Since 2022, many IT companies have closed or shrunk their manpower. Thousands of Indian IT professionals across the globe, who have lost their jobs due to the series of recent layoffs at companies like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, are now struggling to find new employment. In order to remain in the country, they are now battling to find new employment within the time frame allowed by their work visas.
Twitter’s Delhi and Mumbai offices were closed two days ago, and employees were asked to work from home. Amid layoffs and severe cost-cutting, Twitter has closed its offices. The microblogging platform’s Bengaluru office, which largely has engineering staff, remains operational. The Delhi and Mumbai offices shuttered a few weeks ago, with the remaining staff now working from home. However, the number of employees affected by the move could not be immediately ascertained.
The closure of the two offices in key locations in India comes as the platform has initiated a massive cost-cutting drive globally after billionaire Elon Musk’s USD 44 billion takeover of Twitter last year.
Twitter fired the majority of its over 200 employees in India as part of the subsequent layoffs. Only a handful of positions were spared as layoffs culled roles across engineering, sales and marketing, and communications teams. A potential economic recession is a big red flag. With inflation soaring in most parts of the world, central banks have been scrambling since March this year to rein it in by increasing rates so as to make it more costly to borrow and consume. This will eventually affect economic growth and jobs. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has cited forecasts for global GDP growth in 2022 and 2023 as “gloomy,” given the pandemic and ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Setting aside the 2008 financial crisis numbers, estimates for this calendar year and the next by the IMF are the weakest since 2001.
Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, announced earlier this month that the tech giant would fire 10,000 employees, or approximately 5 percent of its entire workforce, calling it a difficult decision the tech giant had to make to remain a “consequential company” in the face of economic uncertainty throughout the world. As the job-killing spree in the IT sector continues in 2023, Microsoft is the third company, following Facebook and Amazon, to announce job cuts.
The current era is one of “significant change,” according to Indian-origin Customers who increased their digital spending during the pandemic outbreak, according to Nadella, are now optimizing it to accomplish more with fewer resources.
Since November 2022, approximately 200,000 IT employees have lost their jobs, including record numbers at firms like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon. Some industry insiders estimate that between 30 and 40% of them are Indian IT professionals, many of whom are in possession of H-1B and L1 visas. A non-immigrant visa called the H-1B allows US businesses to hire foreign nationals for specialized jobs that require theoretical or technical competence. It is essential to the hiring of tens of thousands of workers each year from nations like China and India by technology companies.
The most recent Google move to pause their Green Card procedure just makes things worse for Indian IT professionals. This is primarily due to the fact that they cannot be seen arguing before USCIS that they require a foreign IT professional as a permanent resident at a time when they have sacked thousands of people. It is anticipated that other businesses will do the same.
The US has now launched new initiatives that will help cut visa processing delays in India. Special interviews are being scheduled for first-time applicants, and the strength of the consular staff is being increased. A spate of mass layoffs has rocked the technology industry globally, with an estimated 100,000 people losing their jobs in just the first 40 days of 2023, amid an uncertain economic climate.
While the Indian tech industry has not been left untouched by the global carnage, experts are confident that the impact on India will be limited and the country will continue to remain a strong tech hub.
While it is very unfortunate whenever someone gets laid off, in India that will largely be restricted to the start-up sector or IT product sector, which employs less than 200,000 people as compared to the four to five million people that are employed in IT services today.
