‘When companies don't value loyalty, why should the employees be loyal?’; Linkedin post stirs debate amid mass lay offs

New Delhi: Over 50,000 employees in 153 companies globally have lost their jobs in the first 20 days of 2023 so far, according to layoffs.fyi as major tech companies Microsoft, Google, salesforce laid off its staff. Google became the latest entry to lay off its 12,000 employees globally amid toughest days. Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the responsibility and deeply sorry about that. Apart from that, Salesforce, Vimeo, and Swiggy also laid some of their employees. Among the fired employees, some were reported to serve the companies for many years.

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Linkedin has been flooded with heart-wrenching posts from long-time employees telling the apathy and mockery of these companies despite working for many years there as loyal employees. One ex-Microsoft employees wrote in a linkedin post how being fired had hurt so much after serving the company for 21 years dedicately.

Going into the depth about the issue, a Linkedin user named Abhishek Ganti has questioned the objective of loyalty if the companies don’t respect it. He reported in the post the examples of long-serving employees of Microsoft and Google being laid off in the recent mass firing.

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“One person spent 21 years at #Microsoft and got laid off. And another one spent 16 years at #google and met with a similar fate. Their access to systems were cut off and they were informed by an email about their lay off,” Ganti wrote in the linkedin post.

He further said to all HRs in the post that they “don’t grill candidates on frequent switches and loyalty. And asked rhetorically when companies don’t value loyalty, why should the employees be loyal.

His linkedin post has so far received over 29,000 reactions, over 400 comments and 494 reposts.

Netizens blame top management for this

A linkedin user Radha Gupta commented that you were indeed right but HRs were also bound to follow instructions as they were one of us, so the actual problem was in the hierarchy and upper level management of the company. She added that they just used ground level as per their convenience, and undoubtedly that was what practically was and if it’s unfair it was what it was.

Another linkedin user Sravan G. Kumar commented that corporate world was designed on only one thing ‘requirement’. He added that it didn’t matter how many years (employees) served in a company, if any resource didn’t perform, companies would show them the exit door. He justified himself by saying that he wasn’t trying to insult or support anyone individual or company. “My question is does those 21 yrs in Microsoft resource or 16 yrs in Google resource is performing atleast to the required standards.. if NO there is nothing to discuss but if YES, then it's a bulnder by the companies.”