- TikToker Nicole Tsai says she went to Disneyland to ‘eat her feelings’ after being laid off from Google.
- She was one of the 12,000 employees who were retrenched abruptly.
- In tears, she showed how she had lost access to her work email and calendar, per her TikTok.
A woman who went viral documenting her life working as a Google program manager on TikTok, said in a post she went to “eat her feelings” at Disneyland after getting laid off.
The ex-employee, TikToker Nicole Tsai, said she was one of the 12,000 people laid off from the tech giant last Friday. She posted a video on the social media platform on Saturday titled “A day in my life getting laid off at Google,” during which she documented her distress at finding out she was abruptly retrenched.
According to her LinkedIn page, Tsai worked as a partner services program manager at Google in Irvine, California, since July 2021.
She said in the video — which received over 4.2 million views – that she woke up to an “ominous” message text from her boss which read: “Hey Nicole feel free to give me a call.”
She was then told to check the news regarding the company's mass layoffs and her work email, when she found that she had lost access to the company's systems. She then deduced that she had been laid off.
There was no transparency about how the retrenchments were decided, Tsai said in her TikTok.
"I think the worst part is that it seems like no one was consulted on this decision. Everyone was finding out about the layoffs at the same time. It just felt like a really bad game of Russian Roulette, and there was no consistency around who was let go," she said, showing clips of herself crying.
She then decided to go to Disneyland, where she indulged in treats like churros, a teriyaki turkey leg, Rice Krispies, and a corn dog, snippets of the video posted to TikTok show.
Tsai had previously posted several videos about her experience working in the Google office in Los Angeles — from the complimentary meals in the office cafeteria to the fun facilities in the office, such as a large slide, scooters to get to meeting rooms and a bar for happy hour.
She said that while she was unsure of what the future holds for her, she would vlog her journey and post more content on TikTok.
As Insider's Geoff Weiss reported, various Google employees have used TikTok to document the luxe life at Google's offices; some of those TikTokers were affected by the latest round of layoffs and have started using the platform to talk about life after layoffs.
Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google's parent Alphabet told staff in a memo on Friday the tech company is laying off 12,000 employees, or around 6.4% of its global workforce. Alphabet had about 186,779 employees as of September 30, Insider reported previously.
Tsai did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
