- Shruti Dhumak navigated maternity leave amid Google’s AI industry shake-up and layoffs.
- She shared her leave to maintain visibility and manage family support from India.
- Dhumak focused on self-improvement and open communication to regain her efficiency at work.
This spoken essay is based on a conversation with Shruti Dhumak, a client cloud engineer in Google’s Boston office, who was born in February 2023. It has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified her employment history.
Before I had my son, I always doubted how I would cope with being this overly ambitious person with motherhood.
I’ve been with Google for about four years. I had my first child in February 2022 and split my maternity leave into three stages to make the most of the temporary support I had when my family visited.
Between Google’s policy of six months of maternity leave, one month of prenatal leave, and one month of paid leave, I had a total of eight months away from work. I knew I was lucky to have this leave because it’s rare in the US, but going on leave and the anxiety of being replaced while I was away was one of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with.
I am a customer engineer and a large part of my role revolves around managing the relationship with our cloud customers. If someone takes over for me, the customers end up being closer to that rep and I risk losing my accounts to someone else.
I was also paranoid that my absence or performing below my peak once I returned would make me more susceptible to a layoff. Two weeks before my submission, Google announced its biggest layoff of 12,000 people. As someone on an H1-B visa, a layoff would mean I would have to find another job within weeks or risk returning to India with a newborn.
When I returned to work, I wasn’t 100 percent myself – neither as a person nor as an employee. I was not one hundred percent efficient. I have had my moments when I broke down and passed out during a phone call.
Despite my efforts, some other senior executives were preferred by business partners for some responsibilities. To top it off, Google was entering the artificial intelligence industry. Months away I felt like I was years away.
But I was able to turn my performance around. In 2024, I received awards for my performance, and it’s the complete opposite of how last year went.
There were four things I did to make the transition easier for myself:
1. Share my permission
Google offers employees the flexibility to take maternity leave for up to one year after the baby is born. I split my leave into three phases, which allowed me to return to work periodically to make sure I was visible and my work wasn’t forgotten.
I took my first vacation a month before the baby was born. I came back in the third month postpartum and went back on vacation in September, November, December and January. It was created based on who was there to help me with the baby throughout the year – first my parents and then my in-laws.
2. Highlight my work
No one will talk about me until I do that, which I struggled with in my previous companies.
I made sure to speak up when things weren’t going my way and I made sure to collect evidence of my efforts and achievements.
I took advantage of the help I had and spent my evenings and weekends taking exams and completing certifications to improve and show others that I was getting up to speed.
3. Have open and honest conversations
What helped me throughout the year was my manager. She saw what was going on when I was missing things because I had been a good performer all these years.
I shared everything more openly during one-on-one meetings, which helped because she understood my challenges. It also helped me maintain visibility with upper management because Google is strict with the grades and ratings you get.
It made all the difference in the world to have a female manager and a work culture where men could empathize. My job involves a lot of talking and explaining, and I suffered from shortness of breath during my third trimester. My male counterparts realized this and asked me to take vacations and go off camera, which helped me work until the day I left for vacation.
I also built my network and talked to women who are managers on other teams in the company. Women who have been the best shared their experiences secretly crying after becoming parents, and no one said they had it all figured out. Now, I share my journey with others.
4. Taking it one day at a time
During the wave of tech layoffs in 2022, I had at least three close friends who were fired from Google, Microsoft, and Meta, which stuck with me and made me paranoid about my situation.
Postpartum stress and depression are not behind me, but I decided to take it one day at a time.
I decided to be laser focused and do things as they come. There have been times when I’ve felt like delaying an answer, but I do it anyway because I know it can lead to more tasks that I can add to my annual review.
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