A Los Angeles-based lawyer employed by Google discovered he was being laid off by the tech giant in an email that he received at 2 a.m. while he was feeding his newborn infant daughter.
Nicholas Dufau had been employed by the search engine as its associate product counsel for six months when he was granted parental leave following the birth of his daughter in the early morning hours of Jan. 17.
Dufau shared a photo of him cradling his little bundle of joy to his chest on Google’s internal Slack channel, where dozens of colleagues sent their warm wishes.
Little did the new dad know that just 72 hours later, he would receive a message from his employer notifying him that he no longer had access to his work email and that he was effectively terminated — this while feeding his daughter in the wee hours of the night.
He was among 12,000 employees let go by Google last week.
“Last Tuesday morning at 2am, I became a father,” Dufau wrote in a LinkedIn post Wednesday that has gone viral.
“The next day, my Google teammates showered me with heart emojis and virtual confetti, wishing me well on my paternity leave.”
Dufau continued: “On Friday morning at 2am while feeding my infant, I received a notification that I had lost access to my Google corporate accounts.”
“I had been laid off via automated email,” he wrote.
Dufau wrote that his colleagues at Google reassured him that the company “was one that treasured its employees and encouraged me to take the full extent of my parental leave to cherish this precious time with my family.”
“I had never been so thankful to find myself on a team that valued me as a person,” he wrote.
“Every layoff hurts — the timing of this experience, however, not only made me feel acutely expendable, it made me feel naive,” Dufau wrote.
He wrote that he has found solace in his “saintly wife and miraculous daughter” who “have been here to lift my spirits and give me comfort.”
The Post has sought comment from Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Laid-off Googlers have not been shy about posting their stories on social media.
Nicole Tsai, a Southern California-based “vlogger,” posted a viral TikTok video showing the precise moment she learned she was being let go.
Google is among several tech giants that have downsized in recent weeks and months as Silicon Valley is feeling the pinch of a sluggish economic environment marred by high inflation.
[Written in collaboration with other media outlets with information from the following sources]
