Bhubaneswar/California: Bracing for a potential recession, Big Tech has begun retrenching hundreds of employees during the last few months. According to reports, around 60,000 to 80,000 Indian IT professionals have already lost their jobs in the United States. Precisely speaking, 30%-40% of laid-off techies in the US are Indians.
Microsoft began its massive job cuts of eliminating 10,000 employees on January 18. The layoffs add to the tens of thousands announced in recent months across the technology sector. Many who have lost their jobs are desperately seeking new jobs, but most are yet to be successful. IT Employees laid off by their companies have taken to social media to share their miseries and seek new opportunities.
Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet together have retrenched 51,000 employees. According to Layoffs.fyi, which compiles data from public reports and tracks layoffs, as of now, 312,600 employees have lost jobs. In 2023 alone, 174 tech companies laid off 56,570 employees.
According to industry sources, a significant number of Indian IT employees in the US are on H-1B and L1 visas. The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise. Tech companies depend on it to hire tens of thousands of employees each year from countries like India and China.
L-1A and L-1B visas are available for temporary intra-company transferees who work in managerial positions or have specialised knowledge. A significant number of Indian IT professionals, who are on non-immigrant work visas like H-1B are L1, are now scrambling for options to stay in the US to find a new job in the stipulated few months’ time that they get under these foreign work visas after losing their jobs and change their visa status as well.
Monambigha M. is one such Indian IT professional who has been affected by the recent retrenchments of Google employees. She joined Google only 10 months ago. In a post on LinkedIn, she said that she needs to spring back into action as living in the US on an H-1B visa does not give her the flexibility to take time off. “I am affected by the layoffs at Microsoft today. Many teams from the hardware side fell on the chopping block within Microsoft,” she wrote in the post
Similarly, Kunal Kumar Gupta received a termination letter after working with Google for three years and six months. “I am immediately open to work and would need immediate assistance to find a role as I am on an H-1B visa which gives me 60 days to find a job,” Gupta said.
Meanwhile, Google said on Tuesday that investors were asking the company to retrench 1.5 lahks more employees. On Monday, Swedish music streaming firm Spotify announced it will reduce its employee base by 6%, or about 600 employees. In a note to the employees, Spotify CEO CEO Daniel Ek wrote, “While we have made great progress in improving speed in the last few years, we haven’t focused as much on improving efficiency… And in a challenging economic environment, efficiency takes on greater importance. So, in an effort to drive more efficiency, control costs… I have decided to restructure our organisation.”
In a note to employees, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the layoffs, affecting less than 5 per cent of the company’s workforce, would end by the end of March, with notifications beginning on Wednesday.
