’ve been caught off guard.”

While he thanked his colleagues for their support, he appealed for ‘visibility’ on the social media platform, wanting to start work again.
“I will be forever grateful for everything I learned and to all the fantastic people I had the pleasure of working with. I want to say thank you to my managers Emma Daly-Ronayne, Marie-Claire Kennedy and Joe Morgan and my buddies Yasmeen Hussain and Rocco Sek. Your continuous support was instrumental to my successes,” he said. “I am open to work and look forward to taking everything I’ve learned and achieved and bringing it to my next position, wherever that might be.”

Google’s parent Alphabet Inc announced recently that they were cutting about 12,000 jobs due to a ‘different economic reality’, doubling down on artificial intelligence (AI). Alphabet is facing competition from Microsoftwhich is reportedly looking to boost its stake in ChatGPT – a chatbot that answers queries with human-like responses.
The job cuts affect 6% of its workforce, and follows thousands of layoffs at tech giants including Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Meta Platforms Inc (META.O).
Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s boss since 2019, said in a staff memo that he took ‘full responsibility’ for the decisions that led to the layoffs. Pichai, whose pay was recently tied more closely to performance, said this was a moment to “sharpen our focus, reengineer our cost base and direct our talent and capital to our highest priorities,” as Alphabet looked to get imbue its products with more AI, echoing comments from Microsoft that announced job cuts.