According to police authorities, a senior software engineer at Google reportedly jumped to his death from the tech company’s Chelsea NYC headquarters on Thursday night, NY Post reported the suicide.
NYC police investigate suicide of Google engineer who jumped from company’s 14th floor
The individual, who has not been identified pending family notification, fell from the 14th floor of the 111 Eighth Ave. building around 11:30 p.m. After which police received several 911 calls reporting an unconscious person lying on the ground near a building on West 15th Street.
Upon arriving at the scene, police found the man unconscious and quickly transported him to Bellevue Hospital, where he was later pronounced dead.
Reports indicate that handprints were found on the ledge of a 14th-floor open-air terrace, but investigators did not discover any note or video related to the incident.
The recent death of the senior software engineer at Google’s Manhattan headquarters follows another apparent suicide of a 33-year-old employee named Jacob Pratt a few months earlier.
Pratt was discovered dead in an apartment located in Chelsea at the intersection of West 26th Street and 6th Avenue on February 16th, where he appeared to have hanged himself.
Google employee suicides raise concerns amidst company’s workforce reductions
According to an NYPD source who spoke with the NY Post, Jacob Pratt appeared to have hanged himself in his apartment.
Based on his LinkedIn profile, Pratt had been working at Google for a year and a half as a partnership leader, starting initially as an agency manager in May 2019. His obituary noted that his passion for advertising and technology led him to his “dream job” at Google in Manhattan.
Both Pratt’s and the recent senior software engineer’s deaths occurred after Google conducted a global workforce reduction, which affected approximately 12,000 employees, according to DailyMail. It is currently unclear whether job insecurity played a role in these tragic incidents.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, executed the layoffs as part of a wider trend of cutbacks in the tech industry.
According to Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, the company’s recent layoffs have impacted various teams throughout the organization, including those working in recruiting, certain corporate functions, and some engineering and product teams.
