Meta laid off Surbhi Gupta, an engineer from India who worked as a Product Manager in the USA since 2009. Gupta was also cast by Netflix in its popular show, ‘Indian Matchmaking.’ She is one of the thousands who have been recently laid off by Meta as part of the company’s mass layoff plan. Gupta acknowledged the difficulty she would face in finding another job considering that there is a downtrend in terms of new hires by companies.
Surbhi Gupta, the former winner of ‘Miss Bharat-California’ in a 2018 beauty pageant, later explained these recent events to BBC and called this move by Meta quite unexpected. She received a mail one morning, regarding the layoff process and was later denied access to the computer and the office gym. She reiterated that the whole event felt like a breakup and told BBC, it took her over fifteen years to build her life in the United States. “It felt like the Titanic sinking because I was losing access to things one by one – workplace, then email, then the laptop,” she added.
However, Meta did not ask Gupta to leave the office with immediate effect. Her last working day at the office will be in January. That being said, the real task is to find another job as soon as possible as Gupta has an H1-B visa, which means she can stay in the United States for not more than 60 days after she leaves Meta. And just like Gupta, there are a thousand other Indians in the United States who find themselves in a similar situation.
But why are big tech companies like Meta, Twitter, Amazon, etc., laying off? Let’s have a look.
Why are Tech companies laying off their employees?
Meta laid off around 11,000 employees last month i.e., 13 per cent of its total workforce. But Meta isn’t the only tech company doing it, as Twitter, Amazon, BYJUs, and several other companies have already fired thousands of their employees or are on the verge of laying them off.
The reasons behind these layoffs are different, but there is one common ground. These companies went on a massive hiring spree during the pandemic as they expected an increase in their businesses. However, as things slowly got back to normal, these tech companies didn’t receive the expected profits and investments. And as a result, they are now forced to cut their losses, and laying off employees is one way to do that. Another potential reason behind the layoffs could be the anticipation of a recession in 2023.
