This post by Grigory Yakushev, a former Google employee, appeared originally on Quora as an answer to the question "What does it feel like to be fired from Google?" The post describes his individual experience and has been edited for clarity.

I was fired from Google this April, after five years working there.

I experienced burnout about a year before that: My productivity dropped by approximately five times.

So I needed to change something, and I changed teams — transferring to semantic search (the thing that gives you a direct answer rather than links to your query).

That was a mistake. Search is the biggest and most complex product at Google, and semantic search is one of the brainiest teams around. With burnout my performance not only failed to recover, it went further downhill.

At that point my relationship with the manager and director started to deteriorate, too. They got a new guy on the team but couldn't get much done from me. My manager's first instinct was to enforce some discipline by essentially making me stay in front of my computer and monitor when I came and went. Naturally, it made things even worse.

In private discussions I was asked why I didn't leave on my own, to which I answered that I was happy with my Google salary. If Google was not happy with my performance, they could feel free to fire me, but I wasn't going to jump myself.

In March I was put on PIP (Performance Improvement Plan). It was a formal agreement that I needed to produce a certain output in two months. After a week it was quite obvious to me that I wouldn't make it.

Again I had a talk with HR and my director and was actually threatened to be fired for "gross conduct," without benefits or a waiting period. Apparently my manager and director decided that I was somehow gaming the system and just milking the company while not making any effort to do my job.

In the end, they didn't wait for the PIP deadline and gave me a termination notice after another week passed. I returned my Google hardware and badge, and my manager walked me out of the building. It all happened in about 10 minutes. My Google employee account was revoked at the same time. We went to a nearby café and he bought me a drink, which I appreciated.

As was stated in my contract I had a one-month notice period. That meant I was formally employed and received my salary for another month, even though I was not allowed to work. Google also produced a stellar reference letter for future employers, without mentioning any of this.

Overall it felt unpleasant, as is natural with burnout. I think the nasty attitude my manager and director used with me was unnecessary — it sucks when your superiors don't trust you, and that they treated me as a liar without saying it explicitly. My colleagues didn't know anything about this process, though, and were generally great and supportive. They are probably the smartest people I ever worked with.

I have fully recovered since this period. Changing teams didn't help me, but changing companies did.