Google Laid Off My Entire Team a Week After I Moved to Spain

Looks like I'm back on the market!

My mom hates it when I say Google fired us. Every time I say it, she instantly reminds me that Google laid off (not fired!) my 100-person team because the project came to an unexpected close—at least for us.

Whatever word we use, though, the effect is the same: I lost my dream job.

For real, this time!

A trip down memory lane.

I remember the moment I realized I should move to America. Or maybe it was a series of moments that led up to it.

The main sentiment was watching my parents love their jobs. They worked at one of the most iconic buildings in Atlanta. Every time we drove into the city, they would point at it and say, “That’s our building!”

“Wow,” I thought to myself. “There are people in the world who actually like going to work?”

If I saw my building on my day off in Jamaica, I would gouge my eyes out. There was nothing wrong with the building itself. But I hated my job in finance, making $4 per hour with two college degrees and a professional certification in payroll.

I thought to myself, that’s what it must feel like to “arrive” in the first world. You have the opportunity of one day finding a job you actually like.

While I can say that was the moment I knew I should move, I didn’t actually think it would happen. But fast-forward to a year and a half later, and that iconic building in Atlanta was my building too.

I didn’t love my job per se, but I liked it. That was a hell of a lot more than I could say for my finance job in Jamaica. One of the top perks was the amazing views from the rooftop floor that only we and the engineers were allowed to access.

Another step along the way.

Still, I knew it wasn’t my end goal. I needed to work remotely if I was going to get the freedom necessary for travel. So, every day, I worked hard to rebuild my freelance clientele. Eventually, the day came when I could quit my city job and work from home and the road.

I truly felt like I had arrived.

In all honesty, full-time copywriting wasn’t as enjoyable as I thought it would be. I definitely loved it more than my city job, and I was grateful for the flexibility to work from anywhere. I didn’t miss waking up at 4:35 AM several times per week to go to work.

But, writing about the same topics over and over and over and over and over again gets really boring. The upside was that it also made me efficient, and what took other freelancers an hour could take me 30 minutes.

After half a year on the road, I realized I could condense my workdays into three days per week and get even more freedom. Those three days were hectic, but the reward of four days off was absolute bliss.

I enjoyed that for three years before the AI Revolution shook the copywriting industry at its core. Almost overnight, work disappeared from queues as clients turned to ChatGPT to churn out content we previously wrote and edited.

That’s when I realized I had to change careers.

The six-month pivot.

It only took me six months to pivot from copywriting to tech. I amazed even myself with the speed.

But the truth is that it took a lot of hard work. I joined one university and dropped out after a week, then switched to another. I completed several Google certifications, redid high school and college math, and learned the basics of how to code.

It was a lot!

It all paid off when a recruiter reached out to me and asked me if I’d like to work for Google. The rate was lower than I made as a freelancer who worked three days per week—roughly half. However, because I was paid hourly for all the time spent working and had to commit to a 40-hour work week, I earned more than I ever had before.

It wasn’t the money that made the job worth it, though. And, in truth, my coworkers constantly complained about our pay. To be clear, none of us made six figures or anything close to that, but we did make above the national median salary for the US.

Still, they said it was “crumbs,” and one even called it “McDonald’s pay.” It was certainly a much lower hourly rate for me and twice the time commitment, but I felt it was a solid offer for an entry-level tech job.

So, what made it my dream job?

Well, for starters, I had a pretty amazing team.

Most of us were from creative backgrounds, and several were academics. If you threw a rock, you could easily hit 10 people with PhDs. It was a relaxed work environment where pajamas were welcome, and people didn’t hide their dyed hair or tattoos on camera.

Need time off for a last-minute exam? Take it.

Need a week to tow the RV across the country? Send us pictures!

Want to move to Spain? Sounds awesome; go for it!

That level of freedom, flexibility, and support is unlike anything any of us had ever experienced before. We talked about it often long before layoffs were a whisper in the wind. And we still talk about it now that Google has loudly announced that it’s getting rid of us bastard children.

What’s the next step?

No one plans to be laid off a week and a half after moving to a foreign country, so it’s hard to say what’s next. Halloween will be my last day on the project. I’m still considering my options and reaching out.

All but one of my copywriting clients are no longer around. Several of them went under or switched to AI. The old job boards I used to frequent that successfully got me contract after copywriting contract are now ghost towns. I can almost see the tumbleweed rolling idly across my screen under the “No results to display” message.

Luckily, I have a legal writing client that I’ve continued working for even throughout school and the Google job. I also have a technical writing client who hired me for part-time work a month after Google did.

I kept these clients for exactly this possibility, i.e. that the project would eventually come to an end and leave me stranded. I’ve lost about 70% of my income, but the 30% remaining means I won’t starve.

The Spanish issue.

I will say that I’ve heard from recruiters more often this time around than I did last year. Maybe the job market is better in 2024, or maybe my master’s degree and tech experience have caught a few eyes.

The problem I keep running into is that companies don’t seem to like 1099 contractors anymore, and W2 contracts create a complex tax scenario for working from Spain.

Another coworker of mine is in Barcelona, and she’s facing the same issue. In fact, she had to convert her contract from W2 to 1099 on our existing team just to move here last summer.

On the upside, I can close things out by saying my Spanish Digital Nomad Visa was approved a few days ago, and I’ve found an apartment. I’ll share more details about my new place and the visa process with paid subscribers next week.

Despite the unexpected loss and the sadness of losing my team, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the break. I’ve spent the past year running from one task to the next. Even when I finished full-time grad school, the next order of business was renovating the RV and then moving to Spain.

I’m ready to take a well-needed break for a week or two. I’ll still be doing client work and looking for my replacement job, but there will be plenty of time to catch my breath. In fact, I’m headed to Madrid to meet up with friends this weekend.

If you know of anyone hiring remote workers, feel free to shoot me an email. I’m looking for roles in AI, technical training, technical writing, and junior project management. If you think there’s something else I should consider, I’m happy to take a look at that, too.

Thanks in advance!