After Mass Layoff, Google Strips Employees Of Their Perks Including Free Massages, Fitness Centers

Google was known in the corporate world for high-quality corporate catering. The company has now reportedly pared back food options in recent years.

New Delhi: Alphabet’s Google Inc., which is one among the top five companies in the world by value, is gradually cutting back employee benefits as per reports by international media. Employees who work with Google, and who got laid off, have revealed how the tech giant has discontinued several benefits which they used to enjoy a few years ago.

Google is cutting back its cafe opening hours. The company has also extended the duration of the replacement of devices, including laptops, said a report on Business Insider.

“Slowly the perks have been going away. They were being stripped down gradually,” an engineer, who has worked at Google for around 15 years told Business Insider. The report highlighted that some of the benefits that have been cut temporarily include free massage, and the closure of campus shuttle buses and fitness centers.

Google was known in the corporate world for high-quality corporate catering. The company has now reportedly pared back food options in recent years.

“Food was the greatest perk at Google”, another laid off employee said, adding that food budgets were “scaled back” towards the end of the 2010s. Another laid-off Google Cloud sales engineer said that food options Google offered at its Cambridge, Boston office were “significantly reduced from their pre-pandemic heights,” with little variation between weeks.

However, as per the report, some employees disagreed and added that food at their offices was still high quality. The Mint has reported that apart from food, Google has curbed spending on employee travel, restricting it to “business critical” trips only.

Also some other laid off employees have claimed that Google has cut spending on merchandise. A former technical program manager at Google said, “I got a really cheap jacket and backpack” when she joined Google in 2022.

Google also cut benefits given to employees as holiday gifts, said the report. It quoted some staff who said that Google offered them phones from the company. And now, it is said that Google started to replace the gadgets and cash bonuses with $400 donations to a charity of their choice, as per Google staff.

The report of Google’s cost-cutting has come after the company announced the mass layoff of around 12,000 workers, accounting for 6% of its workforce, and has since been tweaking other operations in a bid to save cash.

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