Raju Kadam, former senior technical program manager at Facebook’s parent company Meta, who was part of the 11,000 laid off by the company last week, shared a picture of his children on LinkedIn and said. “My clock to leave the USA has started today. I’m reaching out to all Metamates, connections, LinkedIn community to help me find a job, otherwise I have to leave the USA with my kids. I was not expecting to be part (of) layoff, as I had a strong performance in all quarters since I joined Meta. I started an incredible journey to work in Meta 9 months back, but it abruptly came to an end.”
Kadam’s post saw over 23,000 responses, including many offers of help.
Madhura Dighe, a former software engineer at Twitter, said, “This is not easy to write, but here we go. I was amongst 50 per cent of the employees affected due to layoffs at Twitter. I got logged off company Gmail and Slack in the evening along with my teammates. No communication whatsoever.”
Cyrus D Mehta, managing partner of New York-based law firm Cyrus D Mehta & Partners, said when an H-1B worker is being laid off or terminated, they get 60 days of grace period that allows them to remain in the H-1B status to find a new job. “The new employer must file the H-1B within the 60-day period. This 60-day period may not be enough to find a new job. The H-1B worker should negotiate that their employment with the company that is terminating them be extended as long as possible as the 60-day grace period will only trigger when the paid employment is terminated.”
An Indian worker, he said, is disadvantaged because of the green card backlogs caused by the per country limits. A green card allows a person to live and work permanently in the US, but country limits on green cards issued per year, together with the rush of Indian applications for green cards, has meant that there are over 7 lakh Indians today waiting for it. Many of those applicants are working on visas like H-1B.
Mehta said the Biden administration can help by changing the 60-day grace period rule by allowing more time for H-1B workers to remain in the US. But he noted that a rule change will take time as the administration has to generally first comply with the notice and comment requirements before changing the rule. “The administration must also be inclined to do this,” he said.
Meanwhile, companies in India are inviting those being laid off in the US to return home. Harsh Jain, CEO and co-founder of Dream Sports, is among those offering jobs. “With all the 2022 Tech layoffs (52,000+!) in the US, please spread the word to remind Indians to come back home (specially those with visa issues) to help Indian Tech realise our hyper-growth potential in the next decade!,” Jain tweeted.
Silicon Valley-based academic and entrepreneur Vivek Wadhwa said the layoffs are good news for India because many hundreds of very highly qualified people would return back home and join the workforce there. “It’s a loss for America because highly skilled workers are forced to leave and they’re going to discourage other people from coming here when the markets are better. Many will take the hefty savings that they have and start companies in India. This is the immigration exodus that I wrote a book about in which I want the United States to lose competitiveness because of its really bad immigration policies,” he said.
