I am a former Google employee, who was laid off yesterday.

What you are saying is not true. The severance package was extremely generous, over $150k (equivalent for 6 months of pay + RSU vest) for myself personally, and I've been working remotely from LCOL while getting the HCOL salary, allowing me to save an incredibly large amount of money in the past year. I saw this layoff coming for a while (literally everyone internally knows Google overhired and was starting to cut back on expenses, delaying bonuses etc.) and was already actively applying, and because of this I had interviews lined up before lunch on the day of my layoff. I know some of my coworkers who were also overemployed, and honestly we were talking yesterday about taking extended vacations.

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Some people (but not all) who got to keep their jobs were very bitter after seeing the severance packages we got, and were asking if they could volunteer for the next round of layoffs. I was already planning to leave because I was getting a lot of heat for working remotely and taking advantage of the COL difference, and wanted to go the OE route with jobs that are all full remote.