Ex-Googlers unite to ride out tech storm

A Xoogler community meet-up in Tel Aviv / Photo credit: Xoogler

After Google announced that it was cutting 12,000 employees in January, Xoogler – a community that connects Google alumni and current staff – found itself in an important position.

The number of Xoogler members has shot up from around 14,000 to more than 26,000 over the past month, according to Christopher Fong, the community’s founder.

Last week, Google reportedly eliminated about 450 and 190 jobs in India and Singapore, respectively.

“We clearly knew there was a big demand from a lot of people who would need help, and we knew we had the infrastructure of people everywhere around the world to organize events and programming,” Fong tells Tech in Asia.

He says some of the Xoogler members are still at Google “trying to figure out perhaps what they want to do next.”

Fong worked at Google between 2006 and 2015, with his last role being on Project Sand Hill, which aimed to pull fast-growing startups into the company.

He later founded Xoogler, which has turned into a large base of startup founders, investors, and mentors. Job search events and resume improvement sessions were added after the layoffs happened.

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Xoogler also encourages its members to launch their own startups. Fong argues that this could be “a very good time” to do so considering the severance package and gardening leave ex-Google employees were given and the potential to tap to other Xoogler members.

The community is organizing a series of events for impacted Google employees.

“What I would really like to happen is when companies conduct a reduction in force, they are inspired to organize these job fairs and also arrange co-working membership to meet each other and prepare for their job search,” Fong says.