[UncleMeat]

This is a weird one. Google is notoriously slow to fire people for performance reasons. People get Needs Improvement ratings. They go on PIPs. It takes ages. A sudden termination typically means something else. This can either mean that the individual did something especially foolish or a lot of people are doing the wrong thing to get this person fired (a manager, a skip, some people in HR, and probably a director would be involved in this sort of thing).

But the complaints here seem to be related to performance management. Getting a frustratingly low rating. Being told that they aren't doing enough work. For this sort of situation I'd expect the firing process to take months.

"CME for missing a meeting" is strange, but the good news is that manager calibration notes are stored in durable systems and in many locales people have the legal right to see them. So it'd be possible to see if this was actually the reason for a rating.

We'll see if more information comes out.

[0xy]

The individual was very likely on a PIP. They mentioned "performance issues". It could've went on for months.

If a manager really wants you gone they can manufacture evidence and have you yanked quickly by constructing unobtainable and/or subjective PIP targets.

[UncleMeat]

It may depend on the org, but in my org at Google there is a ton of oversight in PIP construction. I've not ever personally seen unobtainable or subjective PIP targets.

It'd also be extremely odd to be on a PIP after receiving a Consistently Meets Expectations rating. Only a subset of Needs Improvement ratings actually get PIPs. CME, by definition, means that you are doing your job sufficiently.