I acted as I’ve seen myself act on the rare occasion of a car accident: exit the situation as fast as possible and return to normalcy. I left my bedroom and went to shuffle my kids through our morning routine, but I wasn’t myself. I felt like I was in a fog. I pretended to be calm, but I felt I was one kid’s tantrum away from losing it that morning. Before leaving our NYC apartment, as I was getting dressed, my husband was going through his morning routine, starting the day with listening to the news… using Google’s assistant of course. I kissed him good morning and told him I got laid off. “You’re joking right?” he said. “No” I said and smiled. This went on twice more, before the message landed. I left him there and dropped the kids at school.
I was a month shy of celebrating my 9th Googleversary (that’s what Googlers call their work anniversary). A year ago I experienced a crisis. Before joining Google I couldn’t have imagined staying at the same job for longer than 2–3 years, and there I was, 8 years and having fun. That crisis led me to switch roles. After 8.5 years of “Making Googlers uniquely productive”, I joined Google’s internal incubator — Area 120.
Area 120 was a place where any Googler could pitch an idea and get it funded (hire a team, get money, get 6 months to prove your idea). Successful ideas got “acquired” by Google’s product area (think Maps, Search, Ads, YouTube) and get prime time, well if everything goes well.
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