Across the tech industry, companies including Amazon, Meta, and Twitter are laying off thousands. Google is an outlier in that it has not conducted mass layoffs so far, but many employees still feel nervous and are creating memes to channel that anxiety.
Several employees have taken to the company's internal MemeGen site to post memes about their worries that layoffs could be coming, given how many other Big Tech companies have already cut jobs.
So far, sources say they have not heard of any planned layoffs. But that hasn't stopped people from feeling worried about losing their jobs or being rated lower in performance reviews. Amazon started laying off employees on Tuesday, Insider reported, impacting 10,000 roles, according to the New York Times. Meta laid off 11,000 employees, while Twitter laid off more than 3,000 full-time employees, along with many contract workers.
To further fuel that anxiety, Google had an internal outage yesterday that prevented employees from accessing some internal documents and calendar tools. Some employees made memes about how the outage made them think they got laid off or fired.
In addition, TCI, a large activist investor, recently called on Google to cut costs and said the company has too many employees. And the company has trimmed a few teams in recent weeks, including projects in its Area 120 group. It also shuttered its Stadia gaming service, and employees were given a limited time to find new roles within the company.
Many Googlers have historically made memes to ridicule executive decisions, such as Google's bid for a AI contract with the Pentagon and vice president Urs Hölzle's tweet about buying and selling people for profit.
Insider reached out to Google for comment. Below is a selection of recent layoff-themed memes created by Googlers.
