'Longest 5 Minutes Of My Life', Laid Off Google Employee On H-1B Visa Opens Up About His Ordeal
We are just four months into 2024?and?more than 50,000 employees have already?been laid off?by tech companies?so far. What makes matters even worse is that there seems to be no end?in sight?to the tech layoffs anytime soon, as more and more big names in the tech industry?are expected?to trim their workforce.
This?is leaving?employees, especially those on work visas in the US?with?an uncertain future.?
Laid off while preparing for interview?
Matt Hu, a software engineer?who was?working with Google's recently laid-off Python?team, has opened up about how he learned that he just lost his dream job.
According to Hu, he was to conduct his first shadow interview that day.
"Googlers?are required to?take at least one shadow interview to go through the whole hiring process, then speak to the official interviewer to?get their interview knowledge aligned, to be finally qualified as an interviewer," Hu wrote on LinkedIn.
Something bad is happening??
He was working from?home?cooked a big dinner with his girlfriend, and watched some TV for his first interview in two years.
"I went downstairs and opened up my laptop. That was 21:00. I got a weird email?saying?'You?Cloudtop StopInstance operation has?begun' and I suddenly recalled I?just?had the?cloudtop?maintenance a few days back, it?couldn't be a scheduled task, there?is?definitely?something bad happening," Hu said.
He even tried to search on Google's internal search engine Moma "what stopinstance means" and that is when it struck him.
"Thus I had the longest five minutes in my life, witnessing how I lost?corp?access?one?website by another, with a forced laptop reboot, then finally, an email saying "Notice regarding your employment". Until then I started to realize, my watch at Google is over," Hu wrote.
Find a job in 60 days
Hu, a Chinese national who has been with Google for nearly two years was in the US on an H-1B visa. And with him being laid off by Google, Hu now also faces the prospect of deportation from the US if he fails to land another job in the next sixty days.
For more news and current affairs from around the world, please visit?Indiatimes News.
